1. United States
2. Ga.
3. Letter

As a young public school student, I am deeply disappointed and disgusted with the bill H.R. 2616. LGBTQ+ youth have already been targeted enough. According to The Trevor Project, about 40% of transgender and nonbinary young people have seriously considered attempting suicide. In that same study, 1 in 10 queer young people attempted suicide in the past year. Furthermore, data published by the CDC shows that queer students are FIVE times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. Aside from matters of mental health, 10% of queer students are threatened or even hurt with a weapon on school property. And before you underestimate that 10%, that would mean that if you gathered 100 queer students in a room, 10 of them have been threatened with violence with real weapons at school. At home, “outing” them could be even worse. In the BEST case scenario if they have homophobic guardians, they will be put through psychological harm and have their mental health plummet. I personally have a friend who has been through this. She was immediately cut off from access to all her friends, and told me her mother never spoke to her other than when dinner was ready. She is one of the strongest people I know, though she did struggle. However, this was the BEST case scenario. We have already seen 12-year-olds being dropped into homeless shelters with nothing but their school books, forced into conversion therapy, which is absolute psychological torture according to The Trevor Project, which found that queer children exposed to conversion therapy are three times more likely to attempt suicide than those who haven’t been. Transgender children are also 73% more likely to experience homelessness and 77% more likely to experience food insecurity than their cisgender peers. If they do end up keeping their homes, they could be subjected to emotional abuse, including cutting off all friends, including ones that didn’t even support them in the first place, not talking to them unless absolutely needed, or completely invading privacy by removing doors because “liars don’t deserve privacy.” This could also, in the worst case, cross into physical or even sexual abuse. This is not about an ideology; this is not about a political belief. Innocent children are being harmed and KILLED already, and by taking away their right to privacy, that torment could be taken home as domestic abuse or further harm to their mental health. Please vote NO to H.R. 2616 to protect my transgender and LGBTQ+ peers and siblings.