Last week Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, committed suicide after suffering being bullied for years. His tormentors bullied him for his sexual orientation.
Earlier this year, he made this video as part of the It Gets Better project after coming out as bisexual.
Unfortunately, the bullying became too much to take and he ended his life on his terms.
When are we going to grow up? When are people going to accept that being gay or bi isn't a choice, but the way people are born? When are people going to accept that being gay or bi isn't the result of a moral failing, a mental disorder, or a deviant perversion? When are people going to stop judging others based on their sexual orientation?
I have little hope that it will happen in my lifetime. Last week's official end of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the U.S. military was a huge step forward, at least I thought. Until it became clear from the jeering of a gay U.S. soldier during the most recent Republican debate in Florida, just how many people still have this archaic idea of what it means to be gay. Rick Santorum responded that he would repeal DADA, that he feels sex has no place in the military.
Well, yea, sexual intercourse has no place in the military. But would he go so far as to prohibit heterosexuals from talking about their wives or girlfriends? Putting their photos on their desk or beside their bed? Talking about their kids? Talking about loved ones with their coworkers?
I hightly doubt it....yet this is the kind of double standard that homosexuals put up with everyday. The fact that there have always been gays in the military seems to escape peoples' memory, yet read the online comments following any article about the end of DADA and one would think there are none, and we must keep them out before all hell breaks loose! Give. Me. A. Fucking. Break.
It's this kind of judgement, discrimination, and outright bigotry that our children have to face every day. Can you imagine being a gay, bi, or transgendered child, knowing you are different, but not daring to acknowledge it? Feeling like you have no where, or no one, to turn to to talk about it, knowing that this difference is perceived of as wrong by everyone around you. Most kids go to great lengths to hide it, to deny it, because this feeling of wrongness is so indoctrinated into our culture that even kids as young as five years old can sense it. Yet their heterosexual counterparts know no such feelings of wrongness about their existence. They don't go about their day trying to hide their core selves, for fear of retaliation. They don't even think about their sexuality.....it just is.
Wouldn't it be great to see a day when all children, no matter their orientation, can just view their sexuality as just is and not question it, not feel shame about it, and not fear what others will do to them over it? A day when a child doesn't have to go to school full of dread and shame, knowing the taunts and abuse that will take place before the end of the day? All based on the way that person was born. I really hope I live to see that day.
Lady Gaga, at a recent concert, paid tribute to Jamey. Mid-song, she pauses and states, "Bullying is for losers."
Indeed.
This is for GBE week 19, "Judgement"
