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A simple message: “You’re a perfect child of God.” Simple, yes, but it is also a profound message that everybody can and should hear — hopefully repeatedly — and one that seems especially urgent for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth in an era of entrenched bullying, depression, and suicide. America’s recent strides to support such youth are remarkable. The Trevor Project and the It Gets Better project are the most headlined, and they are bolstered by waves of community-level activism like the Out in the Silence campaign for justice and equality in rural and small town America.

Amidst this groundswell of much-needed activity, however, a single song stands out to me for its clarity of message and its beautiful simplicity.

“You’re Not Alone,” developed by lyricist Jon Hartmere and composer Lynne Shankel for the current off-Broadway revival of the musical Bare, will become a new anthem for LGBT youth. Bare churns in tempo with the lives of a group of sexually awakening teenagers who are struggling within the confines of a Catholic school. “You’re Not Alone” comes late in the second act and represents the show’s emotional pinnacle, piercing through the turmoil. (Although no official recording of the song yet exists, a demo version is available to stream here.) Sister Joan, an empathetic nun, is consoling one of her gay students who is caught in the whirlwinds of the drama. She uses the clearest words imaginable:

You’re created in His image. / You’re a perfect child of God. / And this part of you / It’s the heart of who you are. / It’s who you are / And you just need to know / You’re not alone.

“I feel so honored to be able to sing that song every night,” says Missi Pyle , the accomplished actor who starred in the Academy Award-winning The Artist and plays Sister Joan in this production. Pyle, who grew up Southern Baptist in communities where being gay was “wrong in the eyes of God,” explains the power of singing the song each night:

The song itself is so beautiful. Just looking into somebody’s eyes and saying those words: “You’re perfect just the way you are.” I try to get my own ego out of the way and just perform. It’s all right there in the song.

(Pyle also volunteers at a suicide prevention hotline, which she describes as “one of the most important things I’ve ever done.”)

In developing the song, which is new for this production of Bare, Hartmere and Shankel first settled on the hook — “you’re not alone” — and then fleshed out the remainder of the lyrics and music. As they did so, both felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to create a song that would resonate with LGBT youth and provide them with assurance and hope amidst hostile environments. Hartmere explains, “You don’t have to look very far to find examples of intolerance, places where you can’t be different.” Indeed, as I write this article, I have just learned that 15-year-old Jadin Bell has passed away after hanging himself on his school’s playground in Oregon. “If we can just reach one kid,” says Shankel. “If they think about this show and they can feel better about themselves, or it makes them not make a sad choice, we feel hugely responsible.”

That the song is sung by a teacher to her student illuminates the special role that teachers can play in supporting their students while opening new horizons. “I think that teachers have such an amazing opportunity-slash-responsibility to their students to open a kid’s eyes to what is possible beyond what they think is possible,” says Shankel. Hartmere himself was a teacher who spoke frankly to his classrooms about his sexual orientation and the offense he felt at hearing insults tossed around. “One day on the yard,” he describes, “I heard a kid call someone else gay, and one of the girls from my class said, ‘Don’t use that word because my teacher’s gay, and I like him.’”

In addition to being a teacher, Sister Joan is obviously a nun. Hartmere, who was raised Catholic and whose great aunt is a nun, believes that this character and her song should help to provide a counter-balance to conceptions of the Catholic Church as a monolithic, doctrinaire haven for sex offenders. “There’s another angle here,” says Hartmere, “another way of looking at things. Nuns are an amazing group of people who have an amazing worldview that should be listened to more.”

I couldn’t agree more. Listening to Sister Joan send her clarion message to the struggling student in a recent performance of Bare transported me directly to 1992, when I was a freshman at a Catholic high school in Charleston, South Carolina. I was coming to terms with my sexual orientation, lonely, lost, confused, and yes, suicidal. My Sister Joan was Sister A.J. — short for Alice Joseph — of the Sisters of Mercy order. Sister A.J. was in her 50s when she taught me and passed away some years ago now; God rest her soul. Much like the teacher whose supportive note to a gay student recently went viral, Sister A.J. wrote the following note on one of my essays:

By the way, you were born homosexual, overweight, and with a loving heart. Don’t worry about your homosexuality. One day the pope will understand. PS…I love you.

