Chastity White Rose

Author: Chastity White Rose

  • Chapter 3: The LGBTQIA+ Suicide Epidemic

    Those of us who are part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual community have a higher rate of depression and suicide than the average person. There are many reasons for this, which I can identify and explain. The following are a few reasons that this is the case.

    1. We are lonely

    The fact that former friends and family turn against us when we come out (or are outed without our consent) results in us being without any support network.

    If you have no friends, family, or even a life partner, it can often seem like your existence is meaningless, and no one would notice if you vanished, or perhaps they have even told you to die. Many people who commit suicide feel this way, but at least most have parents, a friend, a spouse, or a therapist they can talk to.

    But too often, this is not the case with some of us who receive hate from humans and are even told that God hates us.

    2. Poverty

    Even those of us who are in the closet are often at a disadvantage economically. If you are single due to being a closeted gay person or are asexual or celibate, you often don’t have a second income to rely on. If you lose your job, have an injury, or get very sick, you have no one to pick you up. And in many places, even gay couples in a sexual or romantic relationship don’t get the same tax breaks or even the ability to have their spouse covered by their insurance.

    Society rewards sexual or romantic relationships and puts them on a pedestal. Even friends are “just friends” and are never taken as seriously as a husband or wife. This problem is compounded because Gay couples have to keep their partner a secret and pretend to be regular friends or roommates. It is beyond exhausting to keep secrets just to avoid being a victim of a hate crime or sent to conversion therapy. Relationships are hard enough normally, but when you can’t honestly answer the question of whether you are single or in a relationship without lying or people not approving your partner because they were born with the wrong body parts, it gets extra stressful.

    3. Lack of Healthcare

    Healthcare is hard for everyone, but for people who already lack a good job and health insurance, if they have an illness, they have no hope of getting treatment. It is also worth mentioning that for transgender people, the surgeries and or hormones they need to feel comfortable in their own body are either denied by health insurance, or a doctor can refuse to do it for personal or religious reasons. Therefore, many people, including myself, have self-harmed their bodies because they could not get the help they needed from a trained surgeon who can remove their breasts, penis, testicles, or whatever is causing them gender dysphoria.

    Also, nobody would seriously have their genitals operated on without a good reason. Although this book is not about my experience specifically, I did have to fight for two years to find someone to remove my testicles. This surgery was needed primarily for reasons of excruciating pain due to testicular torsion, but gender dysphoria also played a large role as well. During that time of intense pain, I used to research suicide methods as well as self-castration methods. It is only because I was finally able to get trained medical help in September of 2020 that I am alive to tell you that I understand why suicide is so common for my people.

    4. Religious Abuse

    The three major monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all tend to speak negatively in their holy scriptures and/or the common traditions of the followers of that religion. I cannot speak on most religions, but I can tell you that those who call themselves Christians tend to pick on homosexuality and describe it as an example of a sin that is somehow worse than murder, theft, lying, or adultery. Of course, they deny that they do this.

    But the key issue is that in spite of the fact that some people are not even having sex with anyone, they are still constantly preached to and told they have a sinful lifestyle regardless of the fact that they have not acted on their desires. Even so, I would argue that their sexual activity, if any, is between them, their partner, and whichever God they believe in.

    But the reason I bring this up is not to bash religion but to explain how a gay or transgender person is often excluded from participating in a religious life. When they are told that they cannot inherit the kingdom of God (see 1 Corinthians 6:9), they can be turned away from finding comfort in religious faith or a relationship with God. Because many people find meaning in their lives through religion, this is one more thing that many LGBT people are not allowed to find comfort and a reason to keep living.

    Resources

    When considering the reasons I have mentioned, it is no surprise that LGBTQIA+ people commit suicide at a higher rate because they do not have the same support systems that cisgender heterosexual people do.

    In fact, while I was writing this book in June 2025, I received news that the national 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline was ordered to end its “Press 3 option,” which matched the caller with someone knowledgeable about LGBTQIA+ issues.

    https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/trump-administration-orders-termination-of-national-lgbtq-youth-suicide-lifeline-effective-july-17th/

    When I heard this news, I was quite devastated. I understand that our issues are not the same as other people’s general crises that lead them to suicide.

    When a person is LGBTQIA+ and calls a suicide hotline, they cannot just talk to some random cisgender straight person who tells them that they probably should stop being gay or transgender, and then all their problems will go away. A lot of people don’t trust someone unless they have reason to believe they understand what they are going through. Just like black people probably would not trust white people who have never experienced the targeted hate crimes and discrimination they face. Having special categories for minorities on a suicide hotline is essential for reasons like these.

    Not everyone is the same, and if an untrained person says the wrong thing to a suicidal person at their worst moment, that person will most likely die. For this reason, I am obligated to say something about this and try to offer resources that may be helpful to my Rainbow people during difficult times.

