Gay Teen Kicked Out of Home is a Survivor

Every day there are stories like this where a kid is thrown out because they are gay. There are people out there who will say that being gay is a choice. Just think about it, if you were given a choice to be gay or to be alienated by your family what would you choose? THERE IS NO CHOICE. Not for me, not for Ben Alley.

Ben Alley misses his parents. He's 18 and just graduated from East Marshall High School in Le Grand, with scholarships to almost cover his costs at the University of Iowa. It's a time for open houses and pride. But he won't be getting that from his once-close family - the Southern Baptist minister father and the mother who home-schooled him early on.

They're not dead; he's dead to them. In sophomore year, Ben informed his parents that he is gay. They informed him he wouldn't be coming home after school the next day - or ever again.

"I do miss them," he said after events last Friday honoring him and other winners of the Matthew Shepard and First Friday Breakfast Club scholarships that are given to gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender young leaders. "But I've learned to cope with that because there's really nothing I can do." His parents have since moved back South.

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