Mostly, kids survive the taunts.
But sometimes they don’t.
Seth Walsh didn’t. Last month, he went into his California backyard and hanged himself. He was 13.
Billy Lucas didn’t. Last month he hanged himself in Indiana. He was 15.
Two weeks later, Asher Brown didn’t. He shot himself to death in a Houston suburb. He was 13.
Most recently, Tyler Clementi didn’t survive either. He jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge.
He was 18.
Four different kids. Four different states. One common cause. All four apparently could not survive the taunts of their peers when it was discovered they were gay.
Experts say suicides by gay teenagers is nothing new. But the recent headlines have many persons, both heterosexual and gay, searching for causes.
Is it negligent teachers and lax school administrators? Parents who pass along their homophobic fears to the next generation? Politicians who pander for votes by railing against a so-called “gay agenda” that “threatens America’s families”?
Dan Savage, a sex columnist based in Seattle, cites one more “accomplice.” Religious leaders who use “anti-gay rhetoric.”
“The problem is that kids are being exposed to this rhetoric and then they go to the school and there’s this gay kid,” he said. “And how are they going to treat this gay kid who they’ve been told is trying to destroy their family? They’re going to abuse him.”
Those are, perhaps, only a few. But they are a few too many. Too many who are eager to picket the funerals of slain soldiers, waving banners declaring that “God hates fags.” Too many prominent preachers claiming that the attacks of 9/11 were a consequence of “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians.”
There is nothing I can think of more tragic than the death of a child. But perhaps the short, tortured lives of Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Asher Brown and Tyler Clementi won’t be in vain.
Perhaps they will give more people the courage to stand up to the righteous bigots who claim to speak for God as they preach hatred from their bully pulpits. To the preachers, the politicians and the parents who send — or even tolerate — the message that it is OK to taunt someone for being different.
Because it’s time to out the accomplices.
Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com
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