    The Trevor Project is an organization that helps LGBTQIA+ people in difficult times. I would advise you to look more into it and write the information down so that in the event you are suicidal or put into a situation where you lose your job or home due to discrimination against you for who you are, at least you will have someone to call.

    I also included some other hotlines which may be of help. I read their websites, and they care greatly about protecting the privacy of the callers who may be in danger if others find out their personal information.

    Trevor Lifeline for LGBTQ Youth

    The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender National Hotline

    Transgender Lifeline

    If anyone has more websites, links, or phone numbers I can add to this post for people contemplating suicide or facing another crisis, please let me know.

    Chastity’s Contact Information

    • (816) 844-2077
    • chastitywhiterose@gmail.com

    This year is a very dangerous time. People are trying to kill my Rainbow people, and most of them are driven to suicide by people who beat them down till they have nothing left to live for. I may be only one person, but I have been at the lowest point in life, just as many of you have. Please contact someone for help if you are feeling like ending your life.

  • Introduction for Walking the Rainbow Bridge

    This book is a little bit different from all my other books. My chosen profession is Technical Writer. I consider my Chess book, Chastity’s Chess Chapters, to be my best example of Technical Writing because it is an instructional guide full of the tiny nerdy details of playing Chess and how to improve at it. Writing a book like that is easy because there are no negative emotions I have about playing a game.

    The topics of LGBTQIA rights and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, however, are very emotional. I try to remain purely factual, but at the same time, this is a very difficult topic to write about without crying. Many of my people have been murdered or driven to suicide because of the bullying they experience due to their identity.

    What is even worse is that my people are kept in a constant state of poverty because people can be fired from their jobs just for being gay, transgender, or not looking the way they are expected to look. Very few of us are hired for jobs in the first place.

    In fact, because of how hard it is for us to obtain employment, many people enter the “Sex Work” industry because it is the only way to survive. This problem creates a never-ending cycle of never being hired because the hiring managers only remember the time they masturbated to you on pornhub and see you as a pure sex object.

    Unfortunately, the Rainbow people are kept poor or are forced to hide in the closet who they really are. The one rule that most of us follow is that if you know someone is gay, transgender, etc, never be the one to tell others about them. Each person must come out when they are ready, and it is safe to do so. Being revealed too soon can likely result in them being murdered or losing their jobs, family, and friends at the worst time.

    My goal is to help common people understand LGBTQIA+ individuals while also helping our community become better communicators so that we can continue to fight for true Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all areas of society. I take on this task even though I would much rather be writing a book about how to play a video game instead right now. For many of my people, these are difficult times, and it is a matter of life and death that I write about this rather than my other projects, which are more fun.

    This book is therefore considered content writing because rather than being instructions for how to play a game or use specific software, the goal is to help people understand the differences between people so that those who fall outside the majority can be included and treated as equals, especially in the workplace.

  • Chapter 2: I Was Born This Way

    It is quite common to hear the phrase “I was born this way” from gay people. The reason we say this is because being gay is something you are born with and is not a choice, just like your sex or skin color, and as such, it cannot be a sin, nor can it be something used as a reason for discrimination.

    Or perhaps it would be accurate to say that we have in our DNA and brain chemistry something that makes us attracted to people of the same sex rather than a different sex. Most of us don’t notice this at birth but instead at puberty when people first have the physical capability for sexual activity and most likely are hearing about it in sex education at school.

    But some children start noticing people of the same sex at the same time as most people start noticing the opposite sex. It is hard for me to describe, especially since I did not go through this type of experience during puberty. However, I know from the stories of other people that people don’t choose who they are attracted to.

    Given a choice people would always choose to be heterosexual because that is what society demands of them; heterosexual people have always been able to get married. No one has been murdered or bullied specifically for being straight because the majority are never criticized.

    I think that the only reason that gay people are so misunderstood is because we are a minority. The people who make laws about whether gay people are allowed to marry each other or whether they are even allowed to adopt children are decided by straight people who don’t know the experience of gay people.

    But I completely agree that people are born in a way that wires them to be gay. It also comes as a spectrum. Some people are interested in both men and women simultaneously. In that case, they would be called bisexual. I would even go so far as to say that most people are neither completely gay nor straight but that there are a lot more people who are bisexual or pansexual.

    But let me be very clear about something: being gay does not actually mean you are having sex with anyone. In fact, many people are married and have sex with their spouse, who is the opposite sex. Others are celibate because there are people of various religions who believe that same-sex activity is a sin. Therefore, these people attempt to conform to the way their religion and the broader society expect them to be.

    But just because a gay man marries a woman and has sex with her doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about men while he is doing it. A gay woman can still marry and have sex with a man, but it is questionable whether she is enjoying it.

