at San Francisco State University’s Family Acceptance Project who has been researching LGBT adolescents for over 25 years, began extensive outreach and in-depth interviews with queer youth in the early 2000's. While studies in the 1970s documented LGBT people coming out, on average, in their early twenties, the latest research demonstrates that the average age has dropped to anywhere between 14 and 16. Kids like Kate Reese have been coming out as LGBT at increasingly younger ages. Now I know people like me are out there.” I thought something was wrong with me until I saw all this research. “Now I understand LGBT terms, and that it’s not a choice. “Now I understand what ‘queer’ means, because all of the information is online,” said Reese, who privately started identifying herself as queer sometime in the fourth grade. But she was able to seek the language to describe herself, and assuage her worries, in a way older LGBT people never could - she had the internet. Reese may have gone quite a few more years thinking that the innocent schoolyard crushes she harbored were indications of her deviance. “I saw girls holding hands and thought, I could go for that. “I began realizing I wasn’t necessarily straight when I was around 5 or 6,” Reese said.
Kate Reese, a 13-year-old living in Reno, Nevada, used to think there was something wrong with her.
