A young 11-year-old boy killed himself after constantly being bullied and called gay or too feminine. Recently his mother spoke out:
"It's not just a gay issue," Walker said. "It's bigger. He was 11 years old, and he wasn't aware of his sexuality. These homophobic people attach derogatory terms to a child who's 11 years old, who goes to church, school, and the library, and he becomes confused. He thinks, Maybe I'm like this. Maybe I'm not. What do I do?"
I would disagree and say it is a gay issue. Whether this child was gay or not will never be known, but he was referred to as one in such a derogatory way that he eventually killed himself. Is this the kind of behaviour we want in our schools?
In a recent ad campaign the National Organization for Marriage brought up an example of a Massachusetts mom who "helplessly" has to let her child learn that gay marriage is okay. Ignoring the horrible misrepresentation of the facts, at face value is that a bad thing? No! We need to teach our children that being gay is okay, because the fact of the matter as that being gay is a matter of who you are from birth and if you teach your children bigotry the results are as tragic as the example above. Too many children kill themselves when they can't handle the pressures of being gay and living in a world where their parents, their friends, or their perceived God hates them for who they are. This problem is propogated by the child bigots, armed with the teachings of their homophobic parents, who verbally torture students for seeming gay, whether it's true or not.
Gay Marriage is not just about allowing same-sex couples to have the same rights as dual-gender couples, but to also show that being gay is okay. It is so vitally important to let the children who are dealing with their own homosexuality to know that they are not abominations, that they are not wrong, that they have a place in our society.
We absolutely MUST think of the children in order to prevent tragedies like this from happening again.
