New Anti-Smoking Ads Warn Teens 'It's Gay To Smoke'
OK, yes, I do get that it's the Onion and it's parody.
Sad thing is, allowing for some exaggeration, there's almost no part of it that isn't at least somewhat true. Despite being, at least on the male side, as a group so image-and-body-conscious that we're the only group of men for whom anorexia is actually an issue, a rather staggering number of gay men smoke. Because it looks cool, or did when we were teens. Because it helps with the whole weight control thing. Because so much of our socializing was done in bars, where smoking used to be almost de rigeur. (Though these days it's usually expressly forbidden by state and local law. Walking past a gay bar at night these days is practically an invitation to lung cancer all on its own. And I will tell you right now that watching all those people hovering outside a bar in a Chicago winter because they have got to get their smoke in NOW! is both incredibly sad, and incredibly funny. Seriously, risking frostbite just because you have GOT to have that cigarette ... But I digress.)
CHAPEL HILL — Men and women who are gay or lesbian are more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to smoke, according to findings from a review study carried out by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The findings, published in the August issue of the journal, Tobacco Control, show that as many as 37 percent of lesbians and 33 percent of gays smoke. That compares to national smoking rates of 18 percent for women and 24 percent for men in the 2006 National Health Interview Survey. The authors reviewed findings from 42 studies of the prevalence of tobacco use among sexual minorities in the U.S. published between 1987 and May 2007. The findings suggest smoking is a significant health inequality for sexual minorities.
Recognizing and understanding the increased risk in a particular population can help policymakers, healthcare officials and others provide support for people more likely to start smoking or who may want to stop smoking, said Joseph Lee, lead author of the review and a social research specialist with the Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Program in the UNC School of Medicine. A number of small or geographically limited studies have suggested that sexual minorities have higher rates of tobacco use than the general population, said Lee, who conducted the review as a master’s student in collaboration with Cathy Melvin, Ph.D., at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and UNC’s Sheps Center for Health Services Research and Gabriel Griffin, a medical student at the Duke University School of Medicine. “The underlying causes of these disparities are not fully explained by this review,” Lee said. “Likely explanations include the success of tobacco industry’s targeted marketing to gays and lesbians, as well as time spent in smoky social venues and stress from discrimination." [...]
Smoking prevention groups go after tobacco ads targeting gays
By Dennis Peck, The Oregonian (oregonlive.com)
March 03, 2009, 10:53PM
The cigarette pitch demands a second look.
Two ripped, rakish men and one lean, pristine hound pause, inexplicably, in the cool shallows of a calm green sea.
"How gay is this ad?" R.E. Szego, a Portland tobacco-prevention specialist, asks when she sees such an image.
It's a sincere question, not a slam.
Wooed for years by tobacco companies -- who lavish free merchandise on their bars and clubs, sponsor their events and advertise heavily in their publications -- gays, lesbians and bisexuals remain hooked on cigarettes, even as the general population smokes less. [...] "If you were coming up gay, it used to be the only place you got to meet was in a bar," says Michael Kaplan, executive director of Cascade AIDS Project and a former pack-a-day smoker. "If you wanted to fit in, you'd smoke."
About one in three gay, lesbian and bisexual Oregonians smoke, compared to about one in five smokers in the state's overall population, according to the public health division of the Oregon Department of Human Services. The disparity is worse among gay, lesbian and bisexual teens, who are 2 1/2 times more likely to smoke than their straight peers. What's more, half of all gay Oregon smokers say they don't want to quit....
So that nearly obsessive gym thing so many of us go through? Pretty much all about the shiny shiny muscles and not so much about the actual health benefits. Not everyone, of course. Certainly not YOU, oh no no no no! But I'm sure that every single one of us has seen someone go to the gym, work themselves into a veritable lake of sweat, then they shower, clean up, go outside ... and light up.
The part with the kids, while, yes, exaggerated, is really the saddest part. Because, honestly, most kids really would rather risk cancer and lung disease than be thought gay.
NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2009 - Middle school LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students are significantly more likely to face hostile school climates than high school LGBT students, yet have less access to school resources and support, according to a new research brief from GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, released as the New York Times Magazine publishes a cover story on students coming out in middle school.
The research brief, the first national research report to look specifically at the experiences of LGBT students in middle school, is based on data from 626 LGBT middle school students who participated in GLSEN's 2007 National School Climate Survey of 6,209 secondary school students.
