Monster Culture Claims Another of its Own

by Alice Doyle

Another teen made national news last month for taking his own life.  Fourteen year old Jamey Rodemeyer died outside his Buffalo home September 18 after being taunted by classmates for years.

            One week later, Jamey’s parents appeared on The Today Show urging American parents to “make their kids talk” and calling for an end to bullying, a rally cry echoed by celebrities such as Ricky Martin and Lady Gaga.  Jamey’s father, Tim Rodemeyer, called the kids who bullied his son “heartless”.

            Awful as it is, Jamey’s is not a new story.  Ann Curry observed that 4500 kids between the ages of 10 and 20 committed suicide in the United States last year.  Though her statistics were not specific, she observed that, like Jamey, a large percentage were lesbian or gay.  She raised the question of whether “intolerant” pastors and politicians who preach against the homosexual lifestyle were partly to blame for the deaths.

            Given the higher rate of suicide among sexually deviant teens, it is perhaps noteworthy that people are not asking different questions or raising other possibilities.  For instance, does the identification of oneself as lesbian or gay cause despair and lead to suicide?  Does lack of parental involvement or school culture play a role?  For several years now, there has been much emphasis on bullying as the cause of suicide in cases such as Jamey’s.  Popular opinion seems to indicate that intolerance is the root cause of the problem.  Intolerance is defined as any word or deed suggesting that there is anything wrong or unequal about the homosexual lifestyle.  Supposedly, by stamping out "intolerance" through new laws, all will be well.  Never mind that this is both impossible and a violation of our civil rights.

Suicide is not a normal response to taunting, teasing or even verbal abuse.

Meet a new contributor to Les Femmes

I want to welcome a new contributor to the Les Femmes blog, Alice Doyle. Alice is a home schooling mother of five daughters age 16 to three, who is also a part-time college Spanish professor and amateur photographer. here's what she says about herself on her blog profile:

Wife. Mother, Teacher and Writer. My heroes: Anne Shirley, Sarah Crewe, Patty Bergen, Elizabeth Bennett, Laura Ingalls, Thomas More, Ignatius of Loyola, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, CS Lewis and Stonewall Jackson. Thank you for reading!

Here's Alice's contribution, the first of what I hope will be many more!

But For The Grace


I've been listening to a bit of sports radio lately. My husband, Chris, has it on in the Pilot so, when I drive that car, I catch up on how the other half thinks. I don't know about you but I find it truly amazing that men can remember every important sports moment and have an opinion on everything related to, say, football, but can never seem to remember the details of a conversation--like the name of a friend's new baby. Truly a mystery, no?

But that's not the subject of this post. Yesterday, when I turned the key and backed out of the driveway, host Colin Cowherd was talking about Michael Vick. He was commenting that he couldn't go so far as to say that MV is evil, he simply assumes that Vick is missing something in his brain, an important part, one that would tell him that something like watching two dogs tear each other apart is evil. I'm guessing that Cowherd was responding to a call about Michael Vick's new contract. Perhaps the caller brought up Vick's transgressions and the "injustice" of his multi-million dollar paycheck in light of his past. I don't know. What I do know is that Cowherd's comments made me cringe--a feeling that had less to do with the specifics of Michael Vick and his circumstances than with the enormous lack of a sense of "there, but for the grace of God, go I" that I encounter over and over in my life.