Just last month, 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Indiana, 13-year-old Asher Brown of Texas, and 13-year-old Seth Walsh of California all took their own lives. But things would get drastically worse before the month's end. September closed its doors with two young men in college - Tyler Clementi, a closeted 18-year-old and Raymond Chase, an openly gay sophomore majoring in culinary arts - taking their own lives as well. Rather than suffer the humiliation of being outed by his roommate, Clementi plunged 600 feet off the George Washington Bridge to his death. Chase hanged himself in his dormitory room.
What do these six young men have in common? All were gay and victims of homophobic bullying. Clementi's case has been the most nationally recognized, as his roommate conspired with another student to capture Clementi's sexual encounter with another male student on a webcam set up in their room. He then tweeted to get people to log into the webcam.
But the disturbing news does not stop there. Last year two school teachers in the Anoka-Hennepin school district were accused of and charged with harrassment of a student (who, incidentally, is not gay) who transferred to another district. The teachers subjected said student to harrassment in front of his classmates and even tag-team bullied him. The student was awarded a $25,000 settlement from the district and teachers remain on leave but have not yet been formally dismissed.
These six young men in the past three months are just the cases that we know about. How many more LGBT teens out there are suffering to the point they feel they have no option but to take their own lives?
Of course, bullying among children and teens is nothing new and is hardly restricted to homophobic bullying.
Today it was reported in New York City that seven people, aged 16 to 23, have been arrested and charged in connection to brutal gay beatings in the Bronx. While hate crimes are easier to prosecute, bullying is something that most Americans have simply become immune to. After all, most all of us have been bullied at one point or another. So it could be said the easiest way to deal with it is to suck it up and get through it. Life will get better.
But we don't really know that. We don't know how these young men who took their own lives would have turned out. Ongoing or extremely harsh bullying has been shown to leave deep psychological scars that people carry into adulthood. In Tyler Clementi's case he had a private encounter with another man secretly uploaded to the Internet without his knowledge or consent.
This line of thinking brings up another question. Are the individuals responsible for bullying these boys in some way responsible for their deaths? Again, Clementi's case is unique from the other five due to the invasion of privacy involved. After all, these boys committed suicide. They weren't murdered. They made the decision to take their own lives.
I say yes, the bullies are in some way responsible. Bullies made their lives hell day in and day out for who knows how long. People who commit suicide typically have some sort of psychological break and are often pushed to the point of that break. The people who bullied these boys into committing suicide may not have pushed them off a bridge or handed them the rope they were found hanging from, but their bullying was the psychological instrument of destruction.
R.I.P. Justin, Billy, Asher, Seth, Tyler, and Raymond.
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