Originally Posted by
IMPress Polly
Brett:
I am gay. I am also female, so I'm pretty sure taking Viagra will not help me with anything in any way.
It is true that many gay people struggle emotionally. According to the most recent data I have seen, 25% of openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth in the United States have attempted suicide before, for instance (with the stat being highest for lesbians specifically), as compared with 6% of those who describe themselves as heterosexual. The thing is that it's not our sexual orientation that causes issues like this. It has also been found, for example, that gay youth who live in highly rejecting family environments are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than gay youth who live in highly accepting family environments and that factors like the legalization of same-sex marriage and the liberalization of a country's child adoption policies have been demonstrated to reduce the commonality of suicide attempts among LGB people worldwide. Likewise an IMPACT study from 2010 found that each episode of LGB victimization, such as physical or verbal harassment or abuse that occurs because of one's sexual orientation, increases the likelihood of self-harming behavior by 2.5 times on average.
These facts match with my own lived experience. Being gay hasn't itself done me harm. Rejection of who I am by others, and social pressure on me to reject that part of myself is what has done me harm in connection to this matter. In other words, it isn't homosexuality that causes LGB people to feel unhappy with themselves. It is instead people like you who do that. Being gay doesn't make me unhappy. Being rejected and/or attacked for who I love makes me unhappy. You see how that makes sense?