Free guide · Scarlet Beast En español →
LGBTQ+: coming out, staying safe, and people to talk to
For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning people of any age, for people who are not sure yet, and for the parents and friends beside them. This page passes on, by name, what The Trevor Project, the LGBT National Help Center, Trans Lifeline and a SAMHSA guide for families say: words for who you are, questions to think through before you tell anyone, a back-up plan if home or school isn’t safe, what to do when it goes badly, phone lines answered by LGBTQ+ people, and what parents can do. It puts the questions you pick on one sheet, and prints a card to keep.
Before anything else
- Thinking about suicide right now? Call or text 988, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, at any hour. It is free and confidential, for anyone of any age.
- LGBTQ+ and young? The Trevor Project answers at any hour: call 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678.
- In danger right now? Call 911.
- You do not have to know yet. The Trevor Project says: “You don’t have to figure it out right now (or ever).”
- You do not have to tell anyone. It says there is no one way to come out or be out, and that deciding not to tell others is okay.
- If it went badly. It says: “it does not reflect on the realness of our identities, and it is not our fault.”
- This page saves nothing. Your browser still keeps a history. On a shared phone or computer, use a private window.
More help
- Nowhere to stay: Young and nowhere to stay.
- Unsafe at home or at school: When home isn’t safe and When it’s bullying.
- The weight underneath: When the heaviness won’t lift, When you hurt yourself to cope and the Safety plan builder.
- For the people beside you: When you’re worried about someone.
- Right now: Get help now.
- All our free tools.
Other guides on this site that go with this page
Free to read. We chose these ourselves; no professional did. Each guide was written with AI and has not been reviewed by a professional. They are general information, not advice.
- Help at school for your child: how to ask the school for an evaluation, what an IEP is, 504 plans, and what to do when you and the school disagree.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, counselor or LGBTQ+ organization has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 7, 2026 on the organizations’ own pages: The Trevor Project’s “The Coming Out Handbook”, its “Guide to Being an Ally to Transgender and Nonbinary Young People” and its “Get Help” page; the LGBT National Help Center’s home page; Trans Lifeline’s “Hotline” page; SAGE’s notice that its elder hotline was discontinued in 2023; and SAMHSA’s statement on the 988 “Press 3” option. On October 14, 2026 we read SAMHSA’s 2014 guide “A Practitioner’s Resource Guide: Helping Families to Support Their LGBT Children” (PEP14-LGBTKIDS), in the copy of the PDF on the University of Washington’s site, because SAMHSA’s own site would not load for us; it says it is in the public domain. Changed on October 14, 2026: this page used to pass on HealthyChildren.org’s “Coming Out: Information for Parents of LGBTQ Teens” (American Academy of Pediatrics). Its terms do not allow its content to be used with AI tools, so we took those lines out: the parents’ part now follows the SAMHSA guide, and we still link the Academy’s page without summarising it. We called none of the numbers, and hours change: check each line’s own page. For PFLAG and the Family Acceptance Project we read only the pages that offer their publications, not the publications. A federal health page on this subject that we looked for (MedlinePlus) was not there on that day, so nothing here is from it. This page gives no statistics, says nothing about medical care or about any law, and tells nobody what they are. Everything marked “ours” is ours. It saves nothing: no cookies, no storage, and no analytics on this page.