September's Children

September's Children is the name currently given to several young men who committed suicide last September because of anti-gay bullying.

The youngest of these was Seth Walsh, 13. He was bullied relentlessly by fellow students who continously called him a fag, a queer, a homo. He tried to commit suicide by hanging in his backyard. The attempt was unsuccessful and he was discovered. However, enough damage had been done that he lived just 9 days on life support, before finally passing away.

Another was Tyler Clementi, 18. He jumped from the George Washington Bridge after his roommate and another "hallmate" at his school released two videos of him in sexual encounters with other men. His body was found a week later.

Billy Lucas, 15, also committed suicide because of anti-gay bullying at his school. He hung himself in his family's barn in Indiana. He had been told that he was nothing and that he should just kill himself.

There are many, too many, young men and women who have been lost to us because they were Homosexual or Bisexual or Transgendered and were bullied. Or bashed. Not all of them have been lost to suicide. Some have been lost to murder or have simply disappeared.

How many children and young adults must turn to suicide before something is done to help? How many of our future leaders, doctors, scientists, actors and liberators have to die before their time for us to realize that we have a real problem?

And who is teaching our children to hate? Who is showing them that violence is the right thing to do? Adults who have no respect for life, who are prejudiced and full of venom. Adults who claim that homosexuals who get married is what will destroy the constitution of marriage. And those same adults who say that are marrying and divorcing and fucking around with people that they aren't married to. But somehow, homosexuality is going to destroy the institution of marriage! Christians, like Pat Robertson, who speak for intolerance and practically preach murder when they speak of homosexuality.

How are they supposed to learn any different? Hate is taught. Hate is learned. We do not come into this world with hate, though we leave this world with it raging through our veins.

In honor of all those who have died during the struggle to be counted as equals.