Hollywood Popular Artists

Jun 28th 2012, 13:00

Cyndi Lauper has been a longtime advocate of LGBT rights and now she's turning her attention to an issue that's devastating LGBT youth: homelessness.

About 40% of homeless young people are LGBT and the reason they're often homeless is because they've been rejected by their family due to their sexuality. That's why Cyndi's True Colors Fund is launching the Forty to None Project, which wants to take the LGBT homeless rate from 40% to zero.

"This [LGBT homeless] is actually a fixable thing," Cyndi said. She and Gregory Lewis, executive director of the True Colors Fund, want to make a diff through education, advocacy and developing programs to help the youth and their parents. Cyndi is fully behind what she's doing, saying this is no vanity project.

As it is now, between half a million and 1.6 million young people are homeless in America. Cyndi said that as a parent, she's surprised how other parents can throw out their kids from home because they're LGBT. Rejecting a kid because they're gay is like rejecting a kid because they have brown hair, she said.

"We're hurting ourselves," the singer remarked. "You don't throw your kids on the street."

Cyndi will do everything she can to spread the word of Forty to None and to educate people on the realities of LGBT homelessness, since many people don't realize it's an issue. "I'm going to go on TV and talk about it," she said, also listing her book and Broadway musical "Kinky Boots" as ways to spread the word. "I think that no matter what I'm doing, I'll turn it around to the Forty to None project."

Media files:
cyndismall.jpg (image/jpeg)
cyndibig.jpg (image/jpeg)
CyndiLauper-Feature1.jpg (image/jpeg)
CyndiLauper-Post1.jpg (image/jpeg)
cyndibig-70x53.jpg (image/jpeg)