Another One: Eric James Borges

Eric James Borges, a 19-year-old gay filmmaker. who recorded his won “It Gets Better” video, committed suicide this week.
Known as EricJames to friends, he was a volunteer at the Trevor Project, an organization devoted to preventing LGBT teen suicides. Trevor Project spokeswoman, Laura McGuinnis, said, “He was a volunteer teaching suicide prevention, so he knew what counseling was available to him. Unfortunately suicide is so complicated, so rooted in mental illness, that it is difficult to know why he made that decision. It is very, very sad.”
He seemed like the last kid who would commit suicide, doesn't he? He worked with the Trevor Project, he made his own 'It Gets Better' video. He knew all about LGBT suicides.
But EricJames came froma  family  of "extremist" Christians, who called him "disgusting"and then kicked him out of their home last October.
For being gay.
His own parents, at one time, tried to perform an exorcism on him to make him straight, and therefore acceptable to their  "lifestyle". EricJames also endured emotional and physical abuse at school which caused him to drop out of high school. But, in his video, he said, it had gotten better for him: “You will love, be loved, and I love you...You are not alone.”
EricJames also created a short film called “Invisible Creatures,” in which he shows both gay and straight couples expressing their affection in similar ways because, let's understand one thing, love is love, no matter what gender the couple.
This was a young man who might have helped other LGBT youth to fight the urge to give up, to keep going, to know that it gets better,. but, in the end, probably for one brief moment, EricJames forgot all that, and decided it wouldn't get better.
We'll never know what he might have done as a filmmaker. 
We'll never know what he might have done to help LGBT youth.
We'll. Never. Know.


via Queer Landia and The Washington Post

Will There Be Criminal Charges For Jamey Rodemeyer's "Anonymous" Bullies?

The Amherst Police Department's Special Victims Unit in Buffalo, New York, have opened a criminal investigation in the suicide death of 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer, who was bullied online with gay slurs for more than a year.

He endured that for a year. Imagine yourself being taunted and teased and threatened for a year. Seriously. Imagine it. Now imagine you're fourteen.

The Amherst Police Department's SVU said it will determine whether to charge some students with harassment, cyber-harassment or hate crimes, saying that three students in particular might have been involved. Currently, there are no bullying laws in New York State, so police would have to determine whether aggravated harassment charges fit this case.

Imagine. You're fourteen, and thinking, feeling, wondering, questioning, your sexual orientation, and having to listen to the taunts and teases for years.

Some students posted anonymous messages on Jamey's Mindspring account, a website that allows anonymous posts:
"JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND [sic] UGLY. HE MUST DIE!"
"I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!"

Imagine you're fourteen and that's what people are saying to you. Every.Single.Day.

Every.Single.Day. And, though friends reported the bullying incidences to guidance counselors, everyone, including his mother, thought Jamey had grown stronger. But how do you grow stronger when this happens to you every single day. How do you 'get over it' or 'move on'?

Friends described him as caring and friendly, and he had been seeking help from a social worker and therapist. his own mother, who knew her son was questioning his sexual orientation, thought he'd grown stronger.

Until enough was too much.

In May, after coming out to friends, Jamey posted a YouTube video on the new online site, It Gets Better Project, which provides testimony from adults and celebrities to reassure troubled and potentially suicidal LGBT youth that life improves as they get older, saying, "Love yourself and you're set. ... I promise you, it will get better."

Sadly, for Jamey, it didn't. 

And now, hopefully, the police will find those 'anonymous' people who have nothing better to do than taunt and torment a young boy, and punish them. And hopefully parents and schools and school officials and law enforcement will begin to realize this isn't just fun that kids do. It isn't a game. Games don't end up with someone dead.

On Facebook, Jamey posted: "I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens. ... What do I have to do so people will listen to me? No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you're the ones calling me [gay slur] and tearing me down."

One of his last posts were the lyrics to a song by Hollywood Undead:
"I just wanna say good bye, disappear with no one knowing. ... I don't wanna live this lie, smiling to the world unknowing."

Hopefully, with the police involved, there will be justice for Jamey Rodemeyer, and hopefully, no one will have to endure bullying because of who they are, or who they love, or the color of their skin, their faith, or anything.


Hopefully, bullying will soon die out.


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Another One: Jamey Rodemeyer

Jamey Rodemeyer was just fourteen, and already the victim of bullying and harassment. But it looked like Jamey was going to survive the taunts and the teases; he even created his own 'It Gets Better' YouTube video, in which he said, in part, “That's all you have to do. Just love yourself and you're set. And I promise you, it'll get better.”

Sadly, for Jamey, it didn't get better.

Jamey Rodemeyer took his life this past Sunday, his parents discovering his body after returning from a weekend camping trip.

