365gay.com has just posted a long piece of mine on new research about how parents’ reactions to their LGBT children can have long-term effects on their children’s health and well being. Seems obvious—and you may even have seen the news a few days ago when the first paper on this work came out. I’ve gone into more background on the research, though, showing why its approach is so different, and putting it into the context of the much larger Family Acceptance Project of which it is part. The larger project, and its implications for developing family-centered support and resources for LGBT youth, is really what makes this groundbreaking.
There’s a companion piece with more on the lead researcher, Dr. Caitlin Ryan.
Steve Ralls, communications director for PFLAG, has a piece up on HuffPo about the research findings as well, linking them to the book Prayers for Bobby
(Don’t forget to vote for Mombian as Best Large Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards. Vote every day through January 13. Thanks!)
It is just stuff like this that makes me so grateful for your work here. You provide an invaluable service to LGBTQ parents (even our hetero allies) everywhere.