Dear Future President,

Being a teen that is a part of the LGBT community is hard for some of us. My friend came out to her parents her freshmen year about being trans and they told her she was doing it for the trend; now she is living in the state of depression knowing she can’t be herself around anyone besides a few people; she is now a senior and still can’t be herself because her parents don’t want to accept it; she has friends who support her and other LGBT youth are struggling with the same thing. 30 to 40% of LGBT youth have attempted suicide and have either survived or didn’t, “more than 34,000 (LGBT) people die by suicide each year” making it “the third leading cause of death among 15-24 year olds with lesbian, gay, bisexual youth attempting suicide up to four times more than their heterosexual peers." More teens are dying because they don’t have anywhere to go, no where to sleep, no one to talk to. 

I have been dealing with a similar problem, but my parents don’t know that I am bisexual. They are very christian and want their kids to be perfect, go to church, get good grades; so far I am very far from that. I have been hiding it since 7th grade fearing they will kick me out and no one else would take me in, knowing i won’t have a job, if i can adopt kids. I know someone who got fired for being gay, just started the job been there for only 3 weeks and the manager found out she was lesbian and fired her. LGBT youth don’t have as much stable as older people like in their mid 20's, during my research I found out that most of the suicides that happen in America is because of LGBT community for being made fun of or being kicked out of their house and have nowhere to go. People don’t like being treated poorly; we all should be treated as equal, it doesn’t matter if we’re different than everyone else, we are human and deserve equality. So what needs to be changed is not making us as were aliens, we want the same rights as everyone else, go to the bathroom as our preferred genders, being able to keep our job, getting married or even adopting kids. 

We are human and we are all equal.