Tracy Rodemeyer, Jamey's mother, says he was always taunted and teased and bullied because of his sexuality: "So he hung around with the girls a lot, so then the teasing started happening like 'Oh you're such a girl or you're gay or whatever and that bothered him for many years."

Jamey’s father Tim Rodemeyer said, "To the kids who are bullying they have to realize that words are very powerful and what you think is just fun and games isn't to some people, and you are destroying a lot of lives."

It isn't just a game. it isn't just kids being kids, because kids being kids doesn't usually end up with one of the kids taking his or her own life.

It has to stop. The kids who are being bullied need to stand up and speak up to their parents and teachers about what's being done to them "all in good fun." And parents need to take this seriously; your kids are literally being bullied to death. this is not a joke, or a rite of passage. Bullying = Death.

And the schools, all schools everywhere, need to adopt, and enforce, a Zero Tolerance Policy on bullying. You bully a student, you're suspense. Do it again, you're out.

This has to stop. How do we let a young man like this take his own life? Why do we let it happen?



If you know of someone who is being bullied, or if you are the victim of bullying, there are plenty of places to seek help:

The Trevor Project 24/7 Suicide Hotline for GLBTQI Youth
1-866-4-U-Trevor 
www.thetrevorproject.org

USA National Suicide Prevention Hotline 24/7, Free & Confidential 
1-800-SUICIDE 
1-800-273-Talk

How to Get Help from Bullies? 
www.StopBullying.gov

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President Obama: It Gets Better

Beautiful words, beautifully spoken. And as DavidDust reminds us [HERE], we would likely never hear these words form a president McCain....or :::shudder::: President Mama Grizzly Bore, but......
I wish he'd have spoken sooner.
It always seems to me that he takes a little extra time when responding to issues important to the LGBT community. In fact, it seems, as he did with the Proclamation of Pride Month, that he speaks up after we hear from Secretary of Sate Hillary Clinton.
Just once, I'd like to hear him speak first.
Cynically out.

Bishop Gene Robinson: It Gets Better

Chris Colfer: It Gets Better

Hillary Clinton: It Gets Better

...And Again.....Tyler Clementi......

The other day I was talking to a couple of friends, and one mentioned that he'd been a little busy and hadn't read my blog lately, and, well, what was I writing about. So, I told him.....

Seth Walsh
Asher Brown
Justin Aarberg
Tyler Wilson
Billy Lucas 

I told him it was all sadness and death. The lives of young men so quickly ended because of taunts and teasing and shoves. Broken arms, broken lives, broken families left behind wondering what happened.

And then  came Tyler Clementi, and I almost couldn't bring myself to write about it. It seemed like my blog was all about suicide and bullies, but then, well, I call this place I Should Be Laughing, don't I? And these young men, and countless others who came and went before, and the others that will surely follow, all should be laughing. But they aren't.

Tyler Clementi is no longer laughing.

Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan has charged two Rutgers University freshmen, Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both eighteen, with two counts each of invasion of privacy for using a camera to view and transmit a live image of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi--Dharun Ravi's roommate--having sex with another male student.

Tyler Clementi killed himself after the video aired online. But it was all just a joke, right?

One that went too far. In fact, Dharun Ravi has also been charged with two additional counts of invasion of privacy for allegedly attempting to use the camera to view and transmit another encounter involving Clementi just two days after the first video.

Tyler Clementi wrote the following on his Facebook page: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry." His wallet was found on the George Washington Bridge, and his car parked nearby. His body was recovered from the Hudson River days later.

All in good fun.

Push them into a locker.
Call them names in the hallway.
Break their arms.
Invade their privacy and out them online.

All in good fun.

This is not an LGBT problem. This is an American problem. This problem needs to be solved by all of us, from friends and family, to the teachers and school administrators, and the courts. 

I am so sick of listening to school officials recite their little speeches about how they don't tolerate bullying, while a family readies themselves for a funeral.

I am sick of listening to people say that Ravi and Wei probably won't be charged with anything other than invasion of privacy because, well, that's really all they did wrong. Tell that to Tyler Clementi's family, who would still have their son if Ravi and Wei had found something better to do in September.

I am sick of parents saying it just kids being kids. It isn't; kids learn this behavior in their homes. When they hear their own families put down LGBT people, these kids begin to believe that's the acceptable way to act. They begin to believe that a push in the hallway is okay, as long as it's just a fag getting pushed. A broken arm is okay, if the arm is on the queer kid. Outing someone on the Internet is just plain fun.

And then they all express remorse when the news of the suicide breaks.

I didn't mean to do it.
It was just a joke.
We were just playing.

And yet someone dies.


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