Another aspect of homosexuality is gay teens. Teen years are a hard time to live in, there is school, dating, first jobs, the pressure of an upcoming adult life. With this being such a time of trials, some teens have it worse off than others: gay teens, they are beat, laughed at, mocked, and hated. Many are forced into denial, and even suicide. Why do teens have this added pressure? Because their peers judge them due to who they date, and who they are attracted to. Matthew Shepard would know this better than anyone else. He was beaten into unconciousness and, tied to the fence of his high school football field until his body couldn't handle it anymore and gave way. (lambda home page) Matthew's life was robbed from him, his classmates brutilly killed him because he was a homosexual. Matthew never got his first job, he never got his education, he never got to live. Someone chose to take that from him. Some teens take it from themselves. They cannot handle the stress that their peers put on them. "If you teach a young person that their life has no value, they'll treat their life like it has no value" (Catlin, 1.) Gay bashing in high schools is getting better but there are still teens out there suffering and afraid to come out, for they fear they will be judged. And they will be, the pain will be there, and they won't let their true self be shown.

Not only do they face unrestricted discrimination and harassment at school, they often face similar or worse homophobia at home. Parents, unaware of their children's sexual orientation, often make cutting remarks about homosexual television characters, community members, or the orientation in general. They may not even recognize their comments, but the child (or children) is hanging on to every word, looking for at least a tiny bit of acceptance from family. Many times they find hate instead of acceptance, sometimes to the point of being kicked out of the house at age 14 or 15 when a homophobic parent does find out. This leaves them with nowhere to turn.

"Just because something is forcefully driven into the closet doesn't mean it has gone away" (Graff, 13) unless society become more accepting of others differences, gay teens will continue to be killed off and this nation's views will be like that unto Hitler's.

What about benefits? What legal benefits do a man and woman have that differ from a man and a man's? Try this analogy. A man marries a woman, they adopt a child, the woman than gets sick and all of her medical bills are covered and payed for by her husband's insurance company. The woman has now recovered, and her husband is in a tragic car ac

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1763
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)