The body count of children and young adults committing suicide over homosexuality is shockingly high
It’s been more than a decade since Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in Laramie, Wyo. Yet, the homophobia that took his life continues to claim the lives of others. But the victims are getting younger. This month alone three boys, ages 13, 13 and 15, took their own lives because they were bullied at school by kids who “thought they were gay.”
One kid, Seth Walsh, 13. who lived in Tehachapi, outside of Bakersfield, Ca., hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied. He died Tuesday afternoon after nine days on life support. Another boy, Asher Brown of Houston, Tx., 13, shot himself in the head last Thursday, also directly due to the incessant bullying he suffered at school.
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His parents told the Houston Chronicle the bullying came specifically from four students. They say they complained several times during the last 18 months but the school did nothing about it. The school did not even bother returning his parents’ phone calls.
He was “bullied to death,” said Amy and David Truong, Asher’s mother and stepfather. “Picked on for his small size, his religion and because he did not wear designer clothes and shoes. Kids also accused him of being gay, some of them performing mock gay acts on him in his physical education class.”
Then, yet another boy, Billy Lucas, 15, of Greensburg, In. took his life in early Sept. Once again, he killed himself after incessant bullying. Why did they bully him? They thought he was gay.
“He was threatened to get beat up every day,” friend and classmate Nick Hughes told the local television station. “Sometimes in classes, kids would act like they were going to punch him and stuff and push him.”
“Some people at school called him names,” Hughes said. Those names questioned Lucas’ sexual orientation. Lucas, for the most part, and that Lucas, did little to defend himself.
“He would try to but people would just try to break him down with words and stuff and just pick on him,” Hughes added.
Another boy, 11, was beaten up, his arm broken by bullies because he joined the cheerleading team at his school. That kid Tyler Wilson of Ohio refuses to quit the squad due to the bullying. His mother, once again, complained to the school about the bullying but received no assistance.
Then, in New Jersey, a Rutgers University student jumped off the George Washington bridge on Sept. 23, after two students secretly videotaped him having sex with another male student in his dorm room then posted it on the Internet.
Dharun Ravi and Molly W. Wei, both 18-years-old, were each charged with two counts of invasion of privacy Tuesday for allegedly placing the camera in the boy’s room.
Then, in Michigan an Asst Attorney General has gone on a six month campaign of harassment against a University of Michigan student. This youth’s name is Chris Armstrong. He is the first openly gay student assembly president at the University. The city official launched a website entitled “Chris Armstrong Watch.” This public official’s name is Andrew Shirvell. He has allegedly stalked the poor kid outside of his house. He posted doctored photos on the website with rainbow flags and swastikas printed on the sleeve of the kid’s shirt. He calls Armstrong Satan’s representative on the Student Council. He calls Armstrong a radical homosexual activist. Shirvell has published blog posts accusing Armstrong of engaging in “flagrant sexual promiscuity,” sexually seducing and influencing “a previously conservative [male] student,” and trying to recruit incoming first year students “to join the homosexual ‘lifestyle.’ ” Believe or not, Shirvell still has his job.
“I’m a Christian citizen exercising my First Amendment rights,” Shirvell told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “I have no problem with the fact that Chris is a homosexual. I have a problem with the fact that he’s advancing a radical homosexual agenda.”
Car Joseph Walker-Hoover\’s mother speaks out about bullying
The above video relates to a case dating back to April 2009. In this case, the 11-year-old pushed into taking his own life because he was bullied because his classmates thought “he was gay,” “too effeminate” etc. was black. The only reason I bring it up is to show that bigotry and cruelty is truly colorblind.
Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself with an extension cord after yet another day of bullying at the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, Ma. where he was a student. He was only in the sixth grade.
“I just want to help some other child. I know there are other kids being picked on, and it’s day in and day out,” said Sirdeaner L. Walker, his mother.
During the same month, 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera woke up one morning and told his mother he didn’t want to go to school in DeKalb County, Ga. He came home happy that day showing his mother a report card full of As and Bs. Then, he went upstairs to his room. But when his sister called him down to dinner, he didn’t answer. His mother and daughter climbed the stairs to Jaheem’s room and found him hanging by his belt in the closet.
“I always used to see these things on TV, dead people on the news,” said Masika Bermudez, Jaheem’s mother. “I saw somebody die and to see this dead person is your son, hanging there, a young boy.
… To hang yourself like that, you’ve got to really be tired of something.”
