How High School Can Be Hard on Gay Teens

It would be nice to say that being a gay teen in high school is just like being a straight teen in high school. To say that they are treated the same as straight teens concerning sexuality would be a relief. To go even further and say that being in high school and gay never has any effect, either positive or negative, would mean one wonderful thing-equality in even the harshest environment. Unfortunately, that is not the case, more often than not. Even if the effects are minimal, being gay in high school is bound to have some repercussions unless the teen is fortunate enough to live in one of the rare places where homosexuality is fully accepted.

High school is not the most inviting environment for gay teens, more often than not. Teenagers are hard on each other about even the most trivial things. Being gay makes you the minority, simply because there are more straight people than there are gay people. To some teenagers, you may as well have seeping contagious boils if you are gay. Imagine the kind of treatment that being gay will get you in an environment that contains even one popular gay-hating teen. This treatment can have all kinds of ill effects on impressionable gay teens. They could begin displaying antisocial behavior, become depressed and so on.

Being that gays are the minority on the whole, it is likely that a gay teen is going to have far fewer romantic options than his straight friends do in high school. Naturally, a gay teen is going to want to have a boyfriend. They are going to be curious and, like most teens, feel the need to be excessively lovey with their romantic interests. Well, chances are, most of the boys they develop crushes on are not going to be interested. Straight teens may even act revolted if they are the recipient of advances by a gay teen.

There is no denying that rejection hurts. Rejection coupled with derision is worse. Rejection coupled with derision when you are just a teen is rough beyond words. The teenage years are emotional, tumultuous ones. They are hard on even the most well rounded, popular kids. Feeling like a black sheep in high school can hurt or make us stronger, but when it is about something as delicate as sexuality in your teens, it can feel far worse. Shame is par for course when teens start to come into their sexuality. As a straight person, it is hard to imagine having that amplified. Ouch.

The only thing to be done about possible ill effects of being gay in high school is to educate our straight and gay young people on the natural nature of homosexuality. This is going to be a long and arduous road with a lot of roadblocks, but it must be done to give our teens time to focus on what they want to focus on, like making out and texting. Come to think of it, we should probably be replacing the distraction of sexual preference inequality with something like extreme reading.