Seventy-six percent said they would be comfortable talking with their children about gay issues or gay people. The journal Pediatrics reports that 28 percent of gay high school students drop out of school because of harassment. Meanwhile, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has found in studying schools that 45 percent of gay males and 20 percent of lesbians experienced verbal abuse or physical violence. I tell parents to say to their children, 'This is an important topic because it gets into values and treating people decently. The Internet, she notes, is a great resource.
Children tend to learn by role modeling.
Your child is really looking and watching and taking in those values. More than any past generation, today's parents have learned there's nothing wrong with being gay. Deb Price Deb Price's column is published on Monday.