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Benji
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: August 2007
Messages: 297
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Sadly I agree, this film promoted the problem all wrong focusing on gay parades and flaunting, just what the hate mongers feed into. They should have focused more on the living conditions and the actual youth. Sympathy was lost in the celebration.
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OK, OK. The film wasn't perfect but what would have been? When I went to Toronto, in 1993, I found it an amazingly tolerant city. Much more civilised and accepting of gays than London (I was living 20 miles from London from 1964-1992 and travelling in to the city for work every day). Mind you my hotel was a very short walk from Yonge St!
The difference, I suppose (tell me if I'm wrong), is that a proportion of Canadians are infected with that variety of fundamentalism that one encounters in bible-belt USA. And so there are inhuman people with inhuman attitudes in significant numbers.
I wonder if the gay homeless problem is worse in London or Toronto.
But talking about it doesn't help solve the problem (well, not much).
What do you suppose we should do, Brody? And I mean those of us that are 75 and not rich enough to endow a gay boys refuge?
Love,
Anthony
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"I wonder if the gay homeless problem is worse in London or Toronto"
The problem is NOT Gay homelessness Anthony, the problem is LGBTQ youth being homeless. These are 16 to 24 year olds who are simply not properly equipped to handle living in the real world without any means of support, and by that I am not isolating financial considerations either.
These children are not fully realised adults, in a mature way nor intellectually nor are they properly educated.
You are asking a journalist what can be done. Here is this point for you to consider please; I report on these stories and it tears me up emotionally because I too was once in their shoes although I ended up in America, San Francisco to be precise. So I am biased obviously.
"But talking about it doesn't help solve the problem (well, not much)."
I do not have an answer but I do know that talking about it is exactly the point of writing these stories or in the case of this filmmaker, producing a story that folks will discuss and then take action.
Making a difference starts with a person's willingness to participate as a part of the human race. Even something as small as volunteering at a soup kitchen once a month or once a year. Donating used clothes to charities, or stroking a cheque to nonprofits.
ANYBODY can make a difference, you just have to being willing to be involved.
As far as London goes? I will check with my British brethren on Fleet Street as I have no idea how bad Britain's LGBTQ Youth homelessness problem in their capital is.
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Sorry, Brody, I was using 'gay homelessness' as shorthand for the problem you highlighted.
And I wouldn't rate secondhand clothes or a meal from a soup kitchen as a significant contribution. What I want to see is that no-one that doesn't want to ever has to sleep rough; that society supports people without means of support and helps them to become self-sufficient; that our education system brings up children to be tolerant and to realise what it is that differentiates between moral and immoral behaviour.
And I would like to see a society where parents wouldn't consider throwing out a child that was LGBT &c - and I'm afraid that implies a huge reduction in the sway of religion (and I get stick for my attitude - but I maintain that it is much too hard to reform religions to accept LGBT &c. Just think how far the archbishop of Canterbury has got!)
So I'm afraid it has to be political action. We have a gay MP here! I support him and his party.
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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It may feel like a small thing, but what one can do is speak. Educating even one more ill educated and ill opinioned person is a good start. Educating a future parent is even better. Getting those individuals to educate others is excellent.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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... and I know all too well the problems that prevail (however poorly they are being addressed through this vidéo, as mentioned in one or more of the comments others have made in this thread) regarding the homeless here (and all too likely elsewhere), and not just specifically "Gay Youth" either; but homeless of all ages, and from all walks of life.
Both of my children, now aged-38 and -39, and my ward aged-19, were rescued from the streets of Toronto.
First Alan arrived on my doorstep one late night, then Paul some months later; each known to me previously from having seen them around and about near where I resided; each of disparate circumstances; both homeless and living rough; neither surviving too well; because I was there, and known in the local community to be welcoming with no expectation of "payment in kind".
Neither of my two sons are Gay; nor are they likely to ever be.
Alan's story is atypical; the eldest child of a Canadian born mother who shortly after the birth of their second child abandoned her then American Serviceman husband, moving around from state to state and finally returning to Canada, illegally bringing with her, her son Alan and his middle sister (both children by the same father) and her youngest daughter (fathered by a second American whom she subsequently married) across the Canadian border. All three children were American born (but entitled to Canadian Citizenship by virtue of their mother's citizenship) but none of them had ever been registered as "Canadian Nationals Born Abroad" prior to their second birthday as required under Canadian Law.
Once settled in Toronto, the mother sponsored her second husband, who emigrated, and together they and the three children moved to within a stone's throw of the front door of where I then resided. Alan would have been about age-5. For the next 10-years he witnessed, and later told me, felt completely helpless to intervene, the drunken excesses, and physical abuse of his mother by his step-father (a man I would later learn to be the Union representative for his employer's Spousal Abuse Committee), and during his early teen-aged years fell into a pattern of alcohol and drug-related abuses himself as a coping mechanism for what he witnessed daily and could do nothing about. Like many a youth his age, he wanted to work part-time to earn pocket money, but couldn't. He was unable to obtain the necessary Social Insurance Card (his proof of entitlement to work lawfully in Canada); in fact, he dare not even try to apply, his mother cautioning him, that as he was here illegally and although she was married to his stepfather, she was was never divorced from her first husband (his father) and therefore had committed bigamy under Canadian Law and therefore could be jailed should this ever become known, and his applying for the Social Insurance Card, and his having to prove entitlement to Citizenship would bring all of this to light and the attention of the Canadian authorities. He therefore was reduced to working under-the-table, or to his using his step-father's Name and Social Insurance Number. This led to a catalogue of juvenile offenses involving alcohol, drugs and thievery well before his fifteenth year, and the point at which I first became involved.
