The article below has been written for gayleeds.com by a 15 year old school student.

                                       YOU'RE SO GAY

The meaning of the word Gay has changed significantly throughout the last century. First meaning happy, then homosexual and now as an insult. You only have to walk into a high school to hear “that’s so gay” or “you fag” being thrown about as insults.
Although many teenagers do not mean these insults as anything but a substitute for calling someone stupid, it can be a hard environment for others to be in, particularly LGB students and those with LGB relatives. Despite the obvious homophobia in schools, schools still choose to ignore these problems. A recent report by Stonewall on children with lesbian/gay parents showed that many of these young people felt that not enough education about homosexuality is available in schools and therefore has become a victim of the harsh tongues of those who fear it.
Discrimination comes from fear and we fear the unknown. If we do not understand why something is done, then through our fear we begin to despise it and take every opportunity to insult it.
It seems that the attitudes of the majority of our teachers are not much better. In the Stonewall report, one child states that teachers treat homophobic insults like swear words. This shows that these insults have been used so much they have been implanted into our world and have become the ‘norm.’
Alas, these problems don’t just occur in schools. Remember, when we as teenagers leave school in just a year or two and enter the big world, these homophobic attitudes will also enter the world, yet again. Homophobic insults are used as day-to-day remarks and seem to be more frequent. Statistics on the website ‘Think B4 you speak’ show that on a typical day the word ‘fag’ is used over 1500 times on Twitter. Surely people can see that this behaviour is wrong. Everybody knows, deep down, that these insults are hurtful to others and deeply prejudicial, yet they choose to continue with them, after all, it’s not their problem.
We live in a world of double-standards. Teenagers at my school can say all they like about gays but if one racist remark is said then they are really in trouble. Discrimination is discrimination and I hope that one day people in schools will start to see homophobic language as discrimination and not just as light-hearted insults.

Jade P.
Age 15. Leeds