“You’re Not Alone” and such notes are crystal lasers of love, beaming direct and clear from the hearts of nuns to their LGBT students. May such love go viral.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Time Out Youth, a local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth services agency, and the national Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN), have teamed up to provide 187 local middle and high schools with kits designed to promote safer schools for LGBT students.

“The question I most frequently get from educators is not so much ‘Why should I support these students?’ but, ‘How can I support these students?’” Time Out Youth’s Director of School Outreach Micah Johnson said in a release.

Johnson, who works to promote safer, more inclusive schools, hopes the new kits will increase awareness and help teach educators about the importance of being an ally for LGBT young people.

“Being a visible support for LGBTQ youth is an active, not passive, process,” he said. “This kit allows educators to identify ways that best work within their school environment and professional comfort level.”

The Safe Space Kits usually cost $20 per school. Time Out Youth and GLSEN have partnered to provide them for free to every public middle and high school in Mecklenburg, Lincoln, Cabarrus, Union, Iredell and Gaston Counties, as well as York County in South Carolina.

Time Out Youth said the kits will allow educators to be better prepared to help LGBT students and “promote positive social, emotional and academic outcomes.”

The kits provide educational information for teachers and other school staff as well as safe space stickers and posters that can be displayed in classrooms as a sign of support for LGBT students.

“If I were to have had some teacher, or even my bus driver, who was willing to step up, and step in, I would’ve been more prone to reporting my experiences with bullying and wouldn’t have been so fearful that no one would listen or worse: do nothing,” said Loan Tran, a Charlotte-area high school senior and Time Out Youth Board of Directors member. Tran also volunteers as a GLSEN Student Ambassador.

Time Out Youth, which provides support and education for LGBT youth ages 11-20, hopes school staff and administrators will take advantage of the safe space kits and other opportunities for education on LGBT issues.

“While the kit is designed as a stand-alone resource to educators, school personnel have the additional opportunity for follow-up consultation and training on LGBTQ issues through Time Out Youth,” the group said.

National research data on the experiences of LGBT youth in schools suggests that LGBT young people experience greater rates of harassment and bullying when compared to their straight peers. A 2011 national climate survey of students by GLSEN found that more than 80 percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed at school within the past year. Nearly 40 percent had been physically harassed and 18 percent had reported physical assault.

A recent survey of rural students released in December shows slightly higher incidents of harassment and physical assault for students in rural schools and communities.

info: Learn more about the Safe Space Kits at safespace.glsen.org and more about Time Out Youth at timeoutyouth.org.

(CNN) — The Boy Scouts of America is considering changing its longstanding policy against allowing openly gay members, according to a news release from the organization.

The organization, which has 2.7 million members, is “potentially discussing” doing away with its national policy after months of protest, including hundreds of angry Eagle Scouts renouncing their hard-earned awards and mailing back their red-white-and-blue medals.

Many parents of Scouts across America found the national policy excluding gays confusing — and at odds with basic scouting ideals.

Social media were abuzz with outrage over the policy; gay men who used to be Scouts spoke out in first-person blogs. On her TV talk show, Ellen DeGeneres featured a California Scout who had been denied his Eagle rank because he is gay.

Members of the organization’s national board are expected to bring up the issue at a regularly scheduled biannual meeting in February. Any change would be announced after that.

In the Scouts’ statement Monday, the group indicated that the national board may consider passing any decisions on gay membership to the local level. Each troop’s charter organization would be able to decide “consistent with each organization’s mission, principles, or religious beliefs.”

“The policy change under discussion would allow the religious, civic, or educational organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting to determine how to address this issue,” the statement said.

The statement itself is remarkable. Some members will see the fact that Scouting’s national leadership is even discussing a policy change as a softening of its stance on gays and lesbians.

But some Scouts and Scout parents say that passing the decision to the local level will have little effect on the ground, because many troops have been ignoring the national policy anyway.

The announcement comes after Scouting’s national headquarters received numerous complaints from a grass-roots campaign targeting the policy.

In April, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation started calls for the Scouts to end the ban. The group applauded Monday’s announcement.

“The Boy Scouts of America have heard from scouts, corporations and millions of Americans that discriminating against gay Scouts and Scout leaders is wrong,” GLAAD President Herndon Graddick said. “Scouting is a valuable institution, and this change will only strengthen its core principles of fairness and respect.”

