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A new survey released by two nonprofit organizations focused on the LGBTQ community shows that life is not easy for LGBTQ individuals growing up in the Southern U.S.
Campaign for Southern Equality, an organization that fights for the legal and political rights of the LGBTQ community within the U.S. south, in partnership with Campus Pride, a national nonprofit for student leaders and campus groups working to create a safer college environment for LGBTQ students, released “Coming of Age as an LGBTQ+ Southerner: Family, Faith, Education & Health,” on Aug. 30.
“Right now the sad reality is that many young LGBTQ+ people are experiencing a lack of acceptance at home and in their faith communities – and it’s especially troubling that younger people are often perceiving and receiving less emotional, mental, and physical support and resources than older respondents,” said Shane L. Windmeyer, founder and executive director of Campus Pride, in a press release. “Young LGBTQ+ people are being forced to conjure immense strength and resilience to combat marginalization and isolation – and it’s vital that we do everything we can, on every level of society, to support and affirm them for being who they are.”
The organizations surveyed more than 4,000 LGBTQ Southerners asking them how family life, faith, schools and more impacted their growth in the traditionally conservative part of the country. Participants were asked to rank various areas of their lives on a scale of 0-100, with 0 being “Not At All Supportive” and 100 being Most Supportive.
Survey organizers found that participants gave an average score of 56.37 to their parents/caregivers for support related to sexual orientation and an average score of 51.80 for support related to gender identity, with transgender participants reporting lower scores than cisgender participants and younger participants reporting lower scores than older participants. Additionally, just over 58% of participants stated their parents/caregivers had expressed efforts to repress or change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
For those participants who identified as spiritual or religious, nearly 69% reported being alienated or discouraged from participating in their religious or faith community due to their LGBTQ identity.
Things were not much better at school, with nearly 48% of all respondents reporting they missed days of school because of safety concerns related to their LGBTQ identify with 58% reporting they felt unsafe while at school because of their gender identity and 73% reporting they felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation.
Most alarming is more than half (56.21%) of all respondents reported experiencing suicidal ideation and 13.52% reporting attempting suicide at least once.
“Unfortunately, the dominant narrative emerging from these data is that thousands of individuals throughout the South are not getting the social support they need and deserve at home, in schools, and in their communities,” said Dr. Austin H. Johnson, director of the Southern Equality Research & Policy Center at the Campaign for Southern Equality and assistant professor of sociology at Kenyon College, in the release. “This lack of support and inclusion is disempowering and may cause detrimental harm to their mental and physical wellbeing, especially when that lack of support gets compounded with clear, state-sponsored discrimination such as the passage of anti-LGBTQ laws.”
The average age of survey participants was 28, with a majority of respondents being age 18-24. Respondents were from 13 states with more than half coming from Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia.
Read the full study here.
