The Political Connection to Gay Youth Suicide

A lot has happened since I blogged last.

1. The New Jersey veto that denied family planning funds to NJ women was not overridden.

2. The Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal failed.

3. Six gay teens have committed suicide.

Dear readers, let me direct you back to items 2 and 3. I will line them up again for visual effect:

1. The Don't Ask Don't tell repeal failed.
2. Six Gay teenagers have committed suicide in the last three weeks.

I believe there is a connection between the failure to overturn DADT, the anti-gay marriage campaigns, and the recent suicides of gay youth. Anti-gay messages are INTERNALIZED, especially by youth. We are concerned about youth and violent video games, youth being exposed to sexualized images, youth drinking, but what about youth being told that THEY ARE WRONG, that THEY SHOULD LIVE IN THE SHADOWS. That it is ok to be gay, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T TELL ANYONE.

Messages are strong, especially when you feel alone, especially when you are scared. Often the voice that says you are not ok is the voice that drowns out everything else.

I have been touched by the public grieving process in churches, in communities, on college campuses and on Facebook. I am buoyed by the fact that perhaps these youth will not loose their lives for nothing, that their lives will re-energize the gay rights movement and our allie, that people will see that it isn't so easy to be gay today and that everything is not as ok and "liberal" as it seems.

A tenant of feminism is that the personal is political. When there is a wave of suicide by gay youth something is going on in our larger community and it is up to us to mobilize and not take no for an answer. It is a matter of survival, if not ours, then theirs.