Research Shows…

That having a supportive parents reduces self-harm in LGBTQ youth, something as simple as love can have a positive effect on LGBTQ children. But not everyone gets that support.

For LGBTQ youth, home might not be a safe place to self-isolate
NBC News via Yahoo News
By Sakshi Venkatraman
May 3, 2020

For Fabliha Anbar, 20, her LGBTQ identity is an important part of her social and academic life. She’s out to friends, on social media and at her progressive university, where she founded the South Asian Queer and Trans Collective. But last month, when her campus closed due to the global coronavirus pandemic, Anbar returned home — and back to the proverbial closet.

“Having to go home and act a certain way 24/7 is a means for survival,” said Anbar, who asked that the name of her university and hometown not be published. “That can be straining emotionally and extremely damaging.”

For the past six weeks, Anbar has been self-isolating in a small, two-bedroom house with her parents, whom she said she doesn't feel safe coming out to.
[…]
“They may have had to go back in the closet if they were out at school. If they had support from a GSA or an LGBTQ club or group at school, they don’t have that anymore,” said Ellen Kahn, senior director of programs and partnerships at the Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ rights group.

Many of the youth have turned to online support…

As for Anbar, she said she’s been hosting virtual programming and support groups over Zoom, joined by people from all over the world, for the South Asian Queer and Trans Collective. If she’s within earshot of her parents, she said she has to be careful.

But unfortunately some do not have that option and are forced back in to the closet.

Like Childhelp, The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ young people, reported a steep increase in the number of youth and young adults who have reached out to its 24/7 hotline.
[…]
The Trevor Project offers talk and text crisis hotlines, as well as TrevorSpace, an online community for LGBTQ young people aged 13-24. The LGBT National Help Center has a specific hotline for LGBTQ youth, as well as an online chatroom for those aged 19 and under. Trans Lifeline also offers hotlines in the U.S. and Canada for transgender individuals.

I made the mistake of reading some of the more mild comments are,

• Isn't it amazing that the virus affects the media's pets more adversely than anyone else?
• Mental illness is not a gender. These people need professional help!
• The "oppressed" alphabet community is not better or more important than you, and deserves no special treatment.

There is still a lot of hate out there.

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However, there are a lot of families that support their LGBTQ children and sometimes it comes from an unlikely source.

This 13-Year-Old Girl Is Out To ‘Change The World’
Forbes
By Dawn Ennis
April 30, 2020

Think back to when you were in school. Ten, 11 years old, and you’re called to speak before the class, about who you are.

Rebekah Bruesehoff did that before a crowd of 200 strangers when she was 10. The following year, she traveled to Houston and did it again, in front of 31-thousand people, at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Youth Gathering. Her father is a Lutheran minister.

“I’ve learned that by being who God has called me to be, and by telling my story, hearts and minds are changed,” declared the 11-year-old girl in hot pink pigtails. “I can change the world!”

And what she wants to change about the world most of all is how it sees girls like her. Clearly, Rebekah is not just any ordinary girl, and yet that is exactly the message she conveys at every opportunity.

She is just a typical teenage who loves playing the clarinet and dancing ballet, she also plays sports in school and I just hope that the haters don’t make her their “Cause” against trans students in sports.
What a difference having supportive family makes!

One of the things that have helped her is the New Jersey is the birth certificate law.

The day arrives when New Jersey preteen can change gender on her birth certificate
NorthJersey.com
By Christopher Maag
February 1, 2019

[…]
This Friday, the state of New Jersey began to do its part to help Rebekah be the person she is and always was. That’s when the state Department of Health began posting a form on its website allowing transgender, non-binary and intersex people to change their birth certificates from the gender they were assigned at birth to the gender they live.

The move comes as the result of a law signed in June by Gov. Phil Murphy. It is named the “Babs Siperstein Law” for the transgender advocate who pushed for it, and who in 2009 became the first openly transgender member of the Democratic National Committee. The law previously passed the legislature twice, but  then-Gov. Chris Christie vetoed it both times.