    However, I have personally been studying celibate gay Christians because the idea is fascinating. If someone believes they will go to hell for having gay sex, then they may avoid it their whole life. However, the process is never reversed. No heterosexual person believes that it is a sin for them to have sex. Therefore, they might wait till marriage, but they never avoid it the same way gay people are expected to.

    Even when heterosexual people have sex with multiple people who are not their spouses, the Christians don’t seem to judge them at all. Somehow, every sexual sin can be forgiven if you are at least doing it with the opposite sex, but if you are doing it with a member of the same sex, then all of a sudden, you are told that you must go to hell because you cannot inherit the kingdom of God (based on 1 Corinthians 6:9 in the Christian Bible).

    I am not here to tell you what you should do if you are a gay person. I just wanted to highlight some of the ways that we are not treated the same as straight people. It seems that most of it stems from religious teaching. There are people more qualified to speak from that perspective than I am.

    But as soon as society understands that people are not choosing to be gay, then it no longer makes sense to treat them like criminals, especially when they have not done anything about their feelings.

    Although being gay is not the same as being transgender, both things are similar in that the person did not wake up and decide to one day turn themselves into the opposite sex. In the case of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual, all of them were literally born this way.

    That we are born this way is a fact that must be understood; otherwise, none of us would exist. We would choose to feel and be what the majority wants us to be so that they stop persecuting us about it.

    I was born this way, but really, I think we are this way before birth. I think we are conceived this way with the code that eventually gets run later in our lives.

  • Chapter 1: Building the Bridge

    The first step towards acceptance of the LGBTQIA community is to build the Rainbow Bridge. There are two main sides to the debate over equal rights for the Rainbow people.

    Side A is the people who are themselves lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, or Asexual. We know who we are, and it’s easy to forget that others may not have had the same experiences as us. We have many words that we know what they mean, but others outside our community may not. In short, the Rainbow people are basically like computer programmers because 90% of people have no idea what we are talking about. Also, the reason I say we in this paragraph is because I am part of the LGBTQIA community. Specifically, I am the T and the A.

    Side B are the people who happen to be Cisgender and Heterosexual. The majority of people are this way. They simply accept that if their body is male or female, then that is what they must be. They also only seek to date, marry, or have sex with someone of the opposite sex because they have never felt any attraction to the same sex. Because they have never needed to question the gender roles and stereotypes, they never needed to think about it deeply. Then, when they meet someone from the LGBTQIA community, they wonder what is wrong with them.

    The ability to understand that other people do not have access to the same information as us is called Theory of Mind. There is no easy fix for the fact that straight and gay people are not the same. However, it is still pretty easy to realize that a gay man is attracted to men just as a straight woman is. A lesbian (term for a gay woman) is attracted to women the same way a straight man is. At least parallels and comparisons can be made in this case.

    Cisgender and Transgender people are also not the same. In fact, they are more different than gay and straight people. It can also be easy to forget that being Transgender has absolutely nothing to do with sexuality at all. It is a state of mind where our brain and/or soul tell us where we fall on the gender spectrum. Because of this, it is more difficult to bridge the gap about this topic. I will, of course, do my best because this is my experience, but I also welcome the input of others who can explain it better than I can.

    But if there is any group in the whole LGBTQIA acronym that is the most misunderstood, it is the ‘I’, which stands for Intersex. Intersex people fall outside the male or female BIOLOGICALLY. Being Intersex is a fact about your physical body and is not about identity or sexual attraction. The problem is that many people do not know that Intersex people exist. Even one of my best friends told me that everyone is either male or female. But considering things like Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY chromosomes), androgen insensitivity, and those born with both a penis and a vagina, I dare anyone to decide which of the two sexes these people are.

    My statement on Intersex identity is that only the person who lives in that body can tell us who they are. For example, I have a dear friend who I admire greatly and who is intersex. She identifies as a woman and aligns with a female gender identity despite having XY chromosomes. In that regard, the same standard of self-identification applies to Intersex people just the same as it does to Transgender people. So please, don’t tell people who they are because you are not them. That is like telling a child who wants to make music that they must instead become a carpenter and that they are not allowed to play an instrument or sing.

    And finally, the Asexual community is perhaps the most controversial within the community because we often fight over two competing definitions of what Asexuality means. This topic will be covered in its entire chapter.

    I am qualified to speak from my own experience on Transgender and Asexual identity because it is my own experience. However, just because I am the author does not mean that those of L, G, B, and Q cannot contribute their own experiences. If you would like to join me in future updates to this book with personal stories or allegories that explain your experience, I can include them and give you credit.

    Remember, the goal is to build the Rainbow Bridge. I can’t do it alone. We are in this together. We can help educate the cisgender, straight people on what our words mean rather than merely calling them homophobic or transphobic and then cutting off communication.

