(CNSNews.com) – Pop singer and LGBT activist Cyndi Lauper said on Wednesday that homosexual children are “being thrown away because of who they are.”

Lauper was speaking at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to mark the 40^th anniversary of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act and to advocate for a new authorization of the bill introduced by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) to include language for LGBT youth “protections.”

Lauper said that LGBT youth make up to as much as 40 percent of homeless youth in the United States while only seven percent of youth “identify as gay or transgender.”

“That, to me is alarming, because that means to me that kids are being thrown away because of who they are,” she said. “I think we need these kids.

“I think you never know who’s going to turn out to be what,” Lauper said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which keeps statistics on sexual orientation of adults 18 and older, 96.6 percent identify as heterosexual, 1.6 percent as gay or lesbian and 0.7 percent as bisexual. The remaining 1.1 percent identified as “something else” (0.2 percent), “I don’t know (0.4 percent) or did not provide an answer (0.6 percent).

Lauper is the co-founder of the True Colors Fund, which advocates for homeless homosexual youth. On the organization’s website, she compares their plight with the civil rights struggle of blacks in the United States.

“A moment like that is upon us again, and this time the minority is the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community,” Lauper said. “This time it is straight people who are beginning to stand side by side with their family, friends, co-workers and neighbors to say that this country is about equality, fairness and that never ending pursuit of happiness.”

Although the website does not reveal Lauper’s own experience with homelessness, she said at the event that it was “ironic” to be speaking alongside Health and Human Services officials tasked with youth homelessness.

“I never, for one, thought I’d be anything or amount to anybody. And it’s ironic how I’m standing here with these people – the same kind of people who helped me reenter and go from hostel – you know, youth hostels – to shelters to a home of my own,” said Lauper, who confirmed to reporters after her remarks that she had at one point been homeless in New York City.

The Leahy/Collins bill, which was introduced in the Senate in July, was referred to committee in September.