"One Town's War on Gay Teens"

After reading the Rolling Stone article “One Town’s War on Gay Teens” I had a pit in my stomach and rage brewing inside of me.  It breaks my heart to know so many kids were so miserable in their lives that they would chose to end it at such an early age. I pity the ignorance of people in this town and similar ones all over the world who practice this intolerance. This issue becomes even more tangled due to the fact that most of the intolerance for GLBTQ people is tied into their religion. You cannot tell people to stop practicing their religion and you can’t tell people that their religion is wrong. This only promotes more intolerance. In this specific situation I place blame on a few parties of people, the board of education, students, parents, and the church. All of these parties contributed to nine suicides in just three years.  

When the school board was addressed by the issue and took no action the children lost hope and found self-hatred. When their parents treated the problem lightly or ignored it completely the children lost their security. When the students tormented the GLBTQ students they confirmed all of the horrible things that those students already felt about themselves. When the Church made the GLBTQ students believe that “Homosexuality is a form of mental illness caused by family dysfunction, childhood trauma and exposer to pornography.” They lost their self worth. The school did not allow an alliance club for these students. They felt like they had no one and never would. It was to unbearable living the way they were, so they took their lives.

This article makes this town out to be the center of all evil. The sad reality is that this can happen absolutely anywhere. Bullying is a current nationwide epidemic. Until the problem is resolved unfortunately suicides will continue. I believe a suicide could easily occur at my highschool, but I am confident when I say that I know drastic measures would be taken to deter this option and prevent the desperation. I think that this town went very wrong when nothing changed after the first suicide.  They made it seem like it was okay for GLBTQ students to do this because they had something wrong with them.