Campus Pride. Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
Support and other resources for gay young people are out there, sometimes only a click or a phone call away, but advocates said the recent suicide of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi and other teens who were believed to have been victims of anti-gay bullying point to the need for even more widespread help.
In a country of about 12,000 public school districts, the education network known as GLSEN (glsen.org) counts about 4,000 Gay-Straight Alliances, the name for school clubs mostly in high schools that register with the group.
“Youth in general are not very help-seeking,” said the organization’s executive director, Eliza Byard. “Getting people to reach out is one of the big challenges.”
Another nonprofit focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth, the Trevor Project, operates a free, confidential hotline (866 4-U-Trevor) for counseling and suicide prevention around the clock. The hotline, among many crisis lines available, takes an average of about 30,000 calls a year, said a Trevor spokeswoman, Laura McGinnis.
Trevor (thetrevorproject.org) also offers “TrevorChat,” a free, secure online messaging service for counseling between 4 p.m. and midnight Eastern time. The organization’s Trevor Space, a monitored social networking service for gay youth, has about 13,000 registered users, McGinnis said.
“So if your town has only 300 people in it, you’re not alone,” she said.
