I firmly believe that pressuring or forcing a LGBTQ+ person to be outed – no matter how old or young they are – is a huge risk to their safety and wellbeing. It is not an inherent danger to be LGBTQ+ (in fact, quite the opposite!). So why put LGBTQ+ young people in harm’s way?
History is full of examples of forcible interference in LGBTQ+ people’s coming out journeys: Section 28 in the UK, ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in the US, Florida and Texas demanding the outing of trans young people to the state, Uganda’s proposed bill of criminalising those who do not ‘report’ someone for being LGBTQ+ to the authorities, and so on.
These have never left LGBTQ+ people in a good place – they create shame and stigma, drive fear and suspicion, and unsurprisingly can and have destroyed the mental health and wellbeing of thousands of LGBTQ+ people. Ask any LGBTQ+ adult and they will tell you the lasting impact Section 28 has had on their life – an impact we continue to see among LGBTQ+ teachers who are still too afraid to come out in school today.
We have to ask ourselves: what do we fear? Do we fear that our children might be lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans? If so, why? If we fear them being LGBTQ+, is it because we view being LGBTQ+ as lesser than?
Is the fear that they might face more challenges than their peers? This is likely to be true in the society we currently live in, and is therefore an understandable and genuine fear for many parents. Just Like Us’ research has found time and time again that LGBTQ+ young people face serious and disproportionate challenges when it comes to safety in school, daily tension at home, loneliness, self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
If the fear behind this growing conversation is that we worry our children will encounter these disproportionate challenges that society throws at LGBTQ+ people, then there is plenty we can do that would be more helpful than making a LGBTQ+ young person vulnerable by forcibly outing them.
The Albert Kennedy Trust is a LGBTQ+ homelessness charity. Their 2021 homelessness report found that half of LGBTQ+ young people (50%) fear that expressing their LGBTQ+ identity to family members would lead to them being evicted. 77% of the young people that akt support became homeless after coming out or being outed to their family.
Sadly, navigating challenging family relationships is so often part and parcel of being a LGBTQ+ person. In fact, Just Like Us’ new research has found that the majority of LGBT+ young adults (54%) are estranged from at least one family member and that they are twice as likely to not be close to their immediate family as their straight, cisgender peers.
Trans young people are three times more likely to not have the privilege of closeness with their immediate family – for non-binary young people, it’s almost four times.