Survey: GLB teens at increased health risks; % of population that's GLB is quite large

A new survey is out showing, surprise, gay, lesbian and bi teens are at increased health risks because of the stressors placed on them by an intolerant American society:

High school students who identify as being gay, lesbian, or bisexual are more likely than heterosexual students to smoke, drink alcohol, use drugs, and take part in violent and suicidal behaviors, a CDC survey shows.

CDC researchers analyzed survey results from about 156,000 high school students.

"This report should be a wake-up call for families, schools, and communities that we need to do a much better job of supporting these young people," Howard Wechsler, EdD, MPH, of the CDC, says in a news release. "Any effort to promote adolescent health and safety must take into account the additional stressors these youth experience because of their sexual orientation, such as stigma, discrimination and victimization."

The author of the report, Laura Kann, has the solution to immunize gay students to the health risks but, of course, in order to implement the fix one would have to fight the influence of the following right wing hate groups who are interested in making life as difficult as possible for LGBT kids and their families:

"For youth to thrive in their schools and communities, they need to feel socially, emotionally and physically safe and supported. Schools and communities should take concrete steps to promote healthy environments for all students, such as prohibiting violence and bullying, creating safe spaces where young people can receive support from caring adults, and improving health education and health services to meet the needs of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth."

A very important note regarding this report. Please go to the section that details how many students claim they are gay or bisexual. While it's a bit confusing adding all the numbers up, it appears to be at least twice the number reported by the earlier "study" we complained about a couple of months ago, in which we are supposedly only 3.5% of the population. The percentage of gay, bisexual or questioning students is MUCH higher. And not surprisingly, students appear to have been more willing to tell the truth about their orientation than adults in the earlier survey.