A friend of mine wrote this and I thought I'd share it:
Many of us are reeling from the recent suicide deaths of four teenagers in our country who were driven to their untimely ends by the taunting, harassment and bullying inflicted on them because of their sexual identity. Personally I am deeply shaken because 30 years ago when I was in public school I came very close to being such a statistic. And while I am not surprised that hatred and cruelty toward young gays and lesbians still exists, I am angered that we have still not attended to creating support systems to help keep these kids safe and well.
From the time I was in grade school, until I left high school after sophomore year, I was teased and abused by other kids in school, on the playground and around my home town in Massachusetts. As we all grew, "sissy" became "****", became "faggot;" taunting became pushing, became beating, became terrorizing. I was pushed down flights of stairs, had my hair set on fire, had my locker smeared with feces and graffiti. From the moment I left my house to the moment I set foot back in it at the end of the school day I was subjected to an almost uninterrupted barrage of insults and ridicule and threats of violence. Suicidal thoughts were certainly a part of the impact of all this abuse, and had I not had the family I did, I would not be here to tell this story.
Since the recent deaths of these young gay men, the most recent being the tragic suicide of the Rutgers student who was outed by his dorm mate on the internet, I have been reading the many discussions about what led to these events. There are many discussions about the dangers of the internet in the hands of kids, and the religious right is spending a lot of time calling the abuse these kids suffered 'bullying' to avoid having to have a serious conversation about the fact that these are hate crimes. What isn't being discussed is the fact that not only do the tormentors, these so-called bullies, not get punished for what they do, but the schools do nothing whatever to protect these young gay kids. There are no support systems for them, no counseling, no one to turn to. The kids who tease and beat them get off scot free, and the adults that are entrusted with the care of all the students within those school systems look the other way. This was happening when I was in school in the 70s and early 80s, when we didn't have a national discourse about gay marriage or gays in the military. We didn't even have a national discourse about the AIDS epidemic. I can understand in some measure the ignorance and limitation of those times and why as a young gay kid I could find no help or protection in the public schools. But this is 30 years later, and nothing, not one thing, has changed. And giving the 'bullies' the megaphone of the internet to perpetrate their terror has only added to their power and the extreme pain of the victims.
The fact is that if these kids were adults, they wouldn't be called bullies. They'd be brought up on charges like menacing, harassment, and assault. Restraining orders would be issued. We'd be talking about the impact of their actions in terms like psychological terrorism, bias crime, stalking. And there would be consequences. In the case of 13 year old Asher Brown, who, after enduring extreme and constant abuse, hanged himself, not one of the "bullies" who drove him to his desperate act was ever disciplined. They weren't suspended or expelled, nor did they even serve a day in detention. Asher's parents repeatedly appeared before the principal and the school board, pleading for some protection and assistance for their boy--just as my mother did in 1980--and were turned away with shrugs and were told nothing could be done.
Something CAN be done. But it would require that the people in a position to change things have the courage, despite their personal opinions on homosexuality or the opinions of the majority of the parents within their communities, to make their responsibility to the kids their first priority. I am constantly being reminded of the intolerance and hatred directed by so called Christians against gay people in the name of God, or Christ. And all I can come back to time and time again is the central, most fundamental tenet of Judeo-Christian ideology: The Golden Rule. Despite whatever your personal fears or prejudices are, despite whatever obscure biblical passage you can quote to bolster your bigoted opinion, the fact is that if you are not living day to day with the focused intent to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" you are not only not a Christian, you are not a civilized human being with a spiritual belief system that means anything. And as a parent, if you are not teaching this kind of empathy to your kids, or correcting them when they go astray and start terrorizing someone different than themselves, you are also not a real parent. You are just breeding a new generation of ignorance, hatred and intolerance. The parents of the kids that drove these four promising young men to untimely graves are every bit as responsible as the bullies themselves, as are the teachers and administrators at the schools where nothing was done to stop this cycle of abuse before it spun out of control.
THIS HAS TO STOP. And we must find a way to protect our kids and allow them to grow and learn and exist without fear of abuse, physical violence and terror. It is a very short leap from calling a kid "faggot" and pushing him around, to the mutilation, torture and murder that was inflicted upon Matthew Shepard. I have lived with the scars of what happened to me 30 plus years ago my entire life and have to continue to work through the post traumatic stress I suffered, as well as the fears and insecurities that have plagued me about belonging in situations where I am the minority, or simply interacting with groups of people with a sense of comfort and well being. I don't see myself any more as a victim of what happened to me, but I have had help to reach that understanding. I know first hand the desperation that led to these young men taking their own lives as their only perceivable way of escaping the torment they endured. I was one of the lucky ones who survived. As our culture becomes more and more intensely polarized and as hatred and bigotry gain footholds in public life and are heavily financed by special interests and as their evil views are broadcast round the clock via the internet, we must understand that the youngest members of our society are listening, watching, and learning from all this negativity. And when the cost of all of this is the loss of even one young human life unnecessarily, we must take action and find a way to protect our kids. I intend to become as active as I can in this effort. Meantime I pray for the peace and comfort of the parents, friends and communities who are mourning the loss of these kids.
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
