“School should be an environment where everybody feels safe.” These are the words I hear from my younger sibling, as they recount their experience attending public school in Utah. As a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community, they are faced with hate, discrimination, prejudice, and judgment within a space that is supposed to make every student feel welcome.
My sibling explains a recent event in which the high school’s GSA club was subject to extreme homophobia while simply trying to recruit new members during rush week. With their table set up in the cafeteria, they eagerly waited to meet new members of the community and build connections. They were instead met with flying food and hateful slurs, resulting in the GSA club taking down their table and not returning the following year.
LGBTQIA+ students are spat at and called slurs nearly every day. In fact, “findings from the GLSEN 2019 National School Climate Survey demonstrate that Utah schools were not safe for most lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBTQ) secondary school students” (GLSEN, 2019). This is an extreme problem that is affecting the next generation of youth in our state. The homophobia within our state (and country) is so severe that “LGBTQ+ young people are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide than their peers” (The Trevor Project, 2024).
Utahns, I implore you. Confront your own internalized homophobia. Challenge your friends and family on their harmful beliefs. Come to understand that the lives of our youth are sacred, and it is up to us to make a change. Accept and protect our youth. We can and must do better.
Marcie Johnson, Salt Lake City