As many as 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBT, and a new Williams Institute study of youth shelters confirms this estimate. Between October 2011 and March 2012, 354 agencies completed surveys about their clients and found that about 40 percent of their homeless and non-homeless clients were LGBT (9 percent of whom identified as bisexual). About 30 percent of clients using housing-related services (like emergency shelter and transitional living programs) were LGBT.

What was particularly disconcerting about this study was how evident family rejection contributed to this disproportionate number of homeless LGBT youth:

Of all the agencies’ LGBT homeless clients, 68 percent have experienced family rejection and more than half (54 percent) experienced abuse in their family. Fortunately, nearly 80 percent of the service providers who work with clients under the age of 18 are doing family acceptance-related work, though only about half of providers working with older youth offer such resources.

The largest barriers to doing more work to reduce LGBT youth homelessness were insufficient state funding, insufficient local funding, and insufficient federal funding.

This data demands that more be done to support these agencies, but important than treating the symptom is treating the problem itself. Family rejection is devastating the lives of young people across the country, and very few organizations outside the Family Acceptance Project are addressing this issue. It’s all too easy to see LGBT homeless youth as an invisible population, but there is a very visible onslaught of anti-gay and anti-trans propaganda specifically targeting parents to raise their fears of the LGBT community. Rather than protecting children, the anti-gay efforts led by conservative evangelical Christians may very well be causing the exact kinds of child abuse that they blame LGBT people for.

Google recently announced a new “Legalize Love” campaign to advocate for LGBT rights across the globe. This week, the internet juggernaut shared some of its initial efforts on a new Diversity page called “Legalise Love: LGBT Rights Are Human Rights“:

We’re always looking for ways to educate the broader community about LGBT rights and inclusion, through seminars, trainings and conferences hosted at Google. As part of the World Pride celebration in London this year, we brought 100 guests from LGBT advocacy groups, employee networks and diversity organisations to our office in London for the first ever Google Legalise Love Conference. Our goal was to start a debate about creating an inclusive workplace for LGBT employees around the world. Our guest speakers included Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty Human Rights, Peter Tatchell of The Peter Tatchell Foundation, and a panel of campaigners representing Europe, India, Africa and Asia.

In addition to the Google Legalise Love Conference

• In our Warsaw office, we hosted politician and LGBT activist Krystian Legierski for an office-wide talk and discussion lunch on the importance of civil partnership laws.
• We sponsored the production of Stonewall’s latest Workplace Guide Global Working: Supporting LGB Staff Overseas and hosted a seminar at our London office for Stonewall diversity champions, exploring how organisations use their global influence to promote better workplaces for lesbian, gay and bisexual staff around the world.
• At Google London, the Kaleidoscope Trust held a gathering of LGBT activists from over 40 countries to discuss a roadmap to achieve an inclusive British Commonwealth.

This seems like a promising start to realizing the potential Google has to truly raise awareness about LGBT people and the persecution they face the world over. The company clearly understands that it’s better off if it can support its LGBT employees no matter where on the planet they work and that changes within the company are not enough to achieve a safe and inclusive working environment.

HOUSTON, Texas — When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality in May, many critics argued that the move was out of step with the African American community.

Even after the NAACP took the same step 10 days later, some still perpetuated the myth that most African Americans, particularly more religious people, opposed marriage equality.

ThinkProgress spoke with two African American church leaders at the annual NAACP conference in Houston about same-sex marriage. Sabu Williams, president of the Okaloosa County (Florida) NAACP and a Baptist deacon, explained that “we don’t condone discrimination, period.” Williams continued: “How can we as an organization, and even we as a people, condone discrimination against anybody on any reason, and we say that that’s justified based on our spiritual beliefs?”

Watch it:

Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and a protestant pastor, noted the difference between some churches’ beliefs and laws in society as a whole. “What I found is we have clergy who theologically and culturally and spiritually are heterocentric when it comes to marriage, but constitutionally and legally they refuse to be homophobic,” he explained.

Watch it: