Greensburg, Indiana:
Students told Fox59 News it was common knowledge that children bullied Billy and from what they said, it was getting worse. Last Thursday, Billy's mother found him dead inside their barn. He had hung himself.
Students said on that same day, some students told Billy to kill himself.
"They said stuff like 'you're like a piece of crap' and 'you don't deserve to live.' Different things like that. Talked about how he was gay or whatever," said Swango.
Make it stop. I can't write another one of these. I wrote one for Jaheem Herrera last year. I wrote one when the Michigan legislature failed to pass Matt's Law...again. I don't want to write another one. I don't want to have to sit and think of a mother destroyed, reduced to tears as she mourns the loss of her son. I don't want to have to sit and think of a father, haunted for the rest of his life by the face of his son, tormented by the thought that he could've done more.
We can do more.
Every time Sally Kern calls gays a national security risk, we can do more.
Every time the House and Senate refuse to move on HR 2262, the Safe Schools Improvement Act, we can do more.
Every time an entertainer who, like it or not, has the attention of millions makes jokes about committing a drive-by at a same-sex wedding, we can do more.
Write your legislators. Ask them to pass HR 2262. Donate to candidates who support equality. Volunteer at an event. March in a protest. Donate to your local PFLAG chapter. We can do more.
We have to do more. We have to do more to save our kids. I can't handle another Billy Lucas. Another Jaheem Herrera. Another Carl Joseph Walker Hoover. Another Matt Epling. Too many lives cut too short by a culture that treats LGBT people as less than human. Too many mothers crying over caskets. Too many fathers carrying photos of their dead sons. Too many destroyed families. Make it stop.
UPDATE: This got a lot more eyeballs than I thought it would. As long as you're here, do something positive: text TREVOR to 85944 and donate $5.00 to the Trevor Project, the country's leading suicide prevention organization aimed at LGBT youth.