How far have come with homosexuality? Not very far with people making statements like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/27/tony-perkins-gay-teen-suicide_n_774580.html
Ugh!, I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit.
This kind of thinking just disgusts me, partly because it is a bit personal. In college, a friend of mine, that I met through the campus LGBSU committed suicide. While it technically would not be classified as bullying that drove him to suicide, but more of parental emotional abuse. But then again what is bullying than a form of abuse, in these cases often emotional.
It was made much harder on those of us who really cared about him because in this case, his mother was the bully, and she blamed us for his suicide. Therefore we were not even allowed to attend his funeral to say our goodbyes.
It just frustrates me that these sanctimonious A-holes can't figure out that the reason these young men and women take such a drastic step is not because homosexuality is abnormal or wrong, but because they believe it to be so because society, and often their own family constantly reinforce that message.
There was a thread a while ago about coming out and several openly gay posters, myself included, told tales about the most difficult coming out was to our parents. Many of us feared this because we did not want to lose the love of our parents, despite (knowing now in retrospect) that all of the evidence pointed to acceptance. That is how deep this societal induced shame of homosexuality is
In my case it was difficult to even come out to myself. I grew up in Orange County, CA, one of the most conservative regions of the country. I was raised with a very distorted image of what a homosexual was (effete drag queen). Since those externalities did not match myself, it was difficult for me to reconcile my eternal emotions and feelings with my image of homosexuality. I was not able to come out, even to myself, until I went to college and had professors and classmates who were openly gay, who helped me reform my image of what a homosexual was so that I could reconcile it with my self-image and finally come out.
During my coming out process I had many times contemplated suicide because the process of reassessing your self-image that deeply is not easy emotionally. I really cannot say, even now, why I was one of the lucky ones who did not follow through on those thoughts, I am just grateful that I did not.
However, there are still lasting emotional scars and damage that still carry around from that period. The emotional turmoil wrecked my educational career and I ended up failing out of a very prestigious science and engineering school (Harvey Mudd College). I eventually got my degree from a state school (CSU Long Beach) but I still feel that I never truly lived up to my potential because of the difficulties associated with coming out. I still have confidence issues that have hindered me personally and professionally, which I trace back to that fear of acceptance that became so poignant during my initial coming out.