Same-sex marriage has had a great impact on the youth suicide numbers. Since same-sex marriage has been legalized, there have been fewer youth suicide attempts, according to USA Today.  Before winning the presidential election, Donald Trump said he would “strongly consider” overturning the Supreme Court’s decision to give same-sex couples the right to marry.

“Trump is ignorant. I wish he was irrelevant, but you can’t put a law on love,” said junior Chloe Tuttle.
USA Today reported: “Analyzing data from 1999 to 2015, researchers found a 7% reduction in suicide attempts among high school students in the 32 states that legalized same-sex marriage.” According to Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System data, “More than 29% of gay, lesbian and bisexual high school students nationwide reported attempting suicide within the past 12 months.”

“Yes, youth suicide has decreased, because it was another step of letting youth know it is okay to be different,” said Tuttle.

Many people believe that having marriage equality helps reduce the number of youth suicide attempts because teens will be more hopeful for the future and believe that eventually they will be treated the same and not be judged based on who they choose to have relations with. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the U.S. and the second for people aged 10 to 24. “Before same-sex marriage equality, I was bullied all the time. I was outed. I’m still outed sometimes, but it was a lot worse before,” said Tuttle.

People who are from highly rejecting families are 8.4 more times likely to attempt suicide compared to those who have a supportive family, according to information found on the Trevor Project, which is a youth suicide prevention hotline that have counselors to help the youth.