Schools and Legal System Mistreat Gays, Study Says
Gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers in the United States are far more likely to be harshly punished by schools and courts than their straight peers, even though they are less likely to engage in serious misdeeds, according to a study published on Monday in the medical journal Pediatrics.
The findings, based on a national sample of more than 15,000 middle and high school students, come at a time of heightened attention to the plight of homosexual and bisexual teens. While several high-profile bullying and suicide cases around the country have highlighted the harassment of these adolescents by peers, the study suggests they also suffer a hidden bias when judged by school and legal authorities.
“Gay, lesbian and bisexual kids are being punished by police, courts and by school officials, and it’s not because they’re misbehaving more,” said Kathryn E. W. Himmelstein, the study’s lead author, who initiated the research while an undergraduate student at Yale.
Ms. Himmelstein began the study, she said, after spending time working in the juvenile justice system and noticing a disproportionate number of gay and lesbian teenagers in court. After she could not find research evaluating whether gay teenagers were more likely to be involved in criminal activity, she conducted her own study for her senior thesis. She used data from 1994 to 2002 from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a continuing survey tracking the behavior and health issues of middle and high school students.
Researchers asked young people about nonviolent misdeeds like alcohol use, lying to parents, shoplifting and vandalism, as well as more serious crimes like using a weapon, burglary or selling drugs.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual youths were only slightly more likely to report minor and moderate nonviolent misbehavior than their straight peers, and they were less likely to engage in serious crimes.
But after controlling for differences in behavior, the researchers found that lesbian, gay and bisexual teenagers over all were far more likely to be stopped by the police, arrested or convicted of a crime than other adolescents.
In addition, teenagers who said they had experienced feelings of same-sex attraction were more likely to have been expelled from school than other students.
Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual appeared to be at highest risk for punishment, experiencing 50 percent more police stops and about twice the risk of arrest and conviction as heterosexual girls who reported similar levels of misconduct.
The study was not designed to determine the reasons that behavior by lesbian, gay and bisexual teens is more likely to be punished or criminalized. The authors speculated that the more severe punishments meted out might reflect a bias by school and court officials, or that the teenagers might be less likely to receive educational and child welfare support services than their straight peers.
“Our youth tell us this kind of thing all the time,” said Betsy Pursell, vice president for public education and outreach for the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group.
Ms. Pursell notes that while teenagers obviously don’t wear labels, those who are struggling with same sex attraction or have identified themselves as gay may be perceived to be more difficult if they adopt various behaviors that set them apart from straight students.
For instance, a gay teenager may feel victimized or ostracized, or may be more likely to step outside traditional gender roles or be more guarded in interactions with peers and adults.
“I think adults who work with young people, for better or worse, tend to quickly categorize kids,” says Ms. Pursell. “They may not be categorizing them as L.G.B.T., but as mainstream or out of the mainstream, a potential troublemaker or not a potential troublemaker.”
nytimes.com
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