The Fosters

Blog Post 1: Season 4 Episode 15 of The Fosters

            The Fosters like many other shows cover a wide range of topics in our society and culture. They cover many situations revolving around the LGBTQ+ community. In episode 15 from season 4 there was a topic that was covered, which I feel that you don’t see in the media every day. The topic was the lack of LGBTQ+ sex education in schools.

“Despite growing attention to gay and lesbian concerns, today’s current sex education curriculum in schools and families is still centered upon heterosexuality. Those studies that examine family sex communication and school-based sex education commonly reflect and take place within a heterosexual context as well, which largely ignores the perspective of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals” (Estes, 2017, p. 615)

This issue has been increasing in scale the past few years. I feel like sex education should not just be strictly about heterosexual relationships, and with more teenagers coming out this is more important then ever. In sex education today, there is not explanation of how to have safe sex for people who do not engage in heterosexual activities. They do not teach about how to have safe sex, or what safe relationships are for people who are not straight. This results in teens and others in the LGBTQ+ community to engage in behaviors which are not safe, and can lead to them getting into circumstances which might be hard to get out of. So, it is important to have sex education for all sexual and gender identities, and not just for heterosexual cisgender people.

“A meta-analysis showed that sexual minority youth were almost twice as likely as their heterosexual peers to engage in sex while intoxicated…Other studies have found that rates of intimate partner violence and sexual violence in the LGBTQ+ community are as high or higher than in the general population, particularly for transgender individuals …Given the potential of these negative outcomes, it is important to know where LGBTQ+ young adults obtain their sexual health information and the associations between these sources of information and confidence in sexual health practices.” (Charest, 2016, p.75)

These statistics show that this is a growing issue and should be recognized. All these issues could be minimized if there is some sort of lesson about the LGBTQ+ community.

            This episode showed one of the main characters, Jude, wanting to know how to have sex because he is gay, and no one really told him what to do. And, because his school did not have any sex education for individuals in the community, he did not know what to do, so he resorted to a different way to try to learn more. He went on a gay dating app, like Grindr, to find a man who had experience with sex, so he could learn a thing or two. Jude went to his house and the guy realized Jude was underage and kicked him out. Once his moms found out about what had happened, of course they were mad, but the one thing that bothered them more was the lack of teaching about the LGBTQ+ community and sex in their school. One of the moms wanted to take action to try to add that aspect to the current sex education curriculum, and faced a lot of challenges on the way, like parents thinking it is not moral and should not be taught in the school, and should only be taught at home. This is true to people who want to have this happen in real life. It should not be this way, but until our society become less homophobic and recognizes this as an important issue nothing is going to change.

Blog Post 2: Season 5 Episode 5 of The Fosters

            As I stated in my previous blog post, The Fosters, is a show that has covered many different topics ranging from fostering to LGBTQ+ issues. In episode 5 of season 5, the topic of homelessness and sexual abuse in the LGBTQ+ community was covered. This along with the issue about sex education for LGBTQ+ individuals, have been growing concerns in the community.

“Studies show that LGB adolescents’ relationships with their parents are often challenged, particularly around the time of disclosure of sexual identity or “coming out” …or when parents learn that their children are LGBT.” (Ryan, 2010, p. 206)

The increasing rates of homelessness in the community, are because when some people come out, their families do not support them with their identity and they kick them out of the house. This homophobic move makes many young teens homeless and living on the streets.

“In fact, LGBT people are among the fastest-growing homeless demographic in the nation (after veterans), particularly those in the 15-to-30 age range overall, and women over 40… So, although gays and lesbians constitute only about 10 percent of the population, and trans persons less than 1 percent, LGBT teenagers represent close to half of the homeless teens in the U.S.” (Brownworth, 2014)

These facts are alarming. It is hard to believe that less than 11 percent of the population consists of over half of the homeless youth in the country. And, because of these alarming rates “They will be at greater risk of attempting suicide, experiencing depression or engaging in drug use or unprotected sex.” (Simonette, 2015) There should be programs in place to help combat these issues it is terrible that things like this happen in real life. To illustrate how this problem, affect teens, The Fosters, does a perfect representation of this problem in their show.

            There is one teen in the show, whose case gets brought up to Stef. His friends were trying to help him and get him out of a bad situation he was in. He was stuck living with a sexually abusive man, because his parents kicked him out, and he thought that was a better idea then living on the streets. So, he was brought into talk to Stef, to see if they could find the man, but the teen would not tell them anything because he was fearing for his life, and he did not want to be out on the streets again. To get more information Stef went to the place where the boy used to live when he was on the streets. She went there and asked the other homeless boys if they knew anything about this man, and only one knew just a little, but it did not help too much. This episode put these statistics stated above into images. It showed the many struggles of the teens in the community who get kicked out of their own houses because of their sexuality. The Fosters address many of the issues regarding LGBTQ+ youth today that the news and the mainstream media does not cover.