What Community Do I Have To Go To?

I am something of a gay activist not necessarily because of adult gay rights, but because of the effect of the gay rhetoric on our teens. The following three stories occurred in the last two weeks in different sections of the US.  They are a very sad reminder that the political game playing of secular and religious leaders are not games to some of our teens.  They create a culture of death for which there are no consequences for those who perpetrate the abuse or the adults whose responsibility it is to stop it.  For me the most disturbing aspect of these stories is we don't even know if these young men were actually gay,  but just the perception alone was enough to make their school lives hell on earth. 


A Kern middle school student was taken off life support and declared dead Tuesday afternoon, nine days after he hanged himself after being bullied, friends say, because he was gay. He was just 13.

Seth Walsh, the Tehachapi 13-year-old who hanged himself from a tree in his back yard after years of being bullied, died Tuesday afternoon after nine days on life support.


Tehachapi police investigators interviewed some of the young people who taunted Seth the day he hanged himself and determined despite the tragic outcome of their ridicule, their actions do not constitute a crime.


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Asher Brown’s worn-out tennis shoes still sit in the living room of his Cypress-area home while his student progress report — filled with straight A’s — rests on the coffee table.


The eighth-grader killed himself last week. He shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at Hamilton Middle School in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District.

Brown, his family said, was “bullied to death” — 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, his mother and stepfather said.

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He was a teenager who didn’t quite fit in. His classmates said Billy Lucas was bullied for being different.


The 15-year-old never told anyone he was gay but students at Greensburg High School thought he was and so they picked on him.

“People would call him ‘fag’ and stuff like that, just make fun of him because he’s different basically,” said student Dillen Swango.

Students told Fox59 News it was common knowledge that children bullied Billy and from what they said, it was getting worse. Last Thursday, Billy’s mother found him dead inside their barn. He had hung himself.

Students said on that same day, some students told Billy to kill himself.


"They said stuff like 'you're like a piece of crap' and 'you don't deserve to live.' Different things like that. Talked about how he was gay or whatever," said Swango.

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When thirteen year old boys are driven to understand the fact they are perceived to be gay means their life isn't worth living, we have a problem in society.  It's not a gay problem.  It's a societal problem.  Check this story from August 26th of this year. It's about the Annoka-Hennepin school district in Archbishop Neinstedt's state of Minnesota. The article covers the anti gay group called the Parents Action League. Like NOM and Archbishop Neinstedt, this group refuses to discuss it's funding sources or it's membership, but it is hell bent on keeping the Annoka-Hennepin school district as anti gay as possible.  This is the same school district who had three teen suicides from gay bullying last school year and had two teachers cited for discrimination against a perceived gay student.

Sometimes I wonder if the straight community really understands why so many gay kids kill themselves.  I often hear, "why didn't they get help before they did this to themselves and their parents".   Here's the reason as expressed by a recent graduate from the Annoka-Hennepin area:

"Megan, another 2010 graduate, took issue with the school’s policies. “It says that it is better for students to go to their home or their community or their church. I can’t go to any of those. I go home and my parents tell me I am cursed. I go to my church and I am rejected and condemned. I go to my community? What community do I have to go to?”