Should Adults Encourage Teen Suicide?

The Hemlock Society wants to kill you. Oh...it uses compassionate sounding rhetoric to plant its poison, but the fact is encouraging death is its passion. One of its founders, Derek Humphrey, killed his first wife, Jean, who had cancer (smothered her with a pillow) with the help of Ann, the woman who became his second wife. Then when Ann got cancer, he pressured her to kill herself which she finally did leaving behind a note saying, "You win." She also left behind a note for Rita Marker, a euthanasia opponent who had befriended her. Rita told Ann's story in Deadly Compassion.

And now this evil organization is urging young people to consider suicide with an essay contest for high school students that is even popping up in Catholic schools (Are they nuts?).

Hemlock Society Targets Teens:

Encouraging young people to reflect on suicide is a bad idea. According to suicide.org, drawing on statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, while suicide as a whole has dropped from 13.2 per 100,000 persons in 1950 to 10.8 in 2003, suicide among those aged 5-14 has tripled from 0.2 to 0.6 per 100,000. In the same time period suicide among those aged 15-19 has more than tripled, rising from 2.7 per 100,000 to 7.3 per 100,000. In 2007, the CDC reported that suicide is the fourth leading cause of death for Americans age 10-14, the third leading cause of death for Americans aged 15-24, and the second leading cause of death for Americans aged 25-34.

The Hemlock Society may have changed its name to Compassion in Dying (which then became Compassion & Choices), but, as Derek Humphry's behavior shows, it's not about "compassion" for the dying, but convenience for the living. The only suffering Humphry was trying to alleviate was his own. And brainwashing kids to accept murder of the dying as "compassionate" smells of satanic sulphur!

The Culture of Death Marches On

Taylor Clementi committed suicide after his roommate, Dharun Ravi, posted a brief scene of him involved in gay sex. Read about it here. (Note this is on Huff Post, certainly not a "conservative" source.) Recently Ravi was found guilty of a group of charges that could get the teenager a ten year sentence in jail.

I find this problematic. First of all, consider the logical fallacy that because something happens AFTER something else, that event was the cause. Who knows what else was going on in Taylor's life? Unfortunately, suicide is not uncommon among college students and freshman year is the riskiest. Forty percent of college suicides happen in freshman year.

And a question. Had this been a heterosexual encounter would anyone pay the slightest attention? I have my doubts. But, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and every suicide by someone gay has to be turned into a hate crime caused by anti-gay motivation. Although if the article posted at Huffington is accurate, Ravi had no problem with his gay roommate, he was just being a typical stupid teenage guy. Remember all those locker room jokes? There's a reason for them.

This situation is a tragedy for two young men. But it points to a bigger problem in our culture. Why are so many of our young people so unhappy and desperate that the only way out they can find is ending their own lives? It is one more victory for the culture of death.

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.