Communities Respond to Gay Teen Suicides

Suicide among gay youth has become one of the most talked-about issues within the LGBT community as well as in the mainstream media. Programs and organizations have been created on both a national and local level to prevent gay teens from taking their life, most notably the "It Gets Better" campaign.

School officials are attempting to become proactive rather than reactive in the face of the alarming spate of recent suicides.

In Syracuse, N.Y., for example, a group of guidance councilors talked with teachers and Syracuse school district officials about local anti-bullying policies. CNYCentral.com reported that the district's officials said that every city school has a gay-straight alliance as well as anti-bullying policies. They also said that they are looking into programs that will help educate staff on how to create a more tolerant environment for gay students.

One program comes from the Queering Education Research Institute at Syracuse University. The program's director, Dr. Elizabethe Payne, said the program will educate teachers on how to prevent homophobic bullying.

"You hear a number of reasons," Payne said. "One that teachers give often is that they hear it so often if they intervened every time they heard it they would never get their papers graded." She added that one of the biggest problems is that teachers ignore anti-gay remarks."

Bernadette DeMott, an English teacher and advisor for the gay-straight alliance at Henninger High School, told the newspaper that the school needs to improve how it handles anti-gay bullying.

"They don't deserve to feel the pain that they do, when they're thinking about who they are, and they're learning for the first time who they are," DeMott said.

A high school district in Minnesota that has come in for withering criticism after several gay-related suicides is finally taking serious steps to improve the environment for gay students. The Anoka-Hennepin School District in suburban Minneapolis is currently amending its bullying policies after the U.S. Department of Justice found that the district did not do enough to prevent anti-gay bullying. But an anti-gay conservative group, the Parents Action League (PAL), is demanding that the district protect bullies who harass students for being gay, according to an article in Think Progress.

PAL wanted pro-family and "ex-gay" groups to train the school district's counselors and other staff members. The organization also wanted to tell students that being gay could be harmful. The school district's chairman, Tom Heidemann, refused to give into the organization's demands.

PAL also wanted the schools to teach students that homosexuality is a disorder. "We accept all students and we do not consider them to have a disorder if they identify as gay or support their gay friends," Hinderman responded.

In Washington State, the suicide of a 14-year-old gay teen recently shook the residents of Cashmere, a small farming town east of Seattle. Rafael Morelos, who was openly gay, was found hanging from an irrigation bridge not far from his home. Several people in the conservative community reacted strongly to the teen's death.

Although it is not known if bullying was the main reason for Morelos' suicide, an online petition was created in order for Morelos' school district to enforce its anti-bullying policies. More than 750 people have signed the petition.

"The bottom line is we lost a kid," Cashmere School Superintendent Glenn Johnson told the Seattle Times. "That's of concern no matter what the reason is."