Suffice it to say, that with help from people known to me in high places, and the later intervention of the Governor-General of Canada, under Section 6 of the Immigration Act (Sub-section 4a), Alan and his middle sister were both granted Canadian Citizenship upon each of their attaining their eighteenth year, and the immediate issuance of the necessary Social Insurance Cards, with the third sister able to apply (at any time) without any intervention necessary through her father, who unlike the eldest two children, was here legally, and therefore so was his natural daughter.
This was made possible by the Canadian Government vacating the first marriage through Privy Council Order, declaring it null and void, as more than 15-years had passed without contest from the first husband (at the time of Alan's eighteenth birthday), and the second marriage being declared valid, and therefore legal under Canadian Law for the purposes of the third daughter's application, should she ever choose to make it. This explains the intervention of the Governor-General, as his signature was required to formalize and make legal and binding the invocation of Section 6 (4a) of the Immigration Act of Canada, and Canada's compliance with then U.N. policy of a child's citizenship, in perpetuity, to be nominally declared as being that of its' birth mother.
In order to facilitate this, a long protracted legal battle ensured between me, and Alan's mother, over custody of Alan, with the Ontario Courts granting me sole custody at his age-16, through to his age-23, under the Children's Aid Act (Ontario).
Alan, at age-39, currently resides in my home, his having done so on and off throughout the intervening 25-years, this, when he was not residing "independently" in any one of several U.S. cities, or sheltered in one of several homes I maintained in Los Angeles, Corpus Christi or Savannah; or in in the family home in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia.
It is through my association with Alan and his street-wise peers, and his troubled early life, I became aware of the terrible homeless crisis amongst Toronto's youth, and the homeless in general. I quickly became all too familiar with the likes of Covenant House, Youth Without Shelter, Eva's Place and host of others, and the issues, and problems realized daily by Toronto's street youth.
Sadly, I can't say that my experience living amongst them in Gaytown had (I resided at the corner of Church and Woods Streets during the 1970's) brought me any true understanding about the homeless situation, this not-with-standing that I lived and breathed it daily on that street corner. I'm afraid I was more interested (as likely any Gay young man of my acquaintance and similar age in those times) in trolling for conquests and living the "vita loca" than in fixing what was then emerging as the quintessential issue facing, not just Toronto, but all urban centres of any substance throughout the rest of Canada.
Paul's story is somewhat different, his approaching me because of Alan, and my apparently having helped him resolve his troubles. Paul, unlike Alan, while nominally living rough on the streets, had a home to go to if he chose to, a home that whilst not exactly welcoming, posed no danger to him. Paul's parent's lived two-floors above me, as did Paul in theory. I'd known him more or less, all of his life. I didn't know the paradigm that existed within his household. You see, Paul was adopted, the first child of a then young family that thought they could never bear children. An adoption arranged through family, and therefore Paul's birth-parents were known to him by name, but never in practice. With the arrival of his parents first naturally born child two years after his adoption, the family, as Paul came to understand it as he aged and entered his early teen years had abandoned him, and sort of made it clear they really didn't want too much to do with him. The arrival of the second naturally born child only solidified this situation even further.
At not quite age-15, Paul knocked on my door one afternoon and asked if I might help him become an "emancipated teen". Through the course of our discussion, it became apparent that what Paul really wanted was to be on a farm somewhere, and as far away as possible from the family that neither wanted, nor cared about him.
He and I struck a bargain. I would help him, but it would involve getting custody, as he was minor, and I would attempt to place him with friends who owned and operated a pig-farm in the town of Cobourg, some 100-miles, or so, east of Toronto. In exchange he had to promise to attend the local High School until he turned age-18, attain better than a "B" average yearly, and be amenable to the their household routine work the farm as requested. He, without my having to tell him so, could, at any time, "come home" where he would share a room with Alan, and be considered part of my family. Paul agreed, custody was sought and obtained, the berth on my friend's farm was arranged, and Paul took up "part-time" resident in Coburg, returning to Toronto for a week every three months, or thereabouts for the next 4-years.
Paul is a linear thinker. I learned this the hard way. Our deal was until he turned age-18. Promptly on December 31st, his eighteenth birthday, he arrived home to declare he was finished with school. He would remain on the farm until the summer, mostly out of loyalty to my friends (I suspect) and a desire to see them through the winter and his wanting to finish helping them with their current crop of hogs. He was adamant that he would not return to school and finish his 13th and final year. I realized then, I should have stipulated the end of the school year of the year that he turned age-18. To Paul, a contract was a contract, and he had honoured the contract, both in spirit and intent. He had maintained an A-minus average each and every year
of my stewardship. Nothing was going to deter him from his decision.
