Kevin Hague speaking in Parliament today Gay Green MP Kevin Hague has given a passionate speech in Parliament, speaking up for queer youth across New Zealand and calling for the Prime Minister to take action to counter the fear and isolation they experience. Quoting the Youth '07 survey which found queer youth are three times as likely as their heterosexual peers to experience bullying, Hague reflected on April's Pink Shirt Day, the glbt youth letter campaign to the Prime Minister and the resulting meeting Rainbow Youth and Q-Youth had with John Key to push for help getting the anti-bullying message through in schools. "I've been heartened by that and was particularly pleased by the comments of those organisations, that they felt they had a particularly good hearing from the Prime Minister," Hague said. "As an adult gay man ... and someone who came out early in the 1970s, my observation would be that my life in these days now my life is immeasurably better than the life I would have led as an adult gay man in the 1970s. But what I've been saying recently ... is that I think that for the young person, for the 14-year-old boy that is just starting to realise their difference now that actually that person's experience is not greatly different from the experience I had in the 1970s. "When I think about it, that young person, that 14-year-old, still lives with expectations all around them. From family, from their school, from wider society, from their friends, that they will in fact be heterosexual. And when I speak to young gay, lesbian and transsexual people nowadays and ask them where their role models are, actually there are precious few," he continued. "They can name for me Ellen DeGeneres, you know the TV show host, there is a character in the television show Glee. Every now and again Shortland St has a gay or lesbian character – usually they're in the story for a little while then they get killed off at the end of the season or move away to Australia or something like that. So the role models that are actually accessible and available to these children are pretty few and far between as well. "It's simply not good enough in fact, because the reality is this: the feelings of fear and isolation experienced by these young people lead in turn to damaged self-esteem. That psycho-social risk factor itself leads to real risk of plenty of health and other consequences. It underpins for example, drug and alcohol abuse. It underpins the risk depression. It underpins the risk of suicide ... that same survey, Youth '07, found rates of suicide attempts amongst gay and bisexual young people five times those of their peers. And that is simply unacceptable. "And I'm certainly looking forward to the Prime Minister's programme of change to counter those issues," he finished. You can watch Kevin Hague's speech below:
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 15th June 2011 - 5:42pm