"The findings should be a wake-up call to school officials and policymakers across the country that we can no longer ignore one of the biggest school climate issues facing middle school students, regardless of sexual orientation," GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard said. "GLSEN has worked for many years to provide educators/schools with evidence-based solutions that they can implement to address anti-LGBT bullying and harassment. For the sake of all of our students, schools must take action to address these issues in the critical middle grades."
More than 9 out of 10 LGBT middle school students (91%) said they experienced harassment at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation, 59% experienced physical harassment and a startling 39% said they had been physically assaulted, nearly twice as many as in high school (20%).
More than 8 out of 10 LGBT middle school students (82%) reported hearing homophobic epithets (e.g., "faggot" or "dyke") frequently or often from other students in school – a higher percentage than high school students (73%). Perhaps most shocking, 63% of LGBT middle school students had heard school staff make homophobic remarks.
The negative and hostile climate had a profound effect on student academic success. Half of LGBT middle school students (50%) had skipped at least one day of school in the past month because they felt unsafe. Further, their grade point average was half a grade point lower than students who had not missed school due to safety concerns....
And sadly, being thought "gay" is actually something to worry about still. But it is getting better, slowly but surely.
Austin didn’t know what to wear to his first gay dance last spring. It was bad enough that the gangly 13-year-old from Sand Springs, Okla., had to go without his boyfriend at the time, a 14-year-old star athlete at another middle school, but there were also laundry issues. "I don’t have any clean clothes!" he complained to me by text message, his favored method of communication.
When I met up with him an hour later, he had weathered his wardrobe crisis (he was in jeans and a beige T-shirt with musical instruments on it) but was still a nervous wreck. "I’m kind of scared," he confessed. "Who am I going to talk to? I wish my boyfriend could come." But his boyfriend couldn’t find anyone to give him a ride nor, Austin explained, could his boyfriend ask his father for one. "His dad would give him up for adoption if he knew he was gay," Austin told me. "I'm serious. He has the strictest, scariest dad ever. He has to date girls and act all tough so that people won’t suspect."
Austin doesn’t have to play "the pretend game," as he calls it, anymore. At his middle school, he has come out to his close friends, who have been supportive. A few of his female friends responded that they were bisexual. "Half the girls I know are bisexual," he said. He hadn’t planned on coming out to his mom yet, but she found out a week before the dance. "I told my cousin, my cousin told this other girl, she told her mother, her mother told my mom and then my mom told me," Austin explained. "The only person who really has a problem with it is my older sister, who keeps saying: 'It's just a phase! It’s just a phase!' "
Austin’s mom was on vacation in another state during my visit to Oklahoma, so a family friend drove him to the weekly youth dance at the Openarms Youth Project in Tulsa, which is housed in a white cement-block building next to a redbrick Baptist church on the east side of town. We arrived unfashionably on time, and Austin tried to park himself on a couch in a corner but was whisked away by Ben, a 16-year-old Openarms regular, who gave him an impromptu tour and introduced him to his mom, who works the concession area most weeks.
Openarms is practically overrun with supportive moms. While Austin and Ben were on the patio, a 14-year-old named Nick arrived with his mom. Nick came out to her when he was 12 but had yet to go on a date or even kiss a boy, which prompted his younger sister to opine that maybe he wasn’t actually gay. "She said, 'Maybe you’re bisexual,' " Nick told me. “But I don’t have to have sex with a girl to know I’m not interested."
Ninety minutes after we arrived, Openarms was packed with about 130 teenagers who had come from all corners of the state. Some danced to the Lady Gaga song “Poker Face,” others battled one another in pool or foosball and a handful of young couples held hands on the outdoor patio. In one corner, a short, perky eighth-grade girl kissed her ninth-grade girlfriend of one year. I asked them where they met. "In church," they told me. Not far from them, a 14-year-old named Misti — who came out to classmates at her middle school when she was 12 and weathered anti-gay harassment and bullying, including having food thrown at her in the cafeteria — sat on a wooden bench and cuddled with a new girlfriend....
Seriously, I cannot even imagine such a thing back when I was in junior high. So, yes, things have come a long way. Doesn't mean that there isn't still a long way to go, though.
Posted by iain at October 06, 2009 12:04 PM
