Hundreds gather to remember victims of anti-gay bullying

Hundreds of New Yorkers gathered in Washington Square Park in the cold and wet last night to remember the six youths who took their own lives last month as a result of anti-gay bullying. A vigil was also held on the Rutgers campus where Tyler Clementi, one of the victims, was a freshman.

MIND members from SPSA, PSUMC, New Day and Church of the Village (and possibly others we didn’t see — let us know) were at the New York gathering, which was organized by NYU students.

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and New York Governor David Paterson were there as well. Paterson expressed our collective anguish when he said targets of bullying are “singled out for persecution for nothing more than being who you were born as.” He recited the litany of abuse and the widespread nature of anti-gay bullying in U.S. schools and punctuated his account with the repeated cadence “Attention must be paid.”

Indeed. The six boys and young men who were tormented to death – Justin Aaberg, age 15, from Anoka, Minnesota, Seth Walsh, age 13, from Tehechapi, California, Billy Lucas, age 15, from Greensburg, Indiana, Asher Brown, age 13, from Cypress, Texas, Tyler Clementi, age 18, at Rutgers University and Raymond Chase, age 19, at Johnson & Wales University – are but the most horrifying statistic in an epidemic of bigotry and bullying against queer youth. Nine out of 10 LGBT students are harassed in school; six out of 10 feel unsafe; and four out of 10 have missed school in the last month because they feel unsafe.

At the end of the vigil, in which participants held glowsticks in place of candles (which are banned in the park), organizers handed out chalk as part of the You-Are-Loved Chalk Message Project. In the next half hour the pavement, the fountain and the arch in the park were transformed into an outpouring of love and support for young queer people. Then someone hung their glowstick in one of the trees and soon the tree was turned into a neon memorial. The rain continued but no one left. The need to be together as a queer community under assault, the need to give expression to the grief and the need to find hope and determination to move forward were palpable.

There has been an outpouring of grief and anguish and anger from the gay community in response to these bullycides. Journalist Dan Savage has started a video campaign called “It Gets Better.” Talk show host Ellen Degeneres has made a moving statement. Reconciling congregations and activists have spoken out. RMN’s Troy Plummer wrote an incredibly powerful blog. In response to an appeal from MIND on Saturday, a dozen pastors from across the country sent messages that they were raising the issue and calling for an end to homophobic bullying in their pulpits yesterday; Kevin Johnson from Bloom in the Desert Ministries sent us his sermon.

Yet our annual conference has been silent, as have other institutional church bodies. This is intolerable. As members of a denomination that helps perpetuate anti-gay bias through its own homophobic pronouncements and policies of discrimination, we must hold our church accountable for its role in fueling the bigotry and bullying. We cannot be silent and we cannot do nothing. We need to talk about it in our churches on Sunday. We need to be visible dissenters from our denomination’s homophobia and actively, explicitly welcome LGBT people. We need to preach the message – in our churches and in the community – that God made some of us queer and God loves us that way. And we need to redouble our efforts to end the shameful exclusion and prejudice of the United Methodist Church.

More photos from the vigil are on MIND’s Facebook page.