Cyberbullying and gay bashing, what the hell? By reneeschaferhorton on Oct. 12, 2010, under Life, Media, Parenting http://tucsoncitizen.com/godblogging/ The recent suicides of Seth Walsh, 13, Asher Brown, 13, Billy Lucas, 15 and Tyler Clementi, 18, are all attributed to gay-bashing. Their tormenters believed the young men were gay and used that as a reason to terrorize them in the hallways, locker rooms and cafeterias of their schools. In the case of Clementi, the terrorizing was spread to the Internet, when his stupid (can I call a spade a spade? roommate webcammed Clementi making out with a man in his Rutgers dorm room and (surprise!) streamed it live. Two days later, Clementi jumped to his death off a bridge over the Hudson River. What kind of horrible person web cams his roommate's sexual encounter and streams it online? The kind of young man who no doubt teased guys like Walsh, Brown and Lucas in hallways and cafeterias in middle and high school. The kind of young man who was never stopped in a school yard by a teacher or principal when he or she called someone "fag" or "homo." The kind of young man who didn't hear enough lectures at home about respect for ALL human beings. And, perhaps most tellingly, the kind of young man who is a product of the digital generation that sees nothing as private and lives for their next Face Book status update. The kind of young man brought up in a culture of YouTube, which is just as likely to have "lets make fun of her" clips streamed as it is to have cute videos of babies and kittens. The kind of young man who has been so surrounded by technology that he's lost the ability to think, "Would I want someone to do this to me?" in regard to fellow human beings. That, ladies and gentlemen, is our job as parents: To be good examples, to know what is happening in our kids' lives and to make sure they are behaving as caring, decent human beings -- iPhones and webcams or no. Phoebe Prince, Seth Walsh, Asher Brown, Alexis Pilkington, Billy Lucas, and Tyler Clementi were ... Distributed by Tubemogul.
