Top Biden health official says trans youth being 'driven to depths of despair'

[brooklynite]

Source: The Hill

Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine said trans youth are being “driven to depths of despair” and committing suicide at alarming rates, during a speech on Saturday about the dangers of anti-trans laws being passed in red states across the country.

Levine, the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, said in a speech at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth that LGBTQ youth are being “attacked” and have “few places to turn” for help.

“I want to say this very, very clearly: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans are committing suicide at a rate that should shock our conscience,” Levine said during the Out For Health Conference.

“Even after decades of progress, the most vulnerable among us continue to suffer … transgender women of color not only continue to be harassed, but are more likely than the population at large to suffer violence and even murder.”

Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3473200-top-biden-health-official-says-trans-youth-being-driven-to-depths-of-despair/

[in2herbs]

1. "Bucky" on another DU thread posted that: "When Thomas Jefferson and

George Mason were rewriting Virginia's legal code in the 1790s they had suicide reclassified as a death by disease rather than homicide, so that heirs wouldn't lose their inheritance and to take the stigma of misplaced moral judgment off of people who succumbed to depression.”

Maybe it’s time to reclassify suicides as homicides, especially with today’s excessive bullying leading to suicides.

Just a thought.

[Lunabell]

2. Well, their work is done then.

They would rather have dead kids than LGBTQ kids.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

3. The Republican party is the party of fascist sociopaths.

They'd kill off everyone except for straight white phony christians if they could get away with it.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

4. Why so many of us have screamed and raised hell...

I know that despair. I know that despair of growing up during a different time, where so much of this was hidden and swept under the rug and kept in the closet. The kind of despair that drives a person to self-harm... How the hell I'm even still here, I don't know.

I'm angry and I'm hurt and I'm scared. Not only for my past experiences. Not only what all of this has done for my PTSD... But having lived it, and knowing what kind of hell it is, and watching as these red state red-asses do this shit to a new generation of trans youth. Vulnerable people, during a vulnerable time of their life, being targeted by these thugs... Seeing the QOP portray them as monsters and freaks every fucking day in the news... Trans youth are struggling enough in life without having this shit all over the news on top of it, and these vile laws being passed.

I'm not surprised in the least this has caused the suicide rates to increase. Saddened, not surprised. I had feared this. It's why all of this got to me so much, and still does. Damnit, we struggle enough with self-questioning and self-loathing and self-harm without what has been done in 2022.

I'd say "shame on the QOP," but... We know they have none. No shame. No morals. No heart. No soul.