Bermudez says bullies at school pushed Jaheem over the edge. He complained about being called gay, ugly and “the virgin” because he was from the Virgin Islands, she said.
“He used to say Mom they keep telling me this … this gay word, this gay, gay, gay. I’m tired of hearing it, they’re telling me the same thing over and over,” she said.
Two years prior, 17-year-old Eric Mohat shot himself in his bedroom after enduring similar taunting and bullying.
“He was called fag,” his mother Jan Mohat said. “He was called gay.”
Then one day after his math class, she recalls the final taunts that pushed him over the edge.
“Eric was told by the bully,” his mothers says. “ ‘Eric, why don’t you go home and shoot yourself. It’s not like anybody would care.’
There is one common thread in the above cases: The system failed them all. Whether it was school officials, other parents, or in the case of the city official, institutionalized homophobia, there was a failure on the behalf of people entrusted with looking out for the common good. In all of the above cases, except for two, that failure directly resulted in loss of life. Tragic.
Yet still, some school officials refuse to take bullying seriously. As a reporter in Oklahoma, I personally recall right-wing attacks against a seminar on bullying. Just educating the teachers about anti-gay bullying sent Christian Conservatives over the edge. They raged on that what some teacher might assume was bullying infringed upon other students rights to express their values. They actually campaigned against an anti-bullying initiative. They claimed that protecting gay students or students perceived of as being gay was a form of recruitment by the extremist homosexual activists.
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty,
this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
That’s by the great Frederick Douglass.
This is from the great Emma Lazarus:
Until we are all free, we are none of us free.
It seems odd to quote Bill Clinton when it’s Obama’s recycling of Clintonite politicians that has helped get us into this mess, but there it is. “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Americans are angry with the Obama administration, and the Obama administration is angry with—bloggers? The left-leaning media? What’s wrong with this picture?
The vice president says “Stop whining.” Obama says “Buck up.” Robert Gibbs rants about the “professional left.” All of them seem to forget who put them in office. Last week blogger Susie Madrak told David Axelrod: “Liberals and bloggers feel like we’re the girl you take under the bleachers but won’t be seen with in the light of day.”
And Glenn Greenwald noted to Politico, people’s anger “has very little – basically nothing – to do with what bloggers have been saying, and everything to do with the fact that there are no jobs and millions of people are having their homes foreclosed.”
I wish it wasn’t the case, but it’s true: people would have much less time for Tea Parties and Glenn Beck if there wasn’t so much fear out there about the fate of the nation, and a more defiant fight-back being mounted by Democrats.
Bill Clinton knew that, though his solutions—deregulation, “welfare reform” and NAFTA—created a house of cards that staggered twice and then collapsed two years ago. Now we’re dealing with that fallout, and the fact that Obama put Clinton people in charge of trying to fix the economy. That’s the problem. It’s not Glenn Greenwald or Marcy Wheeler or Rachel Maddow or me. Thank you very much.
As Richard Trumka said, it’s jobs, jobs, jobs. The money media love the story that the lefty media are the problem because it preserves their place as the good guys. I wish we had that much power. The reality is, as we’ve said before, the best antidote to fake class solidarity is the real kind.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
Crossposted from The Huffington Post
Shortly before the California Democratic primary in 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle invited me to write a short article explaining why I, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, was supporting Barack Obama. Like most other progressive activists, I understood that a president is limited in what s/he can accomplish in limiting the power of America’s economic and political elites and in restraining the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and health care profiteers, the oil industry’s relentless destruction of the environment, or the selfishness and materialism that had become the hallmark of Wall Street and increasingly the “common sense” that was conveyed by the media and advertising into the consciousness of many Americans.
But what a president can do is to challenge the ideas of the powerful and rally those who have become aware that the current system is not only destructive to the future of the planet, but also to the possibility of constructing lives that have a sense of higher meaning than accumulating money and things, or of building families and friendships that are about love and not dominated by the self-interest “what’s in it for me” consciousness of the capitalist marketplace. READ FULL POST
This post first appeared on Daily Kos.
NYT’s Michael Shear and Jeff Zeleny report:
President Obama will give his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a send-off Friday as Mr. Emanuel officially announces his departure from the West Wing to run for mayor of Chicago, officials familiar with the decision said.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, at his daily briefing on Thursday afternoon said that the president will give two personnel announcements on Friday morning from the East Room of the White House. Mr. Gibbs, admitting that he was being purposely “oblique,” would not confirm whether the announcements would concern Mr. Emanuel.
This post first appeared on Booman Tribune.
Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains income tax policy in a way even a moran can understand.
Yeah, more of these please. Keep them at two minutes, and people will actually watch them. I’m waiting for one on immigration policy.
This post first appeared on Shakesville.
[Trigger warning for sexual assault, homophobia, and suicide.]
By now, you’ve probably heard the details of the terrible incident at Rutgers University, in which 18-year-old freshman Tyler Clementi jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate and a friend secretly filmed and live-streamed Clementi making out with another young man.
Naturally, a lot of people have reasonably concluded that the “merry pranksters” who broadcast Clementi’s private sexual acts, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, were homophobic. But a longtime friend of Ravi’s says this is not true:
This post first appeared on Washington Monthly.
Readers probably got tired of my reports on one of the most effective federal jobs programs in recent memory, but it was my hope the Senate would find a way to keep it alive. As usually happens when counting on the Senate, those hopes were in vain.
At issue is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund, which should have been one of the most popular programs in Congress. A key component of the Recovery Act, the fund subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits, and government agencies, and has single handedly put more than 240,000 unemployed people back to work in 32 states and the District of Columbia.
More than half of Californians now say that they will vote ‘yes’ this November on Proposition 19, which would legalize the private adult use and cultivation of limited amounts of cannabis, and allow local governments the option of regulating its commercial production and retail distribution.
The latest poll of 2,004 likely voters throughout the state by the Public Policy Institute of California reports that 52 percent of Californians back Prop. 19, versus 41 percent opposed and seven percent undecided.
Of the statewide propositions polled, only Prop. 19 possessed majority support among California voters. In fact, the same poll reports that a greater percentage of voters now back Prop. 19 than support incumbent Democrat Senators Barbara Boxer (42%) and Dianne Feinstein (44%), Senate Republican challenger Carly Fiorina (35%), Gubernatorial Democrat candidate Jerry Brown (37%) or Gubernatorial Republican candidate Meg Whitman (38%).
Historically, ballot initiative campaigns lose support in the months prior to election day. But Prop. 19 is bucking this trend, as recent results from the Field Poll, Survey USA, and polltracker.com clearly show that marijuana legalization is maintaining, and in some cases gaining, voter support as we approach November 2, 2010.
Proposition 19 is endorsed by a broad coalition of divergent and powerful interest groups, including the California NAACP; the Latino Voters League; the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); the National Black Police Association; the United Food and Commercial Workers, (UFCW) Western States Council; the California Council of Churches IMPACT; Firedog Lake; the California Green Party; and the Republican Liberty Caucus. These organizations, along with millions of Californians, agree that it is time to end criminal marijuana prohibition in California.
If you live in California but are not registered to vote, you can do so by going here. Help make history on November 2!
This post is the latest in our series of coal ash community profiles. Our work on coal ash unfortunately becomes timely yet again, as news came out this week of a breach at a coal ash impoundment in North Carolina. This week’s profile was written by Sierra Club Apprentice Andrea Sanchez.
There is nothing little about Little Blue Run Dam, the coal fly ash impoundment that reaches into both Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Coal ash is the toxic by-product of burning coal for electricity – the Little Blue Run ash impoundment belongs to the Bruce Mansfield Plant. This plant is FirstEnergy’s largest coal-fired power plant, burning around seven million tons of coal annually.
At full capacity, the three plants that make up Bruce Mansfield complex produce four million gallons of coal slurry daily. This is where Little Blue comes in.
Seven miles of pipeline will bring you to a 1,694 acre disposal site known as Little Blue (see its eerie blue color in the above Google Maps satellite image). By the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) own admission, Little Blue is one of 49 sites around the country whose dam currently has a High Hazard Potential rating. This rating means that if the dam holding back Little Blue’s toxic slurry – the largest earthen dam in the country – were to breach, it would result in probable loss of life, largely to communities across the river in Ohio.
In addition to the structural hazard, coal ash also contains toxic metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and selenium, to name a few, and so far EPA has not required special liners to ensure that coal ash does not contaminate nearby waterways.
Debbie Havens, of the West Virginia side of the impoundment, remembers the first time the energy company spoke to her about the expansion of the impoundment years ago. A man came to her home armed with a colorful brochure and said, “There will be swimming, boating, walking and bike trails, a place a family could spend time together.”
She told him, “I’m sorry sir, but I have a hard time believing that.” That was the first and only time that anyone came to her door. Now large properties are being bought off left and right to make room for more coal ash waste at Little Blue.
