Asterisk

On April 6, 2009, eleven-year-old Carl Walker-Hoover completed suicide as a direct result of peer abuse (stop calling it bullying). Since then, Carl’s Mom has been on a mission, joining with GLSEN to bring about change in laws regarding peer abuse. Just three months after her son’s death, Ms. Walker went to Congress and challenged our elected officials to protect children.

So far, they haven’t listened.

Carl, Sirdeaner, and Gloria in happier times

More than most people could possibly imagine, the last two and a half years have been difficult for the Walker family, so I was glad that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition featured Sirdeaner and Carl’s siblings on the show last Friday, sharing his story and perhaps giving them a tiny bit of karmic (or is it mokshic?) payback for the nightmare they’ve been through.

You’ll be surprised by the lasting effect of Carl’s death. The family has abandoned the third floor of the home where they found Carl, choosing instead to sleep on cots in the living room. Carl’s room is exactly as he left it, his backpack still tossed half-open on the steps the way 11-year-old boys do.

I was so glad to see GLSEN, The Trevor Project, the It Gets Better Project, and of course the Carl Walker-Hoover Foundation spotlighted. These important organizations are vital resources for kids like Carl.

(Sorry for the ads; they aren’t mine. Also sorry for the Kardashians.)

By now, you’ve probably seen the news report from Chillicothe, Ohio (about 75 miles from me) that rocketed across the internet yesterday (hat tip to Equality Ohio) about a 15-year-old student who was brutally attacked in school this week because he’s gay. (Trigger warning, just to be safe.)

See Dan Savage’s column for my reaction to this story. Cosigned, 100%.

Coincidentally, the school had a big assembly (screencap) about online and offline peer abuse just last Wednesday. Speaker Josh Gunderson addressed the students, ending his presentation by directly addressing suicides caused by peer abuse. Here is Gunderson’s It Gets Better video:

See Gunderson’s Youtube channel to get an idea what he does. It looks like a good program, and we need more of that kind of thing to reach students, but the abuse won’t stop until the adults in charge recognize that this is a real and urgent problem, not one you can just talk about for an hour and then forget for another year.

It’s important that adults treat peer abuse and the accompanying physical attacks without kid gloves. These are serious life-and-death issues. Zach has a concussion and is in a danger zone for self-harm and suicidal ideation right now because of this attack by a peer.

In fact, his attacker is probably back in school today, potentially sitting in the same classroom as his victim. Obviously, this will only exacerbate the attack’s long-term effects.

Union-Scioto School officials must act swiftly, both to make Zach whole and to make it known throughout the community that peer abuse, specifically peer abuse against LGBT people, are not accepted in their schools. Local officials in the sheriff’s and prosecutor’s office must treat this attack seriously and seek real penalties in order to rehabilitate the attacker.

Failing to do that will send the opposite message that attacking and abusing LGBTs is okay, and that’s a message we can’t afford for them to send.

Last weekend, every Republican Presidential candidate with a chance of winning (plus Rick Santorum) appeared on stage at the Values Voter Summit, a meeting sponsored by two certified hate groups on par with (and one with ties to) the Ku Klux Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens.

Family Research Council and American Family Association have both been considered hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center for some time now, and with good reason; both groups push their shared agenda with dangerous propaganda and outright lies about LGBT people.

To repeat: Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum all accepted the invitation of these hate groups (as they have for years), hoping to get their endorsements and the votes of like-minded individuals.

Do you really need more information before you cast your vote in the 2012 presidential election? What stance on which issue could possibly make it okay to vote for a candidate who has actively courted bigotry?

It’s been a week since Jamey Rodemeyer completed suicide, and like many of you, I can’t get him off my mind. I’ve been looking through Jamey’s tumbler blog, and after sifting through hundreds of Lady Gaga gifs, I found this video. He uploaded it on September 13th, just five days before his light went dark.

I see in this video the same cognitive dissonance as in his earlier It Gets Better video. In both, he said the words he was supposed to say, but he didn’t even convince himself. “It gets better, hold your head up high, you were born this way” was his mantra; the lines he repeated to get through the long days and the longer nights until the reality of his life became too strong.

As Harvey Milk famously said, “I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it life is not worth living.”

Jamey had run out of hope. I could fill the page with words (about 1,000 before I started over) trying to explain what happened, but it all comes down to that.

This is what the It Gets Better Project is all about. That’s why I’m From Driftwood, GLSEN, and all the LGBT rights groups exist. Ultimately, they’re here to nudge the rest of us into the hope and reality of a better tomorrow, so that one day there won’t be a 14-year-old kid who cuts and cries and finally completes suicide.

Jamey Rodemeyer
March 21, 1997 - Sepember 18, 2011

I hope to see that day soon. Until then, as Jamey said, paws up.

Forever.

CBS is reporting this hour that the judge in the case of Brandon McInerney has declared a mistrial after jurors told him that they were deadlocked.

Bringing a gun to school and shooting someone in the back of the head — TWICE — doesn’t count as premeditated murder. At least that’s the case in the minds of some of the jurors in the trial of Brandon McInerney, the boy who murdered 15-year-old Lawrence (Latisha) King in broad daylight in front of a room of witnesses in February 2008.

A judge has declared a mistrial in the case of a California teen accused of murdering a gay classmate at a junior high school three years ago.

Jurors on Thursday told Judge Charles Campbell they were unable to reach a unanimous decision whether Brandon McInerney was guilty of killing 15-year-old Larry King.

The brazen shooting in front of stunned classmates in a computer classroom gained wide attention when authorities dubbed it a hate crime because King was gay and evidence suggested McInerney had white supremacy leanings. Extensive news coverage persuaded Campbell to move the case from Ventura County to neighboring Los Angeles County.

The prosecution contend McInerney, who was being tried as an adult, made a conscious decision to kill King during a computer lab class. They said McInerney told others he wanted to hurt King in the days leading up to the slaying and he hid a .22-caliber handgun in his backpack before pulling the weapon out and shooting his classmate twice in the back of the head.

Defense attorneys do not deny McInerney killed King, but they said their client snapped when he heard moments before the shooting that King wanted to change his first name to Latisha.

Prosecutors now have to decide whether to re-file murder and hate crime charges against McInerney.

Latisha (née Lawrence) deserves better.

EVERY.

TIME.

You want to know why trans and gay people kill themselves? This is why. We are seen as less than human. We are seen as less than real.

You want to know why straight people kill trans and gay people? This is why. We are seen as a nuisance to be snuffed out, and if someone actually pulls the trigger (FUCKING TWICE), it’s because the fag scared him by being faggy or something.

This is why, and honestly, I don’t even know what to do about it anymore.

To call this an appalling failure of justice and human decency would be the height of understatement.

I wish long and miserable lives for the jurors in this trial who aren’t convinced that planning and methodically carrying out the death of a gay kid is murder. Very long, and very miserable. May the memory of Latisha King’s murder haunt them the rest of their lives and into the next.