It was just a few days into the first week of school when a 9-year-old boy took his life. According to Julie Turkewitz from The New York Times, fourth grade Jamel Myles hanged himself in his bedroom after reaching his breaking point due to bullying.
According to ABC 7 News, over the summer Myles told his mother that he was gay and was planning to tell his classmates when school started.
“He looked so scared when he told me,” Leia Pierce told KDVR-TV. “He was like, ‘Mom I’m gay.’ And I thought he was playing, so I looked back because I was driving, and he was all curled up, so scared. And I said, I still love you.”
He was a typical victim of bullying at Joe Shoemaker Elementary School in Denver the previous year and the taunting continued well through this current year of school.
According to Caitlin O’Kane from CBS News, Jamel’s mother was devastated. “My son told my oldest daughter the kids at school told him to kill himself. I’m just sad he didn’t come to me.” This reaction to people in the LGBTQ community, especially young members, is all too familiar.
As a general reminder, LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and historical evidence proves this community has technically been around for centuries in every culture.
According to Dr. Bonnie J. Morris from the American Psychological Association, “from the lyrics of same-sex desire inscribed by Sappho in the seventh century BCE to youths raised as the opposite sex in cultures ranging from Albania to Afghanistan; from the ‘female husbands’ of Kenya to the Native American ‘Two-Spirit,’ alternatives to the Western male-female and heterosexual binaries thrived across millennia and culture.”
But despite having existed for centuries, whether with a name or not, the LGBTQ community has been facing the same hardships for a while, with minimal improvement.
More and more young people are coming out to their friends and family, but not everyone can be so accepting. Elementary school, middle school, high school can all be hard enough for young people, trying to get good grades, meet new friends and figure who they are without having to justify who they like or why it is okay. Bullying can be found in every school and coming out can unfortunately stick an easy target on a student’s back.
Bullying is never okay in any form, at any age. In many cases, kids are told they are unwanted and that they should just kill themselves because of who they are and who they choose to love. People should be able to love who they love and be who they want to be without being questioned for it. When children feel that the only way to make the pain and bullying stop is to end their own lives, something has to change.
Children are young so they change their minds about a lot. Such as what they want to be when they grow up and what they want to eat for dinner. So if they come out and say that they like the same sex or do not feel right as the gender they were assigned to at birth, it is possible as they grow and learn more about sexuality that they will change their mind in this regard too. However, it is also possible that they stick to their original statement and it is not anyone’s place to judge or discriminate.
It is time for people to start stepping up and stepping in to prevent tragedies like this from reoccurring. It is true what they say, about how it takes a whole village to raise a child.
No one should suffer in silence. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1-800-273-8255 and it is open 24 hours everyday.