For those living near unlined coal ash impoundments the risk of cancer can be as high as 1 in 50, which is 2,000 times higher than EPA’s “acceptable cancer risk of 1 in 100,000.” This statistic only takes into account the risk of cancer from arsenic exposure in drinking water.
When looking at the entire list of toxins contained in coal ash, the health risks are even worse. Havens’ husband had his thyroid removed several years ago after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer and now Havens herself has a thyroid nodule which doctors are watching. Doctors also found three benign tumors doctors in her breast.
With no family history of thyroid problems, her endocrinologist has assessed that environmental exposure as the cause and told her, “You need to move or you will never survive this stuff.”
In her community three men have already died from cancer this year. One thing is sure, she said, “Life is a lot different than that pretty brochure 36 years ago.”
On the other side of the impoundment in Pennsylvania, Barb Reed and her son are living about a mile away from the site in Georgetown. Reed has lived in the area since 1978; her son is now living with her because he can no longer use his own water. His home is closer to the impoundment and after both FirstEnergy and the state Department of Environmental Protection found that the levels of arsenic in his water were exceeding the maximum EPA levels, he decided he had to leave his home.
“It’s terribly upsetting because he can’t even take showers or wash dishes, he’s had to leave his home, and he’s still paying a mortgage on it,” said Reed. “They haven’t even offered him a viable water supply because they claim it is not their fault.”
If the risk of cancer, the potential for contaminated water, and the destroyed landscape isn’t enough – there is also the smell of rotten eggs. “You can’t breathe because of the smell. Your throat burns, your eyes burns, everyday we’re surrounded by fly ash,” said Havens.
Even from a mile away Reed is reluctant to use her water because of the smell of rotten eggs coming from the tap. While she used to garden in her own backyard, she now grows vegetables out of buckets with store-bought soil to avoid eating contaminated produce.
It is time for EPA and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to treat coal ash as the toxic waste that it is. Both of Reed and Havens have attended the EPA coal ash public hearings in their areas hoping to get the agency to enact federally enforceable standards that will treat coal not like household garbage – but as toxic waste.
“A banana peel is household waste, not fly ash,” said Havens.
In a hysterical screed published by the American Family Association’s One News Now, Matt Barber of the right-wing Liberty Counsel sets his aim at the United Nations:
The United Nations is pressing for acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle worldwide, which was made evident during a recent human rights meeting in Geneva.
A written statement from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on U.N. members to abolish laws that discriminate against homosexuals. The statement comes two months after a homosexual activist group received U.N. accreditation.
“The United Nations just continues to spiral further and further down into the abyss of irrelevancy,” laments Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel. “Their radical, leftist, post-modern secular humanist, globalist agenda is just as clear as it has ever been.”
That agenda has become a point of concern for some countries that depend on the United Nations and its agencies, but Barber points out that at the same time, “this is why so many nations around the world that embrace traditional values, that embrace sexual morality, have really written the U.N. off as an extremist conglomerate of really left-wing ‘wacktivists.’”
As par for the course with One News Now, Barber’s insane comments are the only thing published about the U.N.’s actions.
Here are some facts that the One News Now article omitted:
In a message to a panel discussion in Geneva on ending violence and criminal sanctions based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which was delivered by UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay, Mr. Ban noted that the responsibilities of the UN and the obligations of States are clear.
“No one, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. No one should be prosecuted for their ideas or beliefs. No one should be punished for exercising their right to freedom of expression.”
In May, during a visit to Malawi, the Secretary-General called for laws criminalizing people on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity to be reformed worldwide. Such laws, he noted, fuel violence, help to legitimize homophobia and contribute to a climate of hate.
While in Malawi, he had also lauded the “courageous” decision by the country’s leader to pardon a gay couple who had been sentenced to 14 years in prison, voicing hope that the African nation will update its laws to reflect international standards.
Ms. Pillay noted in her own remarks that, despite significant progress made in a number of States, there is still no region in the world today where people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender or intersex (LGBTI) can live entirely free from discrimination or from the threat of harassment and physical attack.
“But in 78 countries, individuals still face criminal sanctions on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” she told the event, which was held on the sidelines of the 15th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council.
So what the United Nations is actually trying to do is to eliminate persecution against lgbts in other countries.
And apparently to Barber, this persecution, which in some cases includes jail time and physical violence, embodies “traditional values.”
You know, there are times when I get frustrated because I feel that I’m not communicating just how hypocritical and hateful some members of the religious right actually are.
Then someone like Matt Barber comes along and makes my job so much easier.
