A help yet (largely) a hindrance: The role of adults in the school and life experiences of Colombian LGBTQ+ youth

• In Event: Where and how do we learn about LGTBQ+ people? Insights from Colombia, India, United Kingdom, and United States

Proposal

In the last decades, Colombia has made significant progress in the advancement and recognition of LGBTQ+ rights. The Colombian Constitutional Court has established a strong precedent that explicitly protects sexual orientation and gender identity from discrimination, same-sex couples can get married or live in recognized civil unions, adopt children, and have full partner pension and health benefits, among others. Although there is not a comprehensive gender identity law, transgender people can change their name and sex marker in all official documents without psychiatric gatekeeping or any surgical or hormonal intervention. Regarding education, the Constitutional Court has shown a strong anti-discrimination. In 2015, the Court decided the case of Sergio Urrego, a gay teenager who died by suicide after experiencing homophobic bullying from his school’s administration. In ruling T-478 the Court mandated that the Ministry of Education revise all educational community guidelines (manuales de convivencia) in the Colombian school system to ensure they did not discriminate against LGB TQ+ students and that they promote discrimination-free environments. Since then, other rulings have affirmed the Court’s position, honing in on gender identity and expression. Rulings T-363 from 2016 and T-192 from 2020 mandate that technical institutes (T-363) and schools (T-192) recognize the gender identity of their students, regardless of whether they match official documents or not. In both cases, the Court stated that fundamental rights (such as education) cannot depend on changes to official documents (since many cases involve minors who cannot change said documents, among other reasons) or be curtailed by cumbersome administrative requirements. A recent landmark precedent, T-443, specifically names gender identity as a protected category from discrimination in educational settings. The ruling is based on the case of José Manuel Echeverri, a transgender student who sued his school because they refused to recognize his gender identity, and, when compelled to accommodate him, school administrators isolated him from his peers, forcing him to take lessons by himself in a separate classroom, and prohibiting from going to recess to socialize with other students.

It is worth noting that all these cases speak to institutional harassment. Urrego, Echeverri and the other plaintiffs were not bullied or discriminated by his peers (or that was not the cause of the complaint). The main discriminatory situation was created by the adults in charge of guaranteeing their education, safety, and wellbeing: school leadership and staff, mental health professionals, and teachers.

This paper will focus on the role of adults in the life experiences of LGBTQ+ youth, predominately in relation to school. The findings come from a larger national survey of 3,246 LGBTQ+ youth ages 13 to 21 in Colombia about their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the study provides, for the first time in the country, data about the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth in four key aspects: school climate, religious life, family life, and online activities.

One of the main findings of the study is that rather than being part of the solution, adults are often part of the problem. Adults are failing LGBTQ+ youth in school, churches, and the home. In all these spaces, LGBTQ+ youth hear homophobic and transphobic remarks from the adults responsible for their education, care, and wellbeing, and often face institutional harassment.

• Students who reported hearing homophobic remarks at school were asked how often teachers or other school staff intervened if they were present. Almost half of students (42.4%) reported that staff never intervened when present.
• LGBTQ+ youth in Colombia are commonly exposed to anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes from the adults in their lives: 65.5% reported hearing homophobic remarks from school staff; 93.3% of LGBTQ+ youth in Colombia had ever heard negative messages about LGBTQ+ people from their religious congregation or during services, and 87.2% had heard homophobic or transphobic comments from family members in the past year.
• One-quarter of youth (23.7%) said they do not have problems at home for being LGBTQ+. However, the majority of the LGBTQ+ youth have no support from parents vis-à-vis their sexual orientation or gender identity – either because they are not out to the parent or because they are out and the parent is not at all supportive.

Furthermore, parents, religious leaders, and even mental health professionals frequently pressure LGBTQ+ youth to engage in different forms of “therapies” that seek to change their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, promising to make them heterosexual and/or cisgender (not trans).

• 61.0% of LGBTQ+ youth had said that someone had tried to persuade them to change their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
• Parents (60.2%), other family members (40.3%), religious leaders (31.4%), and a counselor or psychologist (17.4%) were the adults that more commonly tried to change the sexual orientation and/or gender identity of LGBTQ+ youth.
• 78.6% of LGBTQ+ youth who participated in “treatments” to try to change their sexual orientation and/or gender identity reported that they were forced to by their parents.

Fortunately, when LGBTQ+ students have supportive staff at school, it can greatly benefit their achievement and well-being. The majority of students (91.1%) could identify at least one school staff member whom they believed was supportive of LGBTQ+ students at their school, and 40.7% could identify six or more supportive school staff. Students who reported having a higher number (six or more) of teachers and school staff who support LGBTQ+ students were less likely to miss days of school because of feeling unsafe (28.2% vs. 42.8%).

In line with these findings, we further found that LGBTQ+ youth in Colombia 1) also experience widespread harassment, bias, and discrimination in school and other aspects of their lives, 2) that the majority does not have strong support networks in their schools, families or churches, and 3) that there few affirming resources and safe spaces available to them.

These result are vital to inform a wide variety of actors looking to make data-driven decisions in the design, implementation and evaluation of programs, initiatives and policies that seek to forge a more inclusive present and a better future for all Colombian youth, including LGBTQ+ youth.

Author

• Joseph G Kosciw, Teachers College, Columbia University