When you have the opportunity to educate youth about the LGBTQ+ community you take it

When you have the opportunity to educate youth about the LGBTQ+ community you take it
Name:Tenisha Rehberg
Pronouns:She/Her
Instagram:t._rehberg

When you have the opportunity to educate youth about the LGBTQ+ community and how their words can effect others without them realizing it, you take it. Myself and and my co-site coordinator for a summer program took a group of the older youth to the park for the afternoon and an unexpected but important conversation needed to happen based on some comments that were made.  With us both being gay we were able to change the opinion of some of the youth at our program with our personal stories.

We were taking the kids to the park and some how they got on the topic of girls marrying girls and boys marrying boys. Some of the kids kept saying that girls can’t marry girls and if they did one of them would have to change genders. We asked them why and they said because girls marrying/dating other girls is gross and they said that’s what one of their friends told them. We had a little chat with them about it saying they shouldn’t say things like that because they never know who is listening and who they might offend or effect with their words. Then I said, “you could offend a teacher, someone in your family, one of your friends or even someone who is sitting right in front of you” (they were sitting in-front of us). That’s when they connected with what we were saying and we told them both of us are gay. Then they ran over and told a few of the other kids and then we had to tell them that we didn’t care, but she should ask permission before telling (outing) other people in the future. Then they quickly changed their mind and are now fine with gay people. They apologized to us and now understand to think about others before they speak.


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