An incredibly in-depth piece on gay/trans homeless youth from AP's Verena Dobnik:
Gizmo Lopez, 19, comes from a staunchly Catholic family with Puerto Rican roots. She now sleeps on the subway.Catholic family values. Then again, dad was only following the lead of the Catholic bishops, who routinely hate on gays.
"I'm bisexual, and my stepfather didn't approve; he said it's wrong," said the teenager, whose mother died two years ago.
Her father moved to Puerto Rico with her two half-brothers, leaving her behind — alone in the family's apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side. One day afternoon, when she came home from school, "I found a pink slip on the door."
She was evicted.
The support saved Demetrius Smith, an 18-year-old who left his great-grandmother's Michigan farm years ago because "she whipped me, and she beat me with an umbrella because she thought I acted like a girl."Just wow.
He bought food and other necessities by working as an escort.
