My name is Ernesto Dominguez; my friends call me “E.” I am a 21-year-old youth living in Portland, Oregon. I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and grew up in the beautiful city of Salt Lake. If I had to define my sexual orientation today, I would say Queer – I tend to mostly just think of myself as a sexual being that is attracted to other sexual beings. If I had to define my gender identity today, I would say I consider myself cisgender, but also gender queer. At its core, what that means is, my gender expression tends to fluctuate (sometimes dramatically) from month to month, or sometimes day to day. On the other hand though, I have always really enjoyed my male body and never felt a need to change it in any way.

My coming out experience was different from my non-people of color (POC) peers for a number of reasons, thus making it quite different than other youth’s experiences. Because I was not white, my mother would always tell me to try and fit in, instead of standing out – that simply by being gay, I was making myself stand out from the rest of the population and subsequently was making my family stand out. My sexual orientation was a reflection not just on myself, but also on the rest of my family. Our family already had a “strike” against us for being from another country, and my sexuality only served to give my family another one.

When two 11-year-old boys died by suicide in April of this year after enduring relentless anti-gay bullying at their separate schools, shocked citizens across the country were forced to come to terms with an uncomfortable but blatant epidemic. The hallways of schools, homes, churches and other places where all young people should be able to safely learn and grow are plagued with its tragic prevalence. Youth who identify as or are perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning (LGBTQ) struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide at a disproportionately high rate as a result of the increased risk factors sexual minorities face.

A new study released in August by the UCLA School of Public Health found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people are twice as likely as heterosexual men and women to seek help from mental health professionals. This recently-revealed conclusion perfectly illustrates the already often-noted statistic determined by a Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey published in 2007: LGBTQ youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers – a fact we’re all too familiar with at The Trevor Project. Perhaps more off-putting than this distressing statistic is that only 14 states even bother to collect sexual orientation data in their Youth Risk Behavior Surveys. The remaining 72% of states ignore the opportunity to obtain vital information about a subculture of young people who are already all too often left without the support networks and resources they desperately need. As disheartening stories such as Carl Walker-Hoover’s and Jaheem Herrera’s (the two 11-year-old boys) surface more frequently, the harsh realities force us to address the preventable nature of these tragedies.

From our friends at GayInAthens.com

Students in University of Georgia instructor Jamie Landau’s “Visual Mediated Rhetoric of Gender and Sexuality” class recently created projects that visually display LGBT life in Athens, Georgia. I had the opportunity to speak to Landau’s SPCM 3310 class earlier this summer about what it means to be a gay blogger. The students were well educated on issues of communication within the LGBT community and offered up a number of thought-provoking questions and suggestions for this Web site. (Like, “How do you decide what to put on the Web site?” and “When do you step in and moderate user interaction?”)

Two of the students groups submitted their projects to GayInAthens.com. Below are the results. The first group filmed “a transformation from ‘man’ to ‘woman.’” The second group created a rendition of Charles Ebbet’s world-famous “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper” photograph.

I recently got the experience recently to table for Campus Pride at Youth Pride Day in Washington DC. It was great to hear many great compliments from people saying how nice it was to see you here and how they would have liked to have such resources when they were younger too. Many youth explored the Campus Climate Index and added their names to the newsletter listserv. I gave a brief talk regarding Campus Pride and one of our universities, George Mason University, was there and spoke about how they completed the index and their programs they offer.

Youth Pride helped expose teens to new organizations and opportunities. It also exposed participants to LGBTQ friendly colleges and universities.

Thank you very much to the organizers for having Campus Pride table at your event and for all your hard work and support for LGBTQ youth.

You can find out more about the event at:
http://www.metroweekly.com/feature/?ak=4213
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How do you define pride?

Many people have different ways of defining pride below are two students' definitions of pride: