I've been very busy with the new granddaughter lately, so things have been hectic, but all is well. I just wanted to diary this because the news of Tyler Clementi's suicide hit close to home. My son is gay. During the worst years of his life--high school--he wrote this essay during an especially bad patch in his life. I reread it often to remind myself of what my son is made of, and to honor those, like Tyler, whose stories end in unbearable tragedy.
With his full permission, this is his essay, written when he was eighteen, a senior in high school, on the night a brick was hurled through our window:
Being young and gay. Being young and gay in the South. The Bible Belt. Leviticus is screamed from the throats of men whose hearts have hardened against people they don't understand. That don't want to understand.
Being young and gay in the south, I discovered who I was on my own. Now that I think about it, the years it took for me to realize who I was were not the worst part. That came later.
Fucking Leviticus.
An opinion weighed against me from a book written over a thousand years ago. Not by God. God didn't write that shit. God doesn't write books, he is simply all that is love and goodness inside us. Dan Bern sang, "Love, love love, is everything."
Okay.
I guess.
Whatever.
Living in the Land of Leviticus and being gay and being young is no easy thing. Even when there are those that love and accept you. Being alone would be tantamount to being insane. Or dead. Or a living dead guy walking around with no hope or options, because in the Land of Leviticus there are no options available because there is no hope here.
Here in the Land of Leviticus where a brick bearing the poorly written message "Fuk U Fagut" was hurled through my front window I can do nothing but watch the police take the brick away and shrug and say "boys will be boys." Pranks. This is what passes for "pranks" in the Land of Leviticus. Here in this land a person is not judged based on what he or she does, or does not do in the face of oppression or violence or injustice. Rather judgement is rendered based on who one loves. It is a bitter irony that love should be shunned and thought a sin while hate is passed off as "prankish."
In the Land of Leviticus there is no love or justice. Those things are sins. Injustice is justice and love is perverse.
Standing amongst the shattered remnants of a simple window in a simple home I can't help but ponder the Orwellian nature of the Land of Leviticus. Where justice is moot. Where love is perverse. Where torment is laughed off as "boys are gonna be boys."
I can only conclude with something my father told me about bigots. He once said that, "Bigots are like ticks. They try to suck the life out of you, but you flick them off and they're gone."
I like that. I find that the middle finger is the best finger for flicking. And fuck Leviticus.
To all of you that don't get the Dan Bern reference, here's the song: