Tyler Clementi's Facebook Profile Photo
On that Sunday Tyler, an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, had asked his roommate if he could have some privacy in their dorm room. The roommate, Dharun Ravi, Twittered that night, “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” Ravi then streamed the feed from his webcam live over the Internet.
Sometime between that live streaming of Tyler on Sunday night and his swan dive off the GWB on Wednesday the following events occurred. Word and gossip spread through the dorm of the live Internet feed of Tyler. Tyler found out about it and went to campus officials requesting a room change. Tyler had another encounter of a sexual nature with a male in his room that Ravi attempted but failed to stream. Ravi apparently knew beforehand that Tyler was going to be involved in a second encounter because he alerted his Twitter followers with the times to be watching. Tyler sought advice on how to handle the issue in a gay chatroom on the Internet. And finally, on Wednesday the 22nd, shortly before he jumped, Tyler posted on his Facebook page, “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry”.
This story, and the way it has been covered and the reaction it has generated beg several questions. First, with whom did Tyler share that Internet streamed liaison? And was that second encounter with the same individual or someone new? And how come no one else seems to be asking this question or trying to track down Tyler’s lover or lovers? The New York Times, the Star-Ledger, ABC, CBS, CNN, MTV, none of them mentioned this person or persons except in passing, simply identifying him in the course of describing the streaming of an encounter “with another man.” Two websites that I write for, Examiner.com and Suite101.com, both covered the story without mentioning whom Tyler had been with.
What sort of sorry excuse for reporting is that? Any half way decent reporter would want a reaction quote from possibly the last person to have any meaningful contact with Tyler. And it would be natural to ask how that person felt about the Internet streaming episode, since their privacy was equally violated. Either everyone on this story got lazy (too lazy to even include a line like “Tyler’s lover could not be identified” or “Tyler’s lover could not be reached for comment” just to cover their own butt) or they’re hiding something.
The second question is what happened in those last hours of Tyler’s life that put him on that bridge? From all accounts he seemed to initially handle the situation well. He went to school officials to report the invasion of privacy and ask to have his room assignment changed. He sought advice online. He even showed up on Wednesday afternoon to rehearse with another student for an upcoming performance with the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra where he played violin. Then at 8:42 PM on Wednesday September 19 Tyler posted on his Facebook page “Jumping off the gw bridge sorry”. Witnesses report seeing someone jump from the George Washington Bridge shortly before 9:00 PM.
Reaction has been largely predictable. Ellen DeGeneres cried as she spoke about it and other celebrities, both gay and straight, decried bullying in general and bullying of gay teens in particular. Politicians clamored for tougher anti-bullying laws.
What I have not heard anyone say is this: Jesus died for Tyler Clementi. And that fact makes Tyler’s death all the more tragic.
There are those who know that fact and yet act as if it were not so. Not only that, but they act like, and go so far as to say, “God hates homosexuals”. I’m not talking about your run of the mill gay bashers and homophobes. I am talking about those misguided knuckleheads who make a claim to Christian faith, those who are, in the words of Paul in his second letter to Timothy, “holding to the outward form of godliness, but denying its power.”1
These are the lunatic fringe of Christianity. Those like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. There’s a group like that where I live. They used to regularly assemble on the road in front of Wal Mart with their bull horns and placards painted with what they must have thought were clever phrases like “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”
What do these foolish people hope to accomplish with such behavior? Do they really think that a homosexual is going to hear their ranting or read their signs and suddenly see the error of their ways and repent? Surely no one is that naïve. More likely their behavior will accomplish what Jesus accused the Pharisees of doing, “But woe to you…hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven.”2
Besides their motives I also question why, almost exclusively, they focus their attention on the gay lifestyle. Yes, I know what the Bible says about homosexuality, I’m not disputing that. But the Bible is much more prolific in dealing with scores of other issues, like adultery, divorce and drunkenness, to name just a few. Why aren’t these guys out in front of Wal Mart with signs that say “It’s until death do us part, not debt do us part”?
By their strident condemnation of gay people they demonstrate that they have forgotten, or are willfully ignoring, the basic truth that Jesus loves and died for gay people as surely as He loves and died for them.
Now before anyone gets too carried away with the last five paragraphs or so, either for or against what I’ve said, allow me to focus attention on the other side of the debate.
