And yet another anti gay bullying related suicide

[dsc]

http://brodylevesque.blogspot.com/2011/01/brodys-notes-14-year-old-kameron.html

By Mark Singer & Brody Levesque (Washington DC) JAN 21 | Kameron Jacobsen, a 14-year-old freshman student from the Monroe Woodbury High School in Orange Country, New York, which is located in the northern edges of the suburban New York City metropolitan area, was tormented by Facebook bullies who taunted him about what they thought was his sexual orientation. He reached a threshold earlier this week and killed himself.
MyFox News, Channel 5 in New York City reports that Kameron's parents, friends, and members of the community are stunned and devastated.
Fox also reports that crisis teams have been called in to help students, staff and parents deal with not one, but two tragedies in less than two weeks. Sources told Fox that besides Kameron's death, another student, a junior on the school's football team, ended his life.
Channel 5 Reporter Lisa Evers in a broadcast Wednesday told viewers:

At the high school they both attended, students tried to make sense of the incomprehensible -- that two teens with everything ahead of them seemed to find life too painful.

end of quote

I just can't stand reading this stuff anymore. Young gay men, actually boys, ending their lives and society apparently doesn't give a damn. If 11 Christians had committed suicide due to anti Christian bullying in half a school year there would have been a special session of Congress to pass measures punishing anti Christian bullying. Politicians would be fighting each other to find the nearest microphone to exise the country of the scourge of anti Christian bullying. With gay kids, not so much. One political party has yet to make even one It Gets Better video, while the other, did nothing at all to pass an anti bullying bill when it still controlled the Congress. HOw many gay, or thought to be gay kids, have to die before we will do something?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ar1c4CavwI8/TTnD1ZPDILI/AAAAAAAADYo/pEx0GiVVAws/s1600/Kameron+Jacobsen.jpg

[patrice]

1. .

no words . . .

[ZombieHorde]

2. What does justice demand in this situation? nt

[reggie the dog]

3. so close to freedom yet so far

in 4 years he would have been done with high school, gone off to the university or what not, and if he went to uni in new york city i am pretty sure he could have been openly gay with little or no problem...

[csziggy]

4. But at 14, four years is an eternity especially if you are being bullied

Or don't fit in.

Our culture is sick. The pervasive cruelty is just one symptom. I don't know if there is a way to heal this.

[japple]

5. 4 years in high school is a loooonnnggg time. 4 years to go through

the bullying, teasing, taunting, BS. My heart breaks for these children--all of them.

[reggie the dog]

9. i know, that's why i say so close yet so far

i am not gay but happen to be a long haired hippie type raisde by a biker dad who is in practice an anarcho/syndicalist. i grew up in a mostly white collar town thanks to my dads UNION blue collar job. i was taunted, spit on, tormented, accused of being gay (which i at first hated but later stopped giving a damn which sexual orientation people thought i had) and bullied all the time. i did 2 half assed suicide attempts, then one of my buddies brothers told me that college was way cooler than high school.... that you could be yourself, i just needed to get out of the lilly white suburbs and get down to chicago to go to the university, so i did, i went to the university of illinois at chicago at it was great, a mind blowing eye opening experience that changed me from being a Republican and Libertarian voting individualist into a Democrat and Green voting liberal who has finally come to understand the meaning of solidarity.

[Posteritatis]

8. At his age that would be about one quarter of his life to that point

That doesn't seem like it's close to anything from that perspective.

[HockeyMom]

6. This is where perhaps a gay teacher could help

Unfortunately, most still have to stay in the closet. I know when my daughter was in HS, she had a lesbian music teacher and another as her soccer coach. She would talk to them, on the hush, hush, so to speak, although just about everyone knew their orientation. Isn't that a shame? I mean, straight single and married school personnel regularly talk about THEIR relationships and give advice to students.

[dsc]

7. It is hard being an out teacher

I would hope that part of NY would be easier than say Utah would be, but still it is hard being different, whether you are the teacher or the student.

[HockeyMom]

10. We lived on LI

My daughter was in HS in the early 90s. Even then, the teachers couldn't come out. I don't live or work in NY now, so I don't know if it has changed.

[dsc]

13. it likely has a bit

I wouldn't have come out but for having agreed to advise our GSA which led to most of my students figuring I was gay so I just decided to admit it.

[bobbolink]

16. It is NOT an individual problem, and individual solutions are not going to change anything.

[sarcasmo]

11. Kick.

[renate]

12. what you said about if it were 11 Christians and anti-Christian bullying...

What an excellent point--and even if it's not necessarily true (although it might be, these days) about a special session of Congress being called, you just know there would be so much more outrage.

[dsc]

14. the Sunday News Shows in Sept and Oct would have been dominated with that story

instead it was a virtual no show. Heck my own school had a suicide prevention presentation at our faculty meeting in early Oct which mentioned neither gay students, bullying, nor cyber bullying. I had to bring it up which isn't, it should be noted, my job.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

15. K&R.....

Thank you for all you do on DU, dsc.

[dsc]

18. thanks

[Starry Messenger]

17. k&r