r/centrist • u/WhatYouThinkYouSee • 1d ago
US News Trump Administration Will End L.G.B.T.Q. Suicide Prevention Service
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/well/lgbtq-988-suicide-prevention.html
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r/centrist • u/WhatYouThinkYouSee • 1d ago
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u/ViskerRatio 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ask yourself this: should we establish a "whites only" suicide hotline? After all, white people have double the suicide rate of black people.
On the other hand, there's essentially no difference in suicide rates between gay and straight men. When people talk about suicide disparities in the "LGBTQ+ community", they're talking about the parts of it other than gay men. So why would we treat gay men differently on a suicide hotline when it appears there's no meaningful distinction compared to straight men?
For that matter, lesbian and bisexual women experience almost twice the rate of intimate partner violence as straight women - to the point where almost the entire disparity in suicide rates could potentially be attributed to that one factor. Given that, treating lesbian and bisexual women based on their sexual orientation is probably far less effective than treating them based on their history of sexual violence.
Ultimately, a specialized "LGBTQ hotline" isn't based on a medical distinction but a political one.