Rochester, Minnesota – A 17-year-old openly gay teen succumbed to
overwhelming bullying, taking his own life this past Sunday. Jay’Cory
Jones jumped to his death into traffic from a pedestrian bridge near
Century High School, according to police reports. According to his
father, Jones was beaten down by the incessant school bullying he
endured for being open and vocal about his sexual orientation. His
father, JayBocka Strader, told the PostBulletin....
More often than not, conservatives represent the internal Christian debate over the ethics of homosexuality as if it were between those who hold firm to traditional Christian values and those who have sold out to secular culture. But this way of framing the debate ignores the real motivations of progressive Christians like myself—motivations that spring from real human tragedies.
The other day a young gay man in Oklahoma took his own life. This is not a new or even an unusual occurrence, although it comes in the wake of a string of highly publicized suicides by young gay men, suicides blamed on bullying. But Zach Harrington’s suicide last week highlights the fact that for sexual minorities in America, the problem runs much deeper than overt bullying, at least as that term is ordinarily understood.
Zach attended a city council meeting in Norman, Oklahoma, during which three hours were given to the public to express their views as to whether GLTB History Month should be recognized. In the end, the proclamation was approved, but the debate:
...became an occasion for those with the most hateful views to be handed a microphone and afforded the chance to tell the community just how sick, sinful, perverted, and disgusting their gay and lesbian neighbors are. According to the Tulsa World report, Harrington’s father “said he feels his son may have glimpsed a hard reality at the Sept. 28 council meeting, a place where the same sentiments that quietly tormented him in high school were being shouted out and applauded by adults the same age as his own parents.”
There you are. The bigotry and hatefulness goes beyond the school years, which is no surprise. Why would we be surprised that some LGTB persons:
...internalize this condemnation. They accept the message that their deepest impulse towards love and intimacy is an affront to God. And since that impulse is an ineradicable feature of who they are, some come to see their very existence as a blight on the world. ....
Sometimes this sense of isolation and rejection can be almost too much to bear, and all it takes is a final gesture of denunciation or scorn to spark an act of self-obliteration. ....
Jesus said that we should distinguish true and false teachings by their fruits. And the teaching that homosexuality is a sin—that, in the words of the Southern Baptist Convention, even the desire for homosexual sex is “always sinful, impure, degrading, shameful, unnatural, indecent and perverted”—this is a teaching that time and again has born poisonous fruits. The shattered promise of Zach Harrington’s life is just one more example in a painful litany. ....
Any theory of the Bible that requires me to ignore my neighbors in favor of teasing out the correct meaning of Romans 1:24-27 seems to do an injustice to the Bible’s heart. If there’s a core message to the Christian Scriptures, it’s that Jesus—a person, not a book—is the fundamental revelation of God. It’s Jesus that John’s Gospel calls the “Word of God,” not the Bible. And in the Gospels, not only does Jesus say nothing about homosexuality, but He is recorded as saying that He comes to us in the form of the neighbor in need—“even the least of these” (Matthew 25:37-40).
I'm going far beyond fair use of another's words, but the essay says so much that is right and true that it's difficult to stop quoting Eric Reitan's words. I urge you to read the entire essay.
But can you really have the right theory about a book if the book teaches you to love your neighbors as yourselves, but your theory about it demands that you stifle the character traits most intimately associated with love? If your theory about the Bible leads you to ignore or refuse to hear the suffering cries of your gay and lesbian neighbors, wouldn’t that be a reason to rethink your theory? Put more forcefully, how many gays and lesbians, crushed by the weight of anti-gay teachings, have to kill themselves before we decide that, just maybe, our theory about the Bible isn’t the best fit with the idea that God is love—and hence isn’t the best fit with the content of the Bible itself?
So what then do we do? We take note and honor those who have died by trying to save GLTB young people and adults from being driven to such desperation that they decide to end their lives. We publicize such organizations as The Trevor Project, which offer help to those who feel there is no hope for productive, happy, and fulfilling lives.
Chris Colfer shares a very personal message for LGBTQ youth in response to the recent suicides that have occurred: "I know what it's like to be bullied and teased every single day and I know that it may seem like there is no chance of happiness left. But I promise you, there is a world full of acceptance and love just waiting for you to find it. So please before you take a drastic action that could be your last, call The Trevor Project."
