UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Carl Siciliano
Cardinal Dolan, I write to you as the director of the Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to homeless LGBT youth. I am writing to you on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of LGBT youths who have been driven from their homes by parents unwilling or unable to accept their own children because they are gay. And I write to you as a member of the Archdiocese of New York who is deeply ashamed by the ways that his bishop contributes to the abuse and harm suffered by these youths.
I want you to understand how you, and other religious leaders who fight against the acceptance of LGBT people, are helping to create a national tragedy. As youths find the courage and integrity to be honest about who they are at younger ages, hundreds of thousands are being turned out of their homes and forced to survive alone on the streets by parents who cannot accept having a gay child. Parental rejection has become so prevalent that LGBT youths make up an astonishing 40 percent of the nation’s homeless youth population.
Do you know that a recent study of family rejection found that parents who identify themselves as “strongly religious” are much more likely to reject their LGBT children?
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