    Also, for the record, a phobia is a fear, not hatred. Can you blame the “normal” people if they are a little bit afraid of us? After all, some of us look really strange and use big words that these people have never heard in their lives. Some of them are open to learning and will accept us, but the process of building the bridge begins with us.

  • Preface for Walking the Rainbow Bridge

    The year is 2025. Many strange things have happened this year. This year is a time of economic collapse, with rising unemployment rates and a lack of ability to communicate or listen. Many of my people have committed suicide this past year in response to the hatred they have received.

    You may wonder what it is I am talking about. I am speaking primarily about the LGBTQIA+ community and the violence and discrimination against them. In many places, it is possible to be killed for not appearing as the gender someone wants you to look or talk like. It is also possible that your family will disown you and kick you out of the house before you have graduated high school because they found out that you are attracted to someone of the same sex rather than the opposite sex.

    Transgender and gay people are not the only ones who face additional challenges. Racism also appears to be increasing or, at the very least, becoming more apparent. With the growing number of companies ending their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies, people on Facebook, Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn are asking questions about what it means.

    • Will they be fired because they are black?
    • Will they be deported to their country of origin even if they have legally immigrated to the United States?
    • Will the marriages of millions of gay, bisexual, or transgender people be no longer considered legal?

    And perhaps more importantly, how can anyone afford to live when they are losing their jobs, prices are rising, and they cannot get new jobs because the Artificial Intelligence overlords have decided their resume is not good enough to pass to a real human to read it?

    I know these thoughts may seem unrelated, but they have been on my mind lately, based on real conversations I have heard and read, both online and from coworkers at Walmart.

    These questions deserve answers, but it will not happen unless we have difficult conversations. Allow me to begin by telling you what I stand for. Look at this picture of the Progress Flag.

    progress-flag_1920x1080.png

    The Progress Flag is one of the most important symbols to me personally. I consider it the ultimate symbol of Diversity. The different colors and shapes represent different groups of people. One of the key interesting things is that the black and brown stripes represent “people of color”, such as those with darker skin colors.

    Skin color and/or race does not have much to do with being gay, transgender, or intersex, but what we all have in common is that our differences have been used as an excuse to exclude us from employment, voting, restrooms, marriage, and even life itself when we are murdered or sent to prison for life without having committed a crime.

    "I've paid my dues
Time after time
I've done my sentence
But committed no crime" - Queen

    What is the solution to the hatred, misunderstanding, and violence we face? I do not have all the answers, but I want to contribute my part in beginning the conversations to educate each other on our different experiences. We are stronger together because of our Diversity.

    What we have in our society is a great divide. We seem to be on two sides of the Grand Canyon. I was thinking to myself that what we need is a bridge. And then it just so happened that I came across an article where hundreds of people lit up a bridge in rainbow colors using only flashlights.

    rainbow-bridge.

    It was at that moment that I remembered a conversation I had in a dream with Honesty the Unicorn about how a rainbow is created.

    H: Like others before you, you will speak and write about the things you have learned. In fact, even now you are typing our conversations on your computer as we speak. You can tell others what you have learned. Though others will probably call you insane or a liar, the evidence speaks for itself.

    You have the power of perseverance. If you keep on speaking, you will be heard. If you keep on seeking the truth you will find it. For he who keeps asking questions will receive the answers. He who keeps seeking will find them sooner or later, and he who knocks on enough doors will find one answered eventually. You don’t know how to give up. You have too much stallion pride for that.

    C: You’re right, Honesty. I don’t know how to give up. But where will I go? How do I know where I will be listened to and where I will find the answers?

    H: Everywhere! Go into all the world. Ask every question, knock on every door, and search everywhere that you have a chance to find the answers. Find those who do not stop you or shame you for singing, dancing, or crying. Do you see that rainbow in the sky, Chastity?

    C: Yes, how long has that been there?

    H: Since the moment we first met. In the human world, a rainbow is created when white light is reflected off of water droplets. In Animal Sanctuary, the Light of Truth reflects off the tears of those with a pure heart. By this you shall know that wherever and whenever you see a rainbow, you will know a unicorn is not very far away. For the truth is revealed in tears without a single word said. This is my promise to you, Chastity. You came here because of your tears, and you will return again, as will all those who are honest enough to cry the tears of joy and of pain. For it is as I spoke long ago, blessed are the Pure in Heart, for they shall see God.

    I ask my fellow Rainbow people to metaphorically walk the Rainbow Bridge this Pride Month of 2025 as we write, speak, and listen to what our different voices have to say.

    As for me, I will remember the Promise of the Rainbow as I was told by Honesty the Unicorn. I won’t give up, and neither should you. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you. I am just a poor transgender writer and Chess player, but I offer my skills and knowledge of computer software to anyone who has a story to tell.