"Around 30 minutes ago, as I sat eating breakfast at the counter of my favorite diner and editing the text for the Spring issue of On Makeup Magazine, a news story on CNN broke through my focus. Within minutes, the next news story fading out in the background and with tears welling up in my eyes, I headed out to write this email.
This past Monday, on the heels of Easter Sunday, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover hung himself with electrical cord on the second floor his mother's Springfield, Massachusetts home.
Carl was 11 year old. This Friday would have been his 12th birthday.
Over the past year, Carl endured excessive bullying at his new school, The New Leadership Charter School. There were daily taunts of being gay - called a faggot, queer and constantly physically threatened. The week before his suicide he was even threatened with death by a female classmate.
Despite his mother's weekly pleas to school administrators to address the problem, and the school's clearly defined anti-bullying policy, nothing changed.
Without a constant support system - including one in place at school - where one can share the difficulties and pain of growing up "different", life can be full of pain and eventually became too much to bear. When you feel alone and hated for who you are, the simplest parts of your daily life can be fraught with stress. The bus ride to school. Lunch in the cafeteria. Gym glass. All so painful that the thought of leaving it all behind can not only enter ones mind - but can become the only option they see in front of them.
Let's be clear here - we don't even know if Carl was, in fact, gay, but the perception and accusation were clearly devastating enough on their own to do serious damage to his sense of self-worth and desire to live.
Growing up gay was certainly not easy back in the '70s and '80s when myself and so many others that in my life were the same age as Carl. One would hope that with the advances over the past 20 years in visibility and in the creation of equal rights laws for gay men and women, bisexual and transgendered persons, we would be at a place in our history where such a tragedy could not happen. It can. It does. It did.
We as a society, even the gay society, can quickly forget or overlook that pain. For many of us, we were young and gay at a time when the world saw being gay very differently. Even the most obvious homosexuality in our culture was looked to with an oversight of don't-ask, don't-tell: Freddie Mercury, Elton John, Liberace and The Village People all clearly gay, but with barely a nod to their sexuality back in the day.
Popular culture has embraced so many things "gay" - Will & Grace, Ellen, a gay wedding on All My Children, Lance Bass, Ricky Martin (yes he's gay and out - enough already), gay contestants featured on American Idol and so many other examples that they are too numerous to list - that one would hope that the times of tip-toeing around the issue in public places - like school - would be over with for good. Clearly they are not.
With the passing of Vermont and Iowa laws allowing the union of same-sex partners - joining the ranks of Connecticut and Massachusetts, along with Governor David Patterson's plan to introduce a gay marriage bill in New York State, and President Obama formerly endorsing a U.N. statement calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality (a measure that former President George W. Bush had refused to sign - no surprise there), I hope that we are on our way to a more accepting and tolerant world.
But with the passing of Prop 8 in California, a new Archbishop in NYC who is strongly in support of preserving the sanctity of marriage, and similar political and religious groups pushing hard to keep gays in their place - not necessarily the closet but at least not in a wedding chapel - we have a long way to go. And for the record - we don't want to get married in your church - so get over it and move on.
Maybe if those who oppose any aspect of homosexuality, for whatever reason, would keep their gay-negative thoughts to themselves and not share them at the dinner table, or even express a positive live-and-let-live message instead of one filled with fear or revulsion, Carl's mother might be celebrating her little boy's birthday this Friday and not a memorial in his honor.
Carl wanted to become president so he could change the world.
I for one am devastated that he will never have the chance.
Teach tolerance not hatred.
Teach acceptance not rejection.
Celebrate diversity."
Proudly gay,
Michael DeVellis
Executive Director, The Powder Group
I didn't really know what to say but this was my reply:
Dear Michael
Thank you for sending this message.
I too don't know what it will take for gay people to be treated fairly in this world, but I guess it starts with each one of us taking a stand as you have and saying we are proud to be who we are and that we care about others like the young Carl in this story.
I grew up before the word gay or homosexual was even spoken in public. School was a place of torture for me. Recess, gym class, the school bus and student lounges were places especially dangerous for me that I had to avoid at all costs.
Some how I made it to graduation (it was my duty to graduate high school as no other member of my immediate family ever had). I didn't go to my Prom and almost didn't take part in my Graduation service until the last minute because I thought why should I, I hate all those kids.
It's hard to believe that in 2009 things are still so unbearable for young school age children like Carl that they only want to make the pain go away, even if it means taking their own life.
I stand with you as a proud gay person and am willing to fight for the lives of children like Carl, that their future, and the future of all people that are different then the majority, can live a life of peace and happiness.
David Frank Ray
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