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Wednesday, 24 September 2008 12:32
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 Advocating for Out of Home Youth
Jacob Anderson-Minshall
“It’s a pretty disturbing picture,” Jody Marksamer says of the “very interesting information” revealed in a new study by the Equity Project examining why LGBT youths enter the juvenile justice system and what their experiences inside are like.
For the past three years Marksamer—who uses male pronouns but says he doesn’t like to talk about his gender identity to the media—has coordinated the Equity Project, a collaboration between the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Legal Services for Children (a San Francisco Bay Area organization providing legal services to youth) and The National Juvenile Defenders Center (a national resource service for juvenile offenders).
“We surveyed and interviewed judges, defenders, prosecutors, probation officers and detention workers,” Marksamer says of the study. “Then we had focus groups with young people across the country. Almost 60 young people [talked] about their experiences in the system.”
A number of the administrators “responded to us in a very aggressive and homophobic manner;” Marksamer reveals. “Stating that this survey was ‘crap,’…that LGBT youth are treated just like everybody else, and that they really are just crazy and have all these problems.”
Still, Marksmer assures, “We also heard some good things, where different places in the country are doing a lot of training [so] they can really, zealously advocate for their clients and understand the context of their LGBT clients’ lives, to get a better sense of why they were arrested. [Then] they’re able to really defend a client.”
Marksamer’s primary job, as Director of NCLR’s Youth Project puts him in the thick of advocacy and education focused on LGBT youth; especially those who are in the foster care, in the juvenile justice system or facing homelessness. “Young people are now coming out at younger ages,” notes Marksamer. “And when families are unable to handle that…LGBT youth are…ending up in the child welfare system because…they’re kicked out or they run away. Then, in order to survive, they have to participate in the street economy and that makes them very vulnerable to arrest as well as exploitation and violence.”
Even homeless shelters aren’t always an option Marksamer says, especially for transgender youth who may not fit into the sex-segregated housing. And a collusion of these factors contributes to the “unfortunate and alarming” number of LGBT youth who are homeless, he says. Marksamer points to surveys that indicate between 20 and 40% of all homeless youth in this country identify as LGBT. Meanwhile, other queer kids land in detention after skipping school or defending themselves from harassment and assault.
Many of these homeless or adjudicated LGBT youths end up in foster care, where Marksamer says there are at least some protections. “In California as well as in Oregon there are laws that require the foster care system treat LGBT young people—and LGBT adults who are involved in that system—without discrimination and ensure that they…are safe.”
To provide recommendations to foster parents and child welfare agencies, Marksamer co-authored the 2006 publication, Best Practice Guidelines for Serving LGBT Youth in Out of Home Care; which is “geared toward people who aren’t familiar working with LGBT people [but] even if you’re an LGBT foster parent and you’re fostering an LGBT youth, you may not know what the system is required to be doing.”
For example, he says, “A young person shouldn’t be prohibited from going to an LGBT related extracurricular activity or youth group programming, if they would be allowed to go to one that was not LGBT.”
While birth parents may bear partial responsibility for sending LGBT kids onto the streets, Marksamer contends, “Parents do come around. [Especially] if they can get support through the child welfare system, and get connected to counseling.” And, he argues, family reunification is critical, “When a young person turns 18, and they’re out of the system; the support of their family is really important.”
In addition to his work with NCLR (nclrights.org) and the Equity Project, Marksamer co-founded PISSAR, an organization focused on safer bathroom access; worked with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in developing guidelines for San Francisco’s non- discrimination ordinance; sits on the board of the foster youth empowerment organization, California Youth Connection; and co-founded The Bay Area Out of Home Youth Advocacy Council to help the San Francisco Bay Area implement the state’s Foster Care Non Discrimination Act, which requires training for foster parents and prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Another issue garnering Marksamer’s attention is one he sees as a “ huge problem”--sexual assault in adult prisons and juvenile detention facilities, “perpetuated by the way that people are treated in these facilities and the way that the power system is set up and encouraged by the guards.”
“There’s no reason anybody who is in prison or jail or juvenile detention facilities should be sexually assaulted,” Marksamer maintains. “It’s a violation of the fourth amendment as well as the constitutional rights of people who are in facilities. The jail and juvenile justice facilities have a constitutional responsibility to ensure the safety of those people in their facilities; and they’re not doing that.”
In 2005, Marksamer spoke to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission about the specific risks LGBT adults and youths face in detention facilities. This summer he says, NCLR submitted comments on a draft set of standards the commission will eventually require facilities to abide by.
“We’re very hopeful,” he says. “That the standards [will] adequately address the concerns and issues that come up for LGBT people in prison and detention facilities. Because…they had incorporated the concerns that we had raised in our [earlier] testimony and …recognized the vulnerability of LGBT people to assaults in prison and juvenile detention facilities.”
Marksamer wants to focus on the positive: “As depressing as some of the things I’ve just talked about sound,” he insists, they’ve begun to improve. “Five years ago it was, ‘We could never have a gay boy in the same group home with other boys.’ And now [it’s] ‘We have a transgender girl and we want to put her in the girls’ group home, can we do that?’”
Trans writer Jacob Anderson-Minshall (
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
) co-hosts Gender Blender, a new show on Portland, Oregon’s 90.7 fm KBOO radio streaming live at KBOO.fm.
© 2008 Jacob Anderson-Minshall
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