Posted on 12/06/2010 5:16:24 AM PST by Abathar
Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adolescents are about 40 percent more likely than other teens to be punished by school authorities, police and the courts, according to a study by Yale University researchers. Published in the January 2011 issue of the journal Pediatrics, the study is the first to document excessive punishment of LGB youth nationwide.
"We found that virtually all types of punishment—including school expulsions, arrests, juvenile convictions, adult convictions and especially police stops—were more frequently meted out to LGB youth," said lead author Kathryn Himmelstein, who initiated the study while she was a Yale undergraduate. The research was supervised by Hannah Brueckner, professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course at Yale.
The study was based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and included about 15,000 middle and high school students who were followed for seven years into early adulthood. The study collected details on participants' sexuality, including feelings of sexual attraction, sexual relationships and self-labeling as LGB. Add Health also surveyed participants about how frequently they engaged in a variety of misbehaviors, ranging in severity from lying to parents, to using a weapon. Add Health included detailed questions about school expulsions and contacts with the criminal justice system.
Himmelstein, who now teaches math at a public high school in New York City, said that adolescents who identified themselves as LGB were about 50 percent more likely to be stopped by police than other teenagers. Teens who reported feelings of attraction to members of the same sex, regardless of their self-identification, were more likely than other teens to be expelled from school or convicted of crimes as adults.
"Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual were especially at risk for unequal treatment," said Himmelstein. "They reported experiencing twice as many police stops, arrests and convictions as other girls who had engaged in similar behavior. Although we did not explore the experiences of transgender youth, anecdotal reports suggest that they are similarly at risk for excessive punishment."
The study showed that these disparities in punishments are not explained by differences in the rates of misbehavior. In fact, the study showed that adolescents who identified themselves as LGB actually engaged in less violence than their peers.
"The painful, even lethal bullying that LGB youth suffer at the hands of their peers has been highlighted by recent tragic events," Himmelstein notes. "Our numbers suggest that school officials, police and judges, who should be protecting LGB youth, are instead singling them out for punishment based on their sexual orientation. LGB teens can't thrive if adults single them out for punishment because of their sexual orientation."
Brueckner added, "The study provides the first and only national estimates for over-representation of LGB youth in the criminal justice system. We simply did not have any good numbers on this before. We need more research on the processes that lead to this to help us identify ways to make our institutions more equitable with respect to policing all youth, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation."
Citation: Pediatrics Vol. 127, 1 (January 1, 2011)
Aggressively ugly. With all those qualifications, you’d think she would figure out that her cause is never going to be popular.
Nice to see Dana Carvey landed a gig.
It's perfect! Victimhood and Lefty saint status all at once!
Wow! Amazing! I didn't know the cops had devices now that can tell you're lesbian/gay/bisexual just by scanning you while you're driving down the street!
Obviously, a factor other than "victimization" is taking place here. Likely candidates: quite possibly "LGB adolescents" are committing stoppable offenses at a higher rate; or perhaps "LGB adolescents" report being stopped by police at a higher rate.
If they all were like Ellen, who is relaxed, always dancing and smiling and quite lighthearted and amusing in a general sense, not just a microphone for gay issues, we would not have a problem. I don't begrudge her the success she has earned as an entertainer.
Rosie, on the other hand, is worse than not funny -- she is determined to make everyone suffer.
Before PCness took over, many studies showed a strong association of alcohol and drug use with homosexuality. Did this researcher determine what, exactly, these self-identified teen lesbians were pulled over by the cops for? Did she go on what the teens said happened? Did she search out police records?
Thank you.
Singled out more? Simply because of LGB? Not likely. More likely, they're singled out because they act out more than the normal kids, as per the agenda.
This is the problem with the delusion that self-declared homosexuals, as a group (not that there are not individual exceptions), can be in the military or the priesthood and be committed to following the rules on sexual misconduct.
They have already identified -- key word/concept -- themselves as a group unwilling or unable to put the rules first. They (as a group) have made their sexuality the most definitive thing about who they are, which will almost always lead to the rules and norms being disregarded when push comes to shove.
Yep!
Typical of this kind of thing I see a lot of slippery language in this press release. I’d want to see the data, methods, etc.
I agree with your conclusion that "norming" is a bad idea that will draw more kids into a degenerate lifestyle.
But when I went to large schools in the late 50s-early 60s, we were aware of several kids whom mainstream kids believed were gay or lesbian and who were teased or taunted for it. Some had crushes on best friends of the same sex, or were just geeky in general, or did role-confused things like playing with the edge of cross-dressing or, in one case, a female who signed up for shop class.
Funny thing is, easily half of the kids whom everyone thought were gay or lesbian actually married people of the opposite sex and had children normally, especially the ones who had a strong moral or religious community.
So there is something to say about bullying -- it's not a good thing to do to a kid for any reason, not just perceived gayness.
Exactly.
This sounds like a perception study. The classic perception studies revolve around college students and drinking. The perception is that drinking occurs at a much higher rate than it does in actuality. Why? Everyone knows some one (or two) that drinks often or “binges” on the weekends and that translates to an overall higher population in the students’ minds. Comparing the “perception” rate to self-reported drinking, there is usually a huge disparity. Overall drinking occurs much less than students perceive. Reports by R.A.’s and other officials have backed this up.
So now we have a group of younger people (who tend to be more egocentric), who likely hang out with more “LGBT” than “straight” students. They might see more students in the first group get in trouble than in the second group. That would lead to a natural perception that they get more punishments. If, in reality, they don’t this is setting up a whole group of teens for more disenfranchisement than they already have.
Intriguing story! I've seen the same behavior in the military, when the tough Marine sergeant ran the married recruits especially hard and punished them arbitrarily, mocking them as "queer" for being married!
An alternative headline for this article: “Gay/Lesbian Teens More Likely To Engage In Criminal Acts”
There is a strong correlation between aberrant sexual orientations and general risk-taking and thrill-seeing behaviors. These latter tend to get one punished, when caught, by school authorities.
Another one to chalk up to correlation is not causation.
I’m sick and tired of homo obsession, homo worship or anything homo. I overheard two homos talking . One said so and so was a “natural “ homo while somebody else was a lipstick home. Just wanted to be a homo for popularity’s sake. I encountered a homo at a walmart checkout recently. gliding his fingers through my food and saying “thay” to everything. I just wanted to grab a hold of him and tell him to act like a man, not a fairy. Take some tetosterone, or do something, just quit acting like a hollywood homo.
Gender Inequality in the Life Course = Professional Victim.
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