The protest was sparked last year after Ohio Cub Scout den leader Jennifer Tyrrell was forced to step down from her position in her son’s Cub Scout pack because she is openly gay.

The father of a gay California Boy Scout whose application for Eagle rank was rejected by a Scout council hailed the BSA statement as “a step in the right direction.”

“It’s interesting that the BSA is leaking this beforehand,” said Eric Andresen, whose son Ryan was denied the Eagle rank after being a Scout for more than a decade.

“We feel if they are going out with this much publicity they couldn’t possibly say no now,” said the elder Andresen, adding that his son sees the move also as “a step in the right direction … It’s about time.”

Meanwhile, conservative Family Research Council President Tony Perkins released a statement in response to Monday’s announcement saying the Scouts organization “would be making a serious mistake to bow to the strong-arm tactics of LGBT activists and open the organization to homosexuality.”

Perkins added: “What has changed in terms of the Boy Scouts’ concern for the well-being of the boys under their care? Or is this not about the well-being of the Scouts, but the funding for the organization?”

Some critics who say that Scouts have failed to change with the times blame the connections to organized religion. Approximately 70% of Scout troops are affiliated with some kind of church or religious group, according to Boy Scouts of America spokesman Deron Smith.

Scouts for Equality reports that 11 organization councils, which include more than 260,000 Scouts, have publicly protested the policy, according to GLAAD.

The Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are among scouting’s biggest backers, Boy Scouts of America says. In 2011, Mormon-backed Cub Scout and Boy Scout troops accounted for more than 420,000 of all Scouts nationwide. More than 200,000 Scouts were members of units affiliated with the Catholic Church.

President Barack Obama — the honorary head of the Scouts, as is every president — supports gay and lesbians in Girl and Boy Scouts, as does former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a Mormon.

Last year, the Girl Scouts allowed a transgender member into a troop, sparking a cookie boycott.

By Joe Fitzgerald, Golden Gate Xpress

Cassidy Barrington calls the Inland Empire the “bible belt” of California. Growing up there she first started to explore her sexuality and her queer identity by joining her high school’s Gay Straight Alliance — brave in an area that was also home to the violent “white Aryan resistance.”

“It was a constant fight for queer visibility, and for tolerance,” Barrington said. At the end of high school, she came out of the closet to her father, who didn’t talk to her for a month afterward.

The 23-year-old graduate student in sexuality studies said her experiences inspired her to become the director of a safe place for LGBTQ students at SF State.

The University’s first Queer Resource Center will open its doors Feb. 6. It will host a grand opening party the next day on Malcom X Plaza at noon. Barrington will be at the helm as its first director.

Housed on the second floor of the Cesar Chavez Student Center in room M-109, the resource center is funded by the Associated Students, Inc. The center will offer a lending library, a referral database for on and off-campus resources for LGBTQ students, a map of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus, and will hold forums and conferences on topics like queer identity.

But more importantly, Barrington wants the Queer Resource Center to offer a sense of community.

“I definitely felt safe (at SF State),” she said. “But just because you don’t feel unsafe, doesn’t mean you feel connected.”

The planning process for the resource center started in the winter of 2011. Abel Gomez, an ASI representative, and others from the school’s queer community led the charge for its creation. The planning was anything but easy. The center’s hiring process drew criticism from the queer community, notably from Katie Tims, who was secretary of the school’s Queer Alliance at the time.

“This meeting is to kind of push the administration into actually making this about students and hiring people that reflect the needs of all students,” Tims told Xpress last Sept., after representatives of the queer student community met with two ASI representatives to air their grievances.

“Many present at the (unveiling) felt (the hiring process) was very homogenous, homonormative if you will,” Tims said.

Tims was unavailable to comment at the time of QRC’s opening.

Homonormativity refers to the feelings of some in the gay community that in order to assimilate with straight culture, gay culture was slowly becoming more “straight,” or “normative,” as opposed to having distinct gender identities.

Barrington made addressing homonormativity one of her first priorities.

“I feel some of the concerns were valid,” she said. In response, she’s planning a series of forums on homonormativity for the inaugural semester of the resource center.

Ultimately, the biggest problem the new resource center faces may have nothing to do with gender politics. The new resource center has a severe lack of space.

