Perhaps I just don’t have much to say these days. Perhaps I am too overwhelmed with work and possibilities of the future. Perhaps I need to get more sleep and have more free time. Perhaps, I just keep seeing things that I believe are important, oppressions that I feel we should be facing as a country and as individuals, and want to share. Perhaps others have more eloquent words than I. Or perhaps, what I want to say is already being said. In the end, today’s post, will be taken from another site. This time, it is from Mombian (a great site for all news, books, and blogs LGBT and LGBT parenting related).
Silence – Then Not
Today marks the 13th annual Day of Silence, an event where students from middle school to college take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment.Last year’s event was in memory of Lawrence King, the California eighth-grader shot to death by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression.We hoped his tragic death would at least lead to change.No such luck.
This year, some students are honoring in memory of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old from Springfield, Mass., who took his life April 6 after enduring constant bullying at school, including anti-LGBT attacks, even though he did not identify as gay. He would have turned 12 today.
This is not a “gay” problem, as Walker’s mother said in an interview with the Advocate. This is a societal problem that affects those most vulnerable, our children.
Today many stay silent to make this point. Tomorrow let’s make some noise about this.
When I was in high school, I took an AP English course. In the semester on writing, we each wrote a portfolio on a topic with pieces coming from different genres. I choose as my topic LGBT youth. One piece was an expose journal article on teenage suicide. I remember this piece probably more than anything else I wrote in high school. I am still shocked at the statistic that over 1/3 of teenage suicides are related to sexual or gender orientation. As the Carl Walker’s suicide shows, you don’t even have to identify as gay or transgendered to be deeply affected by bullying around LGBT issues.
I wish more had changed in the last dozen years since I wrote that paper. And, perhaps things are changing. But for too many it is too late.
On final very important piece of information taken from Lesbian Dad’s post:
I’m reminded by Ellen DeGeneris on her blog that The Trevor Project is “the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth.” 866-4-U-TREVOR.
