Bats do not have boy/girl ways to act or look, but create long-lasting families that care most about helping each other be strong. [Gender Showcase, K-5]

A bat with brown skin sticks out its pink tongue while hanging upside-down from a tree branch against a background of green leaves.

A bat with brown skin spreads its wings while it hangs from upside-down a tree branch against a white background.

Diverse Families Toolkit: There’s More Than One Way To Make a Family

This poster provides an important clarification when learning about biology - that our biological or genetic concept of family may be different from social or legal understandings of family. You can teach your students that all families are valid using this poster or other resources in the Gayby Baby Project’s Diverse families Toolkit.

Groundbreaking Research on Family Rejection of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Adolescents Establishes Predictive Link to Negative Health Outcomes (Pediatrics)

On the basis of odds ratios, lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults who reported higher levels of family rejection during adolescence were 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide, 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression, 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs, and 3.4 times more likely to report having engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse compared with peers from families that reported no or low levels of family rejection.

Latino men reported the highest number of negative family reactions to their sexual orientation in adolescence.

Researchers have established a link between rejecting behaviors of families towards lesbian, gay and bisexual adolescents and negative health problems in early adulthood.

Published in the January 2009 issue of Pediatrics, journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Citation: Caitlin Ryan, David Huebner, Rafael M. Diaz, Jorge Sanchez. Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults. Pediatrics Jan 2009, 123 (1) 346-352; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2007-3524 (link to abstract)