It is incomprehensible to some in this age of militant political correctness that there are still people who look unfavorably on the gay lifestyle. Those who can’t understand how someone could be unsympathetic to homosexuality are, of course, delusional. They are the type of people who believe “if a mental model is esthetically pleasing then it must be true.” And by implication “if you truly believe in something, it’ll happen.”3 I’m not condoning gay bashing or bullying. But to be shocked that prejudice of any kind exists is naïve.
Activist gays will try to tell you that homosexuality is normal. They try so hard and so loud that I suspect they’re really trying to convince themselves. But by any definition, mathematical or logical, of the word “normal” a group that comprises at most 2.5% of a population cannot be considered the norm, or normal.4
And that insistence to demonstrate how “normal” and ubiquitous the gay lifestyle is is one of my major concerns with the group. They are presenting a picture that is so overstated as to be a lie. And they’re so successful in doing it because they have infiltrated areas of society that shape public opinion, like Hollywood. It seems that most TV series now have at least one recurring character who is gay. The teen-targeted show “DeGrassi”, set in a Canadian high school, has had so many major characters who are gay that, statistically speaking, every gay kid in Canada must attend that one school. There’s no balance. You don’t see a statistically accurate portrayal of other groups on TV. When was the last time a regularly appearing character was portrayed as a Christian? Not your nut-job psycho Christian, as is so often the case with Hollywood’s portrayal of people of faith, but a normal American Christian. I can’t think of any.
Up until 1973 the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder, and the decision to change it was very controversial. It took the rest of the world’s psychiatric community another 20 years to do likewise. Many studies show that homosexuals suffer an inordinate amount of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety disorder, conduct disorder and being between 2.5 to 6 times more likely to attempt suicide.5
No, homosexuality is not normal. They might have a stronger argument to say that it is natural. The science on that argument is inconclusive at best. Still, there are other behaviors which some people have a natural tendency towards that are not normal or healthy; alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, gambling addicts, even some murderers may suffer from a naturally occurring physiological condition. But if they act on those tendencies there are consequences. I’m not saying that homosexuality is tantamount to these conditions. I am saying that even if it turns out that for some being homosexual is a natural phenomenon, it does not excuse the behavior. In the immortal words of Katharine Hepburn as Rose Sayer in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
Am I saying that homosexuality is wrong? I’m saying that the act of same gendered sexual relations is wrong, yes. In Biblical terminology that act would constitute a sin. But no more or less than the other behaviors listed by Paul in I Corinthians 6:9 – 10. James 2:10 – 13 tells us that if we’re guilty of breaking one point of the law we’re accountable for all of it.
But James then goes on to say that mercy triumphs over judgment. And that’s the whole point. No one goes to hell for being gay. No one goes to hell for anything that they do. The only way to hell is for what you don’t do, and that would be to not accept the mercy and grace God has made available exclusively through Jesus.
Personally I don’t care if you’re gay, at least not any more than I care if you cheat on your taxes or your wife. That, ultimately, is between you and God. And even if you don’t believe that or refuse to deal with it now, you will deal with it. But in the meantime, please shut up about it. The gay lifestyle is the only lifestyle I’m aware of that is so fixated on a single component of the human existence, sexuality. And frankly, I’m sick of hearing about it. So I’ll stand up against gay bashing and bullying if you’ll keep your freaking parades out of the street, deal?
I’m just sayin’.
Footnotes
12 Timothy 3:5 (NRSV)
2Matthew 23:13 (NRSV)
3In his article, Government by Wishful Thinking, Steven Den Beste talks about the corrupted version of teleology that is rampant today. Here's the link. It's worth a read.
4In the course of researching this article I've seen quite a few studies and surveys, many of which are extremely slanted in their view on both sides of the debate. From what I've found I think it's a pretty safe bet that homosexuals actually account for less than 3% of the population. Here's one pretty easy to decipher chart, based on data from the U.S. Census. And here's a more complete study on the topic.
5The article Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems gives a pretty straight forward view of the topic here.
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThis blog is obviously written by a somewhat conservative Christian who is not gay. You can't base right/wrong on something that extends beyond a behavior on the Bible. Take the Bible out of it, just for a minute. Now, what's wrong with being gay? Who's being hurt?
ReplyDelete