Britain’s homeless gays have mastered what we could only wish to accomplish:
Albert Kennedy Trust chief executive Tim Sigsworth, told the Homeless Link conference last week that young homosexual men were going to bars and cafes and surfing gay websites to find people who would give them a room in return for sex.
‘A lot of young people coming to us are using internet cafes and gay bars too often when they are homeless,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it will be a one-night stand but end up as 10 nights because it’s a bed.’
We can’t get a guy to sleep with us ten consecutive nights and we have a house! With a bed!
We may may jest, but homeless advocate Gayle Jones knows the situations no joke:
There’s a lot of drug and alcohol use in the gay scene. A lot revolves around bars and clubs. If you are young, you have lost your friends and family and feel low about yourself, you will not be bothered about going off with someone who makes you feel better, gives you a bed for the night and shower in the morning.
Even when the bed, shower and “comfort” involve abuse, which, sadly, it often does… So, why don’t these queers go to a hostel? Because many hostels refuse them, that’s why, and the problem’s hardly just British.
An American lesbian named recently settled a case with Chicago’s New Life Shelter after they refused to help her for her gay ways.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Paul Raposo
“There’s a lot of drug and alcohol use in the gay scene. A lot revolves around bars and clubs. If you are young, you have lost your friends and family and feel low about yourself, you will not be bothered about going off with someone who makes you feel better, gives you a bed for the night and shower in the morning.”
That really smacks of homophobia. Is Ms. Jones implying that only gay men are taking advantage of homeless youth? What about all the straight men–and women–who are abusing the homeless?
Ms. Jones goes onto to say:
“Ms Jones said young gay people often imagined there was more homophobia in hostels that there was.”
Lovely; some het who is the chair of a LGBTQ organization is pontificating on something she clearly knows nothing about.
Gregoire
Yeah, this sounds really hot and all, until you wake up and your valuables are gone.
Smartypants
More than 10 years ago I was volunteered with a Seattle program aimed at homeless GLBT youth. The problem of youth trading sex for a place to sleep is very common. Despite Gregoire’s comment, the kids were usually at much greater risk than the men who took advantage of the situation. We had so many reports of kids who were raped or abused in other ways, it would make your heart bleed.
There is also a problem with homophobia in many shelters, particularly but not exclusively faith-based ones, that either reject GLBT youth or that make judgements about them. In my opinion this id just another kind of abuse in exchange for shelter.
The solution includes educating shelters about the particular needs of homeless GLBT youth, developing new shelters that are affirming of sexual minorities, and doing more to support families struggling to deal with a GLBT child so the kids can stay in a reasonably supportive family environment as much as possible.