For the life of me, can't understand why any adult, especially a parent or teacher, would try to hurt a child that way and possibly cause a suicide.
Too many people think they've never met anyone who is gay, and are completely convinced that it's a choice. They've been brainwashed by their religious leaders.
In some places, like the Middle East it's even worse: the very concept of homosexuality doesn't exist.
I suppose I was fortunate in that at the age of 20 I went to work in the airline industry, and a significant number of my male co-workers were gay. At first (and I started the job in 1969) there was no openness about that, but after a while there was. I got to know those men as friends and human beings several years before I learned they weren't "normal". It had a profound effect on me. I had grown up in a culture that if it even acknowledged homosexuality, condemned it. But I realized my friends didn't deserve condemnation. For someone who has never known a gay person (or thinks they've never known one), the gay is easily portrayed as other, as evil, as worth condemning.
I suspect that the percentage of gay people is and has been pretty consistent over time. But if being gay is totally unacceptable, if there are no ways for a gay person to express his or her sexuality, if there is absolutely no way to meet someone like yourself, then it is all hidden, and that's why certain cultures claim that they have no gay people.
It's analogous to suicide. Back when the Catholic Church totally condemned suicide, most suicides were covered up. I know of more than one instance in which it was quite obvious to me that the person had killed himself, but because the family was Catholic there was an elaborate pretense that the death was accidental. Even now suicide isn't readily acknowledged or accepted, but trust me, being honest about it is much better than hiding.
= new reply since forum marked as read