With the Queer Resource Center limited to a single room, an advisor to City College of San Francisco’s Queer resource center and CCSF English professor, Jennifer Worley, says this may limit what they can accomplish.

“We (also) started in a tiny room in our student union,” Worley said. “First of all, it would feel really crowded with even ten people in the space.” Originating in the 1990s, City College’s Queer Resource Center was eventually upgraded to a larger, multi-room office space with computers, printers, a kitchenette and many student workers.

Once they had a larger space, the resource center at City College saw its attendance jump to 60 to 70 students a day.

Worley said the lack of space may even send a negative message to the campus’ queer community.

“I think for SF State to not have their own space (for a resource center), makes it important for them to think about what they’re saying,” Worley said.

But no matter the size, Worley plans on recommending SF State’s new Queer Resource Center to all of her students that transfer from City College. She was impressed at the tenacity it took for Gomez, Barrington and the community at SF State to create their own safe space for queer students of all stripes.

Dean of Students Joseph Greenwell wasn’t able to say definitively if the resource center could get more space in the future.

“I believe that ASI will work with and review the program’s needs as it does with all of their programs and resources,” Greenwell said. “I have also reached out to the new director to offer support as a new center on campus. I look forward to future collaborations as we continue to enhance the student experience at SF State.”

Gomez acknowledged that they won’t be able to do everything they want in a single semester.

“We are very, very far behind other universities,” he said.

Notably, University of San Francisco, City College of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and San Jose State University all have long-established LGBTQ resource centers.

Looking to the future, Gomez said he would like SF State’s resource center to offer scholarships or a workspace for people to just hang out. Gomez and Barrington both have many dreams for the resource center’s future.

For now, SF State’s first Queer Resource Center will focus on workshops, connecting queer services on campus and holding more queer events like Queer Yo Mind,  which fits their goals of educating the community.

Barrington said education is important because even within the queer community itself, many prejudices still remain.

“I was confronted on my bi-phobia,” Barrington said about her time as an undergraduate. “I made a comment about how bi-sexuals were in a transition (to coming out as gay), and were immature,” she said.

Ultimately, those in the Queer Resource Center at UC Santa Barbara, where she studied Sociology, taught her to respect the bisexual community, opening her eyes to her own assumptions and stereotypes.

“It was a transformative moment for me,” Barrington said. And that’s why she wants to give that opportunity to the students of SF State.

“There was this magical, tight knit community,” she said. “I want to create that experience here.”

The ACLU of Florida intervened today on behalf of a  Lake County middle-school student leader seeking to establish a gay-straight alliance (GSA) at Carver Middle  School in Leesburg. The eighth grader spearheading the effort, Bayli Silberstein, says the club is needed to combat bullying at her school, but has faced administrative resistance in trying to establish it.

“The bullying at our school has gotten out of hand, and somebody needs to do something about it,” stated Bayli.

Flagler County isn’t foreign to the bullying of lesbian or gay students, though the most recent public case of bullying involved the actions of a teacher toward a student, rather than one student against another. The case led to an apology by the teacher. The 2011 case, spurred on by the Florida ACLU, also prompted the Flagler County School Board to add protections for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” to the Student Code of Conduct and the school district’s bullying and harassment policy. The Volusia County School Board similarly amended its policy soon afterward. Flagler Palm Coast High School has a gay-straight alliance, but the district’s two middle schools do not.

Students at Leesburg’s Carver Middle School had tried to form a GSA during the previous school year, and even included in the packet of materials submitted to the school a list of situations in which they had faced bullying that year. The principal at the time, however – David Bordenkircher – denied the request outright. Although many of Bayli’s friends that year were in eighth grade and therefore went on to high school, Bayli was left at Carver Middle.

In November, she submitted another packet of materials with the help of a faculty sponsor. They received no response. Bayli and a friend were able to meet with the new principal, Mollie Cunningham, who acknowledged the potential utility of the club but indicated that she needed to consult with the school board. No movement was made on the issue in 2012. After the new year, frustrated with the unexplained delay, Bayli and her mother Erica Silberstein reached out to the ACLU of Florida.

“As a parent, it was a struggle to hear about some of the things that were going on at my daughter’s school,” Erica Silberstein said. “The kids were asking for a support system, but the school didn’t seem very invested in the idea.”