I've never had to worry too much about Paul. He's a better than capable mechanic, a true wizard when it comes to trucks and motor-cycles. He'll never, ever be unemployed. In truth, half-a-dozen years later he entered into an apprenticeship, and subsequently acquired his licenses, and is doing very well thank you very much. That is he is when he works. He's a child of the road, and the road is his friend, and living of the land is what he does best. As a consequence, short of his brief, more often than not annual, visits "home" I never really know what Paul is doing, or where he is doing it.
I do know he applied for, and received, his "original" birth certificate (the one issued in his birth name), and during a brief stint with the Canadian Armed Forces (which I arranged at his request, coming as it did out his visit home on his eighteenth birthday to tell me he was leaving school) went by the his name David as declared on that birth certificate. The birth certificate, rather ironically, being required by the Army (this only because the name was known to him, and he therefore he could legally obtain it without any fuss or muss), so he adopted the name to go with the gig.
Ryan, my Ward, is another kettle of fish entirely. I had thought my child-rearing years were well behind me. Apparently not.
Late one February afternoon (this being some months after my heart attack, and its' attendant sudden blindness which I had learned somewhat awkwardly to live with), I had been walking my little girl "Lucky" (whom I've before mentioned a time or two here, along with her mate Maximillion and her children Bandit and Sampson), or rather she was "walking" or better yet "minding" me. I had encountered some difficulty, with Lucky getting all caught up in some nettles bordering the local church grounds where I routinely exercised here, and Ryan came to my rescue and asked if he could help. He didn't know that I was blind, simply that he saw my distress and offered assistance. I accepted gratefully, and in the course of the conversation that ensued, learned that he was looking for the local "Food Bank", it being supposedly located somewhere in the church on whose grounds he found both Lucky and I. We showed him the way, I offering my card, should he ever need help himself, and Lucky and I went home to our apartment in the building next door.
Over the course of the next six-months or so, Ryan became a semi-frequent visitor to my home, and slowly, as he came to trust me, I learned of his situation. A situation, which if you think my son Alan's saga is horrible, would curl your short hairs. The long and short of it is that, resulting from legal problems he was having, he requested the court to grant me Guardianship of him, and that he be allowed to reside in my home should he desire to do so. And so he has for the past three years when not either in Alberta living with his father, or back home in Cape Breton with an aunt.
Not intending, or wanting, to trump my own horn with all of the above preamble, I guess what I'm really wanting to say is that, absent any true and meaningful government provided solution to the homeless crisis, the only viable, and workable solution to the problems face by our homeless youth (and by extension the homeless regardless of their age or gender, be they Gay or otherwise), is to listen to them when they want to be heard, and when asked, provide them with whatever assistance we can possibly give them. Assistance that has to be enduring and sustaining; assistance that must come from the heart, and not from any sense of responsibility.
Sheltering our homeless in Canada should not be a burden. Affordable housing could be made available. CMHC (Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, an agency of the Federal Government) could (and should) be providing residental builder's (as they did in the late 1950's and early 1960's) 40-year, 3 and 4 %, NHA (National Housing Act) Mortgages to fund the provision of new housing starts, the lion's share of these to be high-rise housing, which could be used to provide affordable shelter to any Canadian.
Rather than bailing out the ailing automobile industry for the umpteenth time, the most recent funding, if sequestered by CMHC, and doled out across the country where and as needed, could have provided for thousands upon thousands of "affordable" new housing starts, with the recipient's of this largesse able to repay these funds at a nominal fixed rate mortgage over the next forty years. CMHC didn't loose money on the funds they provided 50-years ago, and it's not likely they would over any renewed funding this time around either.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Thank you, Warren, for telling me that. Thank you, Warren, for doing that.
Love,
Anthony
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Benji
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: August 2007
Messages: 297
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I took in a street teen 8 years ago, he wasn't gay. His father used to give him money and tell him to get lost, then report him as a runaway. After 6-7 times of this he was taken to Juvie. His only crime was as a runaway, (I was allowed to see his file with him after he turned 18 and it was his only charge, no drugs, theft or any of that) his father was ordered to attend parenting class's and pay the state money. He had a better idea, he moved away while his kid was still being held. They put him in a half-way house and he left at 16 and lived on the streets, moving from friends house to friends house. Wound up on my side of town, living in a park. I got him out of the court system, he got GED, and went to work. Basically he's a pretty good kid.
I donate money to the Street teen shelter here in town. I do what I can within my limited budget.
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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I just read an article about foster care in Southern California. A thirteen year old boy hung himself outside of a foster care home and he was not discovered until about ten days later.
A child in general, gay or non gay, seems to be in serious danger when there is not a strong "family" unit. The definition of a family I believe to mean is a caring group of people who will take care a watch over the safety and well being of a child.
I don't think I've hugged my daughter more this week after reading and watching the video.
Does society even like children?
Raymundo
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