Poll: Gay People Coming Out Earlier

Poll: Gay People Coming Out Earlier

The age at which people in the U.K. are coming out as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender has gone from 37 to 17 in about two generations, according to a survey released Monday by gay rights group Stonewall.

A poll of 1,500 people who are out found that responders over the age of 60 came out, on average, at the age of 37, The Guardian reports. People currently in their 30s came out when they were 21, and those aged 18-34 came out by the time they were 17.

http://advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/11/15/Poll_Gay_People_Coming_Out_Earlier/

keep on coming out, in DROVES, please, because it is harder for people to demonize WHEN THEY KNOW / LIKE / RESPECT real gay people in their lives

Often, even the young ones are outed through either accident or on purpose, which can have problematic effects. Most of the out kids in my group were found out via a text message or email that the parents saw and not a purposeful discussion initiated by them. Secondly, I fear for kids who come out while dependent on adults when we have done next to nothing to create a safety net for them in case it goes horridly wrong. Heck even the relatively famous Derrick (drawing a blank on last name but the Georgia kid who got to go to prom with is boyfriend) got kicked out by his parents. I think we really need, as adult gays, to figure out a way to build such a safety net for those kids or else we could wind up with even more kids kicked out for being gay and living on the streets.