Daniel Tilley, an LGBT-rights advocate with the ACLU of Florida, echoed Erica’s concerns: “The fact that the school has not allowed the GSA to form reflects the very reason why such clubs are so needed. If the school administrators themselves are unwilling to support the very people they are charged with protecting, it is unfortunately unsurprising that students’ peers are no better.”

Because of the school’s continued delay in responding to Bayli’s request to form the club, ACLU of Florida Legal Director Randall Marshall sent a letter today to the superintendent and school-board attorney apprising them of their legal obligations under both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Equal Access Act to allow the club to form. The letter also noted the recent successful legal challenges brought by the ACLU of Florida on behalf of students who sought to establish GSAs and were met with administrative resistance. No such resistance greets the formation of such groups as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, for example, even though the fellowship is an explicitly Christian organization.

“Under the Equal Access Act,” the letter reads, “schools may not pick and choose among clubs based on what they think students should or should not discuss. If a public school allows any student group whose purpose is not directly related to the school’s curriculum to meet on school grounds during lunch or before or after school, then it cannot deny other student groups the same access to the school because of the content of their proposed discussions. The Act specifically provides that a school cannot deny equal access to student clubs because of the ‘religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.’” (The full letter appears below.)

GSAs are student organizations made up of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students, along with their straight allies, who advocate for an end to bullying, harassment, and discrimination against LGBT students and others.  A 2009 survey by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education network found that “84.6 percent of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 40.1 percent reported being physically harassed and 18.8 percent reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation.”

The bullying can, ironically, can have Christian teachings as its source, its inspiration or its justification, especially in the South, as some churches still consider gay and lesbian lifestyles sinful, inadmissible, unnatural, or all three. While schools routinely and implicitly endorse Christian messages or beliefs (Tuesday evening, John Fischer, a Flagler County School Board member, spent part of his time during the board meeting advocating for bringing back prayer in schools), explicit defenses of LGBT students are rare, often leaving the task to advocates beyond the schools.

The ACLU of Florida has succeeded numerous times in recent years in helping students form GSAs at their schools. In 2008, the ACLU of Florida won a similar case on behalf of a GSA in Okeechobee, Florida. The judge ruled that schools must provide for the well-being of gay students and cannot discriminate against the GSA. The Okeechobee County School Board paid $326,000 in attorneys’ fees in that case. In 2009, the ACLU of Florida reached a settlement in a lawsuit against the School Board of Nassau County in following a preliminary injunction by a federal judge against the school board. In 2012, the ACLU of Florida reached a settlement in a lawsuit against the School Board for Marion County; the judge in that case ordered the school to officially recognize the Vanguard High School GSA.

Finally, in January 2013, the ACLU of Florida succeeded in helping the students at Booker T. Washington High School in Escambia County form a GSA after students’ initial efforts were rebuffed by school administrators.

“The Board Members may be uncomfortable about students discussing sexual orientation and how all students need to accept each other, whether gay or straight,” one federal judge wrote in one such ruling, but school officials “cannot censor the students’ speech to avoid discussions on campus that cause them discomfort or represent an unpopular viewpoint.”

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool. ]]> http://gsaday.org/uncategorized/gsa-day-partner-survey/feed/ 0 http://gsaday.org/news/commission-on-glbt-youth-to-enact-anti-discrimination-policies/ http://gsaday.org/news/commission-on-glbt-youth-to-enact-anti-discrimination-policies/#comments Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:10:43 +0000 gsaday http://gsaday.org/?p=2370 By Tony Hobday, Edge

On Jan. 9, Governor Deval L. Patrick swore in members of the MA Commission on GLBT Youth, an independently run state agency established by law to strengthen the lives of, and procure better opportunities for, Massachusetts’ young GLBT people. The Patrick-Murray administration, through a close liaison with the commission, has made strides in improving the lives of young, and often displaced, children throughout the Commonwealth.

“We do what we do as a matter of conscience — all young people should have a chance to thrive,” Gov. Patrick remarked during the swearing-in ceremony. “In that spirit, we will continue to work with the Commission to promote healthy, safe environments for all youth, and provide health education and services to meet the needs of the LGBT population.”

The Governor’s jacket includes a 2010 landmark anti-bullying law; a 2011 bill that extends critical protections to transgender people in housing, employment, education and protections for hate crimes; and the establishment of the Unaccompanied Homeless Youth Commission with a focus on the GLBT homeless youth population.

