"In memory of Jamey Rodemeyer."
"I'm not sure which is more astonishing: the magnitude of torment human beings can endure, or the enthusiasm with which they inflict it."
Jamey is the latest in a rash of teenage kids who committed suicide because of relentless and intense bullying by their peers. Jamey in particular contributed a video to itgetsbetter.org, an anti-bullying outreach designed to draw attention to the problems of gay teens being harassed to the point that they were killing themselves. For him, it evidently didn't get better. I have seen the video and read a little about itgetsbetter.org.
Other than that, I don't know Jamey's story, But this whole bullying/harassment thing isn't all that new. Gay bashing has been a hobby among the straight redneck crowd at least as long as I've been coherent, and probably a lot longer. It was an unofficial sport when I was in high school.
We think this should get better because people should stop being so cruel. We think people should accept us and not discriminate against us because it's the right thing to do. We think we have the right to be gay, just as others have the right to be straight. We think we should be respected and allowed to be who we are without reprisal because this is America, and it is what America stands for. We think the straight world should get over it, and stop thinking of us any differently that they think of any other distinctive people group or subculture.
Gay Advocacy groups push this thinking farther. The discrimination and harassment has to stop. If not because it's immoral, then because it's the law. If not because it's the right thing to do, then because it's the only option. If not because it's inherently wrong, then because of our rights under the Constitution.
And we're right to expect this to change. The Activists are right to push the point legislatively and in other ways.
And to some extent it is changing. DADT is finished. People are changing. People are beginning to realize that the gay community is just another part of the whole of society, and we're just people doing what we know to do to succeed in life. People are beginning to realize that homosexuality is not an invading army bent on destroying society. The change is good.
But this kind of change is slow and not without resistance. It's also not without martyrs like Jamey.
I can basically already write the news articles about the backlash against some on the leading edge of 'serving openly' in the military. Somebody is going to take that freedom to the extreme and get stomped. Somebody is going to resent the change and use the first opportunity they can to lash out against one of us. It's a done deal, whether the story has been written yet or not.
From this perspective, It Gets Better and Jamey's death is just a small step forward in that journey.
But I think there's a better way to facilitate the change is society that we seek and deserve.
I think it's up to us to make sure people see us as men and women, not fags and dykes. I think we do this by being better at our jobs, by contributing more than our fair share to making the world around us a better place, by being good friends and good people first and gay second, by showing the world what we're capable of as humans not who we're having sex with.
I think it is a huge mistake to establish our identity within society at large by our sexuality. I think we have to establish our identity as people worthy of respect and deserving of acceptance. Then if and when they find out we're gay, at least there will be a ton of undeniable evidence that we're not evil.
I think that as long as 'Gay' is associated with ''Sodom and Gomorrah" in the minds of mainstream society, we're screwed. The activists are just making noise and people like Jamey pay the price.
I think that once the rest of the world realizes that we don't want to live in Sodom and Gomorrah, or bring that to their neighborhoods, schools, government and workplaces, the change that needs to happen will happen quickly.
Now, if only I could convince the gay world to actually want something better than Sodom and Gomorrah have to offer. That's the real challenge here.