The face staring up at me from my Internet homepage was not a celebrity. It belonged to a boy my age, barely out of high school, who should be enjoying his first month of college. Yet Tyler Clementi was not wandering his new campus. His body had just been dredged up from the bottom of a river. The Rutgers University freshman had killed himself after his roommate posted a video of Tyler's private sexual encounter with another male student online. Clementi is one of several gay students known to have committed suicide this month.
The article I read about his death included several links to memorial groups on Facebook. Their walls were cluttered with words of kindness and compassion for the bullied teen, support that could have done so much good a mere 24 hours prior. But right alongside the memorials, I found another group formed in support of Clementi's tormentors. One post on the page stuck out: "Nothing of value was lost."
Nothing of value was lost. A human being, a talented musician, a unique soul full of promise was nothing. In a country presided over by a black president, a gay college student is … nothing. In a culture where queer characters make up the starring cast of some of TV's most popular shows, a bullied gay boy is still … nothing.
This tragedy serves as another painful reminder that while gayness may be in vogue on TV, homophobia did not disappear with the birth of our generation. Tufts has always seemed to me to be a bastion of hope, a shining example of the spread of tolerance and understanding. On campus, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Center's "Guess the Straight Person" was so popular that interested audiences gladly hustled through the rain and sat on the auditorium floor just to watch. And yet, at a college a few states away, a gay student cannot find peace in his own dorm room.
Such disdain is difficult to understand. Even more so is the common connection between religion and homophobia. Religious justifications covered the anti−Clementi Facebook page. Religious groups are often the first to protest any increase in rights granted to gays. They point to the source of their anger in the Bible. To them I would point out that there is no asterisk next to "love thy neighbor."
LGBT students ask for tolerance. What they deserve is so much more than that. Tolerance demands only a lack of criticism. It entails no positive action. According to the response to this tragedy, it seems that most of Tyler Clementi's fellow students did not mock, or likely even know about, his sexual orientation. Yet that was not enough to stop the effects of the hate of one other person. What Tyler needed was support and love, not silence. Not tolerance.
Within the next four years, this student body will have left this idyllic campus to make its way in a world that we will define however we choose. Will we enter in silence? Or will we become active protectors of human dignity? It's our choice. We decide if we use the word "gay" as a metaphor for stupid and if we stand idly by while our friends do the same. We decide if we will prolong the lives of slurs like "fag" and "dyke." We decide if we will step in when we see harassment and humiliation. Action or silence. We decide.
For those who cannot believe in the rightness of gayness, believe in the rightness of love. One does not have to support a person's choices to support his or her dignity as a human being. Fighting for gay rights is not tantamount to advocating for homosexuality but rather to recognizing and respecting the rights of every person. Religion does not call upon us to be judges on this earth; it demands that we love equally. The Bible may call a gay woman a sinner, but the same title is given to the one who hates her.
No amount of grief or anger can right the wrongs against Tyler Clementi. All that is left for us to do is make his suicide the last. As students we can keep Tufts a sanctuary for all orientations, and as people we can make sure that the plague of homophobia preys on our country no longer. Let us be bastions of hope and love on this Hill.
Staring at Tyler Clementi's smiling face, I wondered if he would have met a better fate had he come to this campus instead. I decided that the answer was yes. I hope Tufts proves me right.
