LTAFS Addendum: LGBTQ Teens and Sex Ed
Lol, I wrote a whole series thinking, cool, I'll never have to soapbox again. And here we are. So I was reading a middle grade where the mom is telling her tween daughter that she's actually excited that she's LGBTQ because it lowers her risk of teen pregnancy.
Caveat 1: I am aware that in this fictional scenario, the parent was trying to express how their kid being LGBTQ was something that was not worrisome which is a delightful thing. I wish all characters and real people had delightful and supportive adults around them.
Caveat 2: The story has not assigned a specific label to the character's attraction which is why I used the full acronym. So this statement may be more correct than my initial response. Here's a link to some stats: https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2019/12/sexual-orientation-differences-pregnancy-and-abortion-across-lifecourse
The reality is this. Most teens in the US do not get sex education. Like at all. The ones that do, often get very bland ones, that often only vaguely allude to any sexual behavior outside heterosexual behaviors. As a result, if an LGBTQ teen has access to sex ed, it likely does not reference anything about their attraction(s) and so, basically, chances are they either don't listen, or listen in the way you do when you're sitting through someone talking about spaceship design when you have no plans to ever design a spaceship. Like cool, I need to retain none of this. So, all of that is to say, LGBTQ teens on average, are navigating the world with less information about how to navigate sexually and as such are actually (with some exceptions for lesbians) at an elevated risk of sexuallty transmitted infections and teen pregnancy.
Now I want to be clear, there is nothing about being an LGBTQ teen that is riskier, the problem is our current society under-serves this population so they are at higher risk because they are not armed with information they need to make informed choices. This is an information problem not a lifestyle problem. Anyway, yes to supportive fictional parents, but maybe check your stats first. Thank you.