Saintless

Children across this country are being bullied at school, being called gay, and harassed for it. Not all of these children are gay. But, they are being tormented over it. So far this year, at least 2 children have killed themselves because of it. 11 year-old Carl Walker-Hoover felt so tormented by other children at school that he hung himself just a couple of weeks ago. Last week, Jaheem Herrera followed that same path.

On Thursday afternoon, after returning home from school, fifth-grader Jaheem quietly went into his room and hanged himself. His 10-year-old sister, Yerralis, also a fifth-grader, discovered Jaheem’s dead body.

“His sister was screaming, ‘Get him down, get him down,’” said Norman Keene, who helped raise Jaheem since the boy was two years old.

When Keene got to the room, he saw Yerralis holding her brother, trying to remove the pressure of the noose her brother had fashioned with a fabric belt.

Jaheem was bullied relentlessly, his family said. Keene said the family knew the boy was a target, but until his death they didn’t understand the scope.

“We’d ask him, ‘Jaheem, what’s wrong with you?’” Keene recalled. “He’d never tell us.”

He didn’t want his sister to tell, either. She witnessed much of the bullying, and many times rose to her brother’s defense, Keene said.

“They called him gay and a snitch,” his stepfather said. “All the time they’d call him this.”

This should not be happening to our children. It just shouldn’t. These people calling themselves Christians who spread the idea that it’s ok to hate and harass people for being gay must have read about a different Christ than I did. It makes me think of what Mahatma Gandhi said:

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Being so mean to an 11 year old boy that he commits suicide is just something I cannot fathom. Each of these boys had endured this enough that their parents were trying to get the school to help. This wasn’t a one time thing for either of them. This was ongoing, and so hurtful that they each took their own lives. My heart is broken, I am sitting at my desk in tears.

And then I find this atrocity, by the Illinois Family Institute, a group pretending to spread the ideas of Christ:

If you cannot bring yourself to watch all of it, here is part of what I took away from it. The music in the background is a bit ominous, and it seems to be aimed at children. The purpose is for them to not participate in the Day of Silence, which was April 16, and was intended to bring attention anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.

The video is titled Dare to Stand: Rethinking the Day of Silence.

It tells children that “schools are being …coerced…to bring attention to anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender name calling, bullying, and harassment.”

So, it’s telling children that bullying and harassing other children for being gay is ok.

It goes on to say “Hiding beneath this glossy veneer is the truth than in nearly every study it is the homosexual who is more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, to accept abusive relationships,  to acquire and spread sexually transmitted diseases, to suffer in depression and doubt, even to view suicide as a solution.”

My jaw dropped at this. It’s almost as if they’re trying to tell these kids that if they bully another kid for being gay, and that kid commits suicide, it’s just because the kid was gay, and the harassment had nothing to do with it.

The video portrays this teacher with a ruler slapping a child for reading a bible, and then throwing it away. The child goes on to “stand up” for the bible and for the idea that homosexuality is wrong.

This video made me sick. The video is seriously defending bullies. It’s a response to the Day of Silence, and a response to these 11 year old boys who took their own lives as a result of anti-gay bullying. It’s just so wrong I want to scream. This is NOT CHRISTIAN. Jesus Christ would NEVER have done this, or condoned this. You take your beliefs that being gay is wrong and believe whatever you want, but the moment it hurts someone else, even if it’s just their feelings, you become the worst kind of hypocrite imaginable.

Not another child should ever die for a reason like this. Ever.