He’s a dick, to be sure. But in this case he’s right.
I don’t think it’s his contention that gay teens are at a higher risk of suicide that people are taking issue with.
How can you tell? This thread is awash in retardation.
My point, sorry if I was too cryptic, is that the majority of teen suicides are the parents’ fault. If your kid commits suicide because he/she is gay, that is your fault.
That wasn’t even his contention.
Depending on his definition of “in the neighborhood”, the plain meaning of his words is that virtually every teen suicide is caused by rejection of the kids’ religious choices or sexual preferences.
Maybe he doesn’t believe in mental illness or something.
Please tell me this was sarcasm or something.
You might want check that quote again. He gives three reasons for teenage suicide. And the third one is mental illness.
umm…
He gives two: Family rejection and stupid parents. Mental illness isn’t in that quote.
Is depression not a mental illness?
He didn’t blame suicide on mental illness. He blamed it on parents failing to recognize mental illness.
Twat. 
Mofo.
Not at all.
I have worked as a volunteer with gay youth. Kicked out of their homes by their parents as young as 13. Into the street, at 13, because they were gay. Do you think teens whose parents support them when they come out of the closet tend to commit suicide? The kids whose parents support them don’t need volunteers. All of the teen suicides that I knew, anecdotally, when working as a volunteer, had been kicked out into the street by their parents.
Obviously if you kick your kid out of the house because he’s gay and he commits suicide, it’s your fault. However, I highly doubt that all or even most of the kids whose parents aren’t supportive off themselves.
OKay, what proportion of teenagers with unsupportive parents committing suicide is acceptab le, in your mind?
That’s not a wise-ass question. Teeange suicide is a significan problem – and gay teen suicide is way out of proportion to their populyion share. (Somewhere aroung 35% of teenage suicides are gay – I won’t hazard a guess as to the percentage of teenagers overall who are gay, but it’s nowhere near that, by nearly an order of magnitude.) This is the point that Robot tried to make - parents who fail to grasp and deal with real problems encountered by teens, including but not limited to dealing with being gay, are arguably legally and morally at fault w/r/t their children’s suicides.
Wasn’t Robot’s point that it is the parent’s fault 100% of the time?
Parents are imperfect and despite their best efforts, we don’t always pick up on all the things going on with our kids. Especially during those teen years when they start to rebel and try to find their own identity.
It doesn’t matter what point he was trying to make; the point he actually made is completely different.
Personally, I don’t feel any number of teen suicides due to unsupportive parents is acceptable. However, the fact remains that a significant minority of the population is homophobic, and a larger portion is unwilling to accept homosexual children. Those people are not going to disappear or be redeemed overnight; that’s just the way it is.