Imagine you are gay youth in a homophobic community. Every day your emotions are beaten into the ground by your friends, community leaders, maybe even your family. How would this make you feel? Most likely, you would feel depressed. It is possible you would go to extreme measures like suicide. You would not be alone. LGB youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth. Five times more likely that other children. That’s a lot. A likely reason for this is bullying.Today I want to tell you about the horrific experience of sexual orientation based bullying and the effects it can have on LGB youth.

In the world right now, one of the most discriminated against minorities are LGB people.LGB is …show more content…
But whatever the reason, people just don’t seem to want LGB people in the world. And that’s why they bully, because LGB people are different. A gay man recalling his experience in Middle School says "It took a lot of strength to get out of the house and face the bullying. Being ridiculed was part of my daily life.I was at the bottom of all my classes. My self-esteem was so low that I was almost suicidal. I didn't know who or where I was. All I knew was that nearly everyone had decided that I was loathsome, vile and unnatural. By the time I was in the third year, I was being bullied a lot. It was always homophobic bullying. It would happen on the way to school on the bus, between lessons, sometimes during lessons, and on the bus home. It wasn't just verbal abuse but physical abuse, too. Once, on the way home, my hair was set on fire.”This shows it’s not just verbal abuse. It’s physical too. They set his hair on fire. And for what reason? He wasn’t hurting anyone, or even talking to them. They just lighted his hair on fire because he was different. He also states that after the bullying, his “self-esteem was so low that I was almost suicidal”. This directly proves my point that people with low self-esteem are inclined to suicidal behavior, especially among LGB teens. In conclusion, both physical and mental bullying can have significant effects on LGB people, especially those who are still coming to terms with who they