Responsibility

I've been thinking a whole lot about the suicide of Terry Clementi. I've been thinking about my anger at the stupid, thoughtless roommate whose "prank" led Clementi to take his own life. I've thought about the whole online culture in which, as I recently heard in a discussion on NPR, there is no longer an expectation of privacy among people who have grown up on MySpace and now Facebook and Twitter. Since they don't expect it, they feel no need to grant it to others.

I have been thinking about who, or what, is responsible. Can we just lay this at the feet of Tyler Clementi, pushed too far, panicking at the response of his family and loved ones if news got out? Can we lay this at the feet of his chuckle-head roommate, who gathered a group to sit and watch as Tyler made out with another man, then posted the video online? Can we lay it at the feet of a culture that no longer understands there is a wall between private and public? Did Ravi see no difference between what he was doing and the millions of people who tune in to Jersey Shore and the various Real Housewives programs?

I also have been thinking, again, about Tony Kushner's infamous/famous article in The Nation, written in response to the murder of Matthew Shepard.

A lot of people worry these days about the death of civil discourse, and would say that I ought not call the Pope a homicidal liar, nor (to be ecumenical about it) the orthodox rabbinate homicidal liars, nor Trent Lott a disgusting opportunistic hatemonger. But I worry a lot less about the death of civil discourse than I worry about being killed if, visiting the wrong town with my boyfriend, we forget ourselves so much as to betray, at the wrong moment in front of the wrong people, that we love one another. I worry much more about the recent death of the Maine antidiscrimination bill, and about the death of the New York hate crimes bill, which will not pass because it includes sexual orientation. I worry more about the death of civil rights than civil discourse. I worry much more about the irreversible soul-deaths of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered children growing up deliberately, malevolently isolated by the likes of Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich than I worry about the death of civil discourse. I mourn Matthew Shepard's actual death, caused by the unimpeachably civil "we hate the sin, not the sinner" hypocrisy of the religious right, endorsed by the political right, much more than I mourn the lost chance to be civil with someone who does not consider me fully a citizen, nor fully human. I mourn that cruel death more than the chance to be civil with those who sit idly by while theocrats, bullies, panderers and hatemongers, and their crazed murderous children, destroy democracy and our civic life. Civic, not civil, discourse is what matters, and civic discourse mandates the assigning of blame.

If you are lesbian, gay, transgendered, bi, reading this, here's one good place to assign blame: The Human Rights Campaign's appalling, post-Shepard endorsement of Al D'Amato dedicates our resources to the perpetuation of a Republican majority in Congress. The HRC, ostensibly our voice in Washington, is in cahoots with fag-bashers and worse. If you are a heterosexual person, and you are reading this: Yeah yeah yeah, you've heard it all before, but if you have not called your Congressperson to demand passage of a hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation, and e-mailed every Congressperson, if you have not gotten up out of your comfortable chair to campaign for homosexual and all civil rights--campaign, not just passively support--may you think about this crucified man, and may you mourn, and may you burn with a moral citizen's shame. As one civilized person to another: Matthew Shepard shouldn't have died. We should all burn with shame.

Hard words. Prophetic words, too. Rather than lash out at the Ravis of this world, maybe I, for one, should look inside and realize I haven't seen enough of this to really get angry enough. This one event is horrible enough. The endemic nature of maltreatment of sexual minorities, in particular sexual-minority youth, demands more than just anger, even angry words.

It demands we do something about this. It needs to stop. People are dying. I don't care one whit whether or not it is line with Christian teaching, or western traditions, or whatever argument one wishes to make. Real people are dying because some people think it is OK to treat other human beings as less worthy, less acceptable just because they don't love the way most of the rest of us do.

Maybe God really doesn't sanction gay marriage. Maybe being gay is akin to being a murderer, or a pedophile in the eyes of God. My only response to that is, if that is so, I will still insist that we need to work to stop this. People are dying. Young men and women are drinking and drugging and cutting themselves and jumping to their deaths because they feel cast aside - by their families, their peers, and their churches. Their lives are far more important to me than whether or not I am "correct" in reading a Bible passage.

To blame or not to blame? Not quite sure where to go with that. Responsibility, though, starts with the only person whose life I can control completely - me.