KUDOS FOR CHRONICLE!
On Thursday, February 24th, Chronicle aired a show called “Growing up Gay”. It was co-hosted by Randy Price, who is a gay news anchor on Channel 5 and featured Steve Buckley, radio personality and sports writer for the Boston Herald, who recently came out. The show also featured a young man, who attempted suicide when he was in high school, along with his dad and a great piece about a young bi-racial man who found a safe place to land at Brighton High School, thanks to an openly lesbian English teacher that runs the high school’s Gay/Straight/Alliance Program. Each segment had a powerful story to tell and kudos to Chronicle for featuring such programs as the GSA. It is so important for our children to be aware of the support that’s out there, the statistics show that a frightening one in three gay youths have attempted suicide.
As I watched this program, I thought how lucky are we to be living in Massachusetts and why it is so important. A show like this would never be aired in Florida, Texas or Alabama, just to name a few. We are so fortunate to have forward thinking individuals making good decisions for all the people in our great state.
We have successful professional gay men and women living very public lives here in the Bay State and they are the role models for our children’s future. They are giving them hope that when they grow up and start a career, they too can be openly gay and successful.
I can’t leave out something I saw on Oprah last week. Lisa Ling has a series on Oprah’s OWN network called “Our America with Lisa Ling”, which does stories on all different types of people in living in America. This particular story was about a couple living in New England, I believe in Massachusetts, who had a son named Harry who transgendered to a girl, Hailey, at the age of three. She is now seven years old and lives her life as female. I think her parents have shown the courage and strength of our greatest warriors, they have released her from a life of pain and anguish that so many men and women, who struggle with the decision to transgender, but do not have the support of a loving family. Granted, there are always challenges for our children, gay, straight or transgender, but when they have a loving family supporting them, love always wins over hate. For a person longing to live as another gender, it is not living, it’s merely existing.
PFLAG makes life for our children worth living. With the programs they create and the work that they do enable me to write about the success stories in this post. We all can make a difference and when you do, you become a better you, too!
hugs, Barbara
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