We Shouldn't Have To

We Shouldn't Have To

Tyler Clementi, an eighteen-year old college student in New Jersey, committed suicide last week after being harassed for being gay. Clementi's death follows those of Billy Lucas, age 15, Ashter Brown, 13, and Seth Walsh, also 13, all gay teens who recently committed suicide, purportedly due to constant bullying. Looking back further, Clementi's death has echos of the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, which lead to the enactment of hate crime legislation in several states, including the targeted deaths of gay men and women as hate crimes. These deaths are rapidly becoming the rule, not the exception, for gay youths.
Simply put, this is disgusting. The unhappy losses of these young people only further magnifies the central issue when fighting for gay rights in America: there is a culture in the country that tells children there there is something inherently wrong about being gay, something so heinously wrong about it that it's better to kill themselves than to live as gay men and women.
The blockage in the Senate of the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell is only another organization telling these children that because they are gay, they are not good enough. Not good enough to serve America, not good enough to get married.
We shouldn't have to tell LGBT youth not to contemplate suicide. We shouldn't have to tell them that they just need to 'hang on' through the harassment until it gets better, or that yes, they are just as important as everyone else. We shouldn't have to read stories or hear commentary about the deaths of gay youths. We shouldn't have to because the harassment shouldn't exist in the first place.
America must allow Clementi's death to do what Shepard's did in the 90s: make progress for the rights of the gay community. If not a change in the laws surrounding gay marriage, it must act as a motivator to finally repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. It would be irresponsible for the US Senate to look at the influence they can potentially have upon gay youths like Clementi and not pass the retraction of Don't Ask Don't Tell. The change of this policy could, quite literally, save lives- not only in the military, but also at home. It could validate to scores of gay youth their importance to America, and if that is a possibility at all, it is worth it to repeal just for that. Using Clementi's death to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell would not be politicizing it. It would be possibly saving some other Tyler Clementi out there from committing suicide because he didn't think he was good enough.