According to Commission Chairman Julian Cyr, members who are appointed both locally and regionally — a maximum of 50 — serve staggered two-year terms and come from all walks of life: policymakers, teachers, social workers, students, mothers and professionals.

“It’s a rather competitive process for regional members to join the commission,” Cyr commented. “We had over 70 applications to fill 15 or 20 regional spots this cycle.”

Cyr, 26, attributes the competitiveness to an unyielding interest in the welfare of young GLBT people.

“Our members have a real desire to close these gaps [of inequality] and cultivate a culture of support and resiliency,” he said.

While there is much more need for education, training and analysis in the adaptation of sexual and gender diversity, the commission, also on Jan. 9, released an extensive 44-page Annual Policy Recommendations FY2014 report.

For the first time, the recommendations were derived out of public hearings held last June. Youth and adults throughout the Commonwealth shared their experiences, providing immediate tangible data of what is and is not working toward the benefit of GLBT youth. Accessing state-funded services, ongoing discrimination and widespread lack of knowledge on GLBT issues and needs were among the difficulties still being faced.

“Just today [June 20, 2012], a youth in DCF was told that she could not wear a T-shirt that had a rainbow on it because that means lesbian or gay,” Vickie Henry, senior staff attorney for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, reported. “We’ve also been involved with DCF caseworkers who’ve done pinky swears with kids in their care to get them to promise that they won’t be gay, that they will try to be straight. Otherwise, they won’t get into heaven. These are not isolated incidents.”

The annual recommendations reflect the state’s fiscal calendar and, therefore, are expected to be fully implemented as quickly as possible, according to Cyr. “Some recommendations have already been implemented, others are in the works, several others require appropriations to fund,” he said.

A main goal is the implementation of anti-discrimination policies across the board, specifically to include gender identity as described in the 2012 statute An Act Relative to Gender Identity. Another goal is continued training, education and support for anti-bullying in schools.

Also, continued advancements with state agencies such as the Department of Children and Families, and the Department of Youth Services will include collecting data and recognizing and educating on the diverse needs of GLBT youth who experience inequality and disparities cross-sectionally, such as but not limited to race, religion, socio-economic backgrounds and physical and mental abilities.

New in partnership this year with the commission is the Department of Early Education and Care. The EEC went live in 2005, and has important priorities working with teen parents and licensing organizations that work with the government.

The commission aims to help the EEC, among in other areas, to enforce GLBT cultural competency as a regulatory requirement for adoption and foster care providers and other government-funded organizations, faith-based and not, that provide social services or that care for children in state custody.

There are no exact figures on the number of homeless youth in Utah who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and who are also Mormon.

But two organizations estimate the figure could be upward of 200 adolescents — many of whom need help to build a life off the streets after parents shunned them for coming out.

Ogden OUTreach Resource Center officials will launch a new project named Safe and Sound, aimed to assist in particular, but not exclusively, LGBT Mormon youth and their families. The new program is receiving assistance from Mormons Building Bridges, a group started to ease tensions between the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gay-rights activists.

The group garnered international attention when more than 300 straight Mormons marched in Utah’s 2012 Gay Pride Parade.

Safe and Sound organizers plan to use a two-pronged approach to help homeless youth. First, program workers want to reunify youth with families who may have kicked them out because of disagreements over sexual orientation.

If reunification isn’t an option, LGBT youth may be connected with “host homes,” a list of Mormon families who welcome LGBT youth who have been told to leave home.

“It’s cold out there, and we have youth out there without a place to stay,” said Kathy Godwin, co-president of Salt Lake City PFLAG (Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

Across the nation, government and homeless officials will conduct an annual census of homeless people on Jan. 31.

Homeless and LGBT officials said the number of homeless Utah youth is estimated at about 1,000, of which about 300 to 400 are LGBT. Out of those LGBT homeless youth, about 150 to 200 are believed to come from Mormon homes.

“The problem of youth living on the streets of Utah, in abandoned buildings, in camps or surfing from couch to couch is simply intolerable,” said Marian Edmonds, executive director of OUTreach Resource Center. “If there’s a youth that is being kicked out, then we want to provide a welcoming and affirming community that would give them a place to stay.”