Just this morning, I told one of my readers, Jerry, that I couldn't write any more about gay suicides, that after Matthew Shepherd's anniversary yesterday, I was empty, that I had no more words for the heartbreaking stories, and here I am a couple of hours later writing again. I want not to write any more of these stories. I want the numbers on the "How Many Deaths Will It Take...?" series of posts to stop increasing, because the deaths stop. That's what I want.
It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”
That night, the authorities say, the Rutgers University student who sent the message used a camera in his dormitory room to stream the roommate’s intimate encounter live on the Internet.
And three days later, the roommate who had been surreptitiously broadcast — Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman and an accomplished violinist — jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River in an apparent suicide.
The Sept. 22 death, details of which the authorities disclosed on Wednesday, was the latest by a young American that followed the online posting of hurtful material. The news came on the same day that Rutgers kicked off a two-year, campuswide project to teach the importance of civility, with special attention to the use and abuse of new technology.
Those who knew Mr. Clementi — on the Rutgers campus in Piscataway, N.J., at his North Jersey high school and in a community orchestra — were anguished by the circumstances surrounding his death, describing him as an intensely devoted musician who was sweet and shy.
I read about Tyler's suicide yesterday, but I had no heart for posting on the deaths of two young people in the same day. I'm sorry.
My original post with the title above was posted on September 6, 2010. That I'm up to post N0. 5 in the series in one month is horrifying. Other incidents may have passed under my radar. I hope not.
The Middlesex County prosecutor’s office said Mr. Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, N.J., and another classmate, Molly Wei, 18, of Princeton Junction, N.J., had each been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy for using “the camera to view and transmit a live image” of Mr. Clementi. The most serious charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.
Mr. Ravi was charged with two additional counts of invasion of privacy for trying a similar live feed on the Internet on Sept. 21, the day before the suicide. A spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, James O’Neill, said the investigation was continuing, but he declined to “speculate on additional charges.”
Those who filmed the video and published it on the internet are not juveniles, and they will suffer consequences, as they should.
And another life of a gifted young man ended far too soon because of the inhumanity of humans, one to the other.
May Tyler Clementi rest in peace and rise in glory.
May God give comfort, consolation, and peace to Tyler's parents and to all who love him.
May God have mercy on us all!
A number of my readers sent me links to the story.
Asher Brown's worn-out tennis shoes still sit in the living room of his Cypress-area home while his student progress report — filled with straight A's — rests on the coffee table.
The eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District.
Brown, his family said, was "bullied to death" — picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class, his mother and stepfather said.
The 13-year-old's parents said they had complained about the bullying to Hamilton Middle School officials during the past 18 months, but claimed their concerns fell on deaf ears.
When will school authorities begin to take the bullying and abuse seriously? How many kids will have to die before the members of our communities take note and force those authorities to implement policies to prevent such tragedies from happening?
Cy Fair ISD officials said Monday that they never received any complaints from Brown's parents before the suicide about the way the boy was being treated at school.
School district spokeswoman Kelli Durham said no students, school employees or the boy's parents ever reported that he was being bullied.
That statement infuriated the Truongs, who accused the school district of protecting the bullies and their parents.
There’s a great deal of outrage directed at the students who bullied Asher consistently during his two years at Hamilton, and rightly so. There’s additional focus on a school administration that Asher’s parents and others say looks the other way when students suffer abuse at the hands of their peers. That scrutiny must continue.
But there’s an even broader and more insidious force at work in our country when it comes to gay teen suicide. Granted, gay rights may be inching slowly forward in the court system, but that progress has contributed greatly to unprecedented levels of self-esteem battering rhetoric in the media and from the pulpit. ....
Yes, the bullies and their despicable behavior are responsible for Asher’s death. But so is the toxic, virulently anti-gay environment that continues to swirl around all of our children.
And when will the rest of the people in the country take responsibility for contributing to the toxic environment in which LGTB persons are forced to live and that drives so many young people to take their lives?
May Asher Brown rest in peace and rise in glory.
May God give comfort, consolation, and peace to Asher's parents and to all who love him.
