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Introduction xxiii on hearsay about where to find “those kinds of people.” For adolescents, there were no onsite GSA organizations at their schools. For adults, there were no LGBT centers. Often, LGBT people felt like they were the only ones, and finding others like themselves was difficult and often dangerous. Even as the gay community organized and became a strong political force, adolescents usually were not welcomed. Rather than being overt discrimi- nation against younger people, this was more because those in the gay community felt they needed to prove to the world that they were not child predators, a stereotype used to shame homosexuals into hiding. Outreach to adolescents by community LGBT centers would not become viable until much later in the gay rights movement. As such, LGBT and questioning adolescents had very few resources to support their coming out. Finding accurate information was daunting, and finding other coming-out adoles- cents was virtually impossible. Research on LGBT youth suicide reveals that the suicide rates for gay teens were significantly higher before 1971 than now. By the late 1990s, the Internet began to reach into private homes—but it was very limited at first. By the 2010s, more than half the homes in the United States subscribed to some kind of Internet access. At first there were chat rooms. The Internet provided anonymity and was the perfect way to put in one’s toes to test the waters. But with anonymity also came trolling and scams. Many of the early chat rooms set up special rooms for teen-only chat to reduce and hopefully prevent use by adult preda- tors. With the Internet came an explosion of resources and content. The larger LGBT national organizations and publications provided many arti- cles about coming out, disease prevention, where to meet, calendars of events, and more. Even though the information was accurate and impor- tant, because it was disseminated in pieces, it tended to be decontextual- ized. Colleges and other educational institutions developed gay studies programs that helped bring better understanding to the tidal wave of information. Still, because of the Internet’s open accessibility, antigay political articles and sensationalized fake news and statistics obfuscated the normalcy of LGBT people. Some religious Web sites attempted to use shame to control those coming-out LGBT people, including encouraging gay people to use discredited “reparative” therapies or encouraging parents to force their gay children into conversion camps. The sexual orientation change therapies are recognized for being fraudulent—they cannot change sexual orienta- tion in any person—and for causing emotional harm. Many states have implemented laws to prevent therapists from engaging in such therapies and making it illegal for parents to force adolescents into such programs.