Wisdom of the Young

I always knew my baby sister (six years my junior) was beyond her years. She is beautiful, intelligent and so wise, I am often the one asking her for advice rather than vice versa. However, when she read her English oral to me, I knew I had to post it on my blog, if only to serve as a reminder that there are courageous, strong-willed human beings in our midst, and they are often far younger than ourselves!

"The current event I will be speaking on today is that of the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, a fourteen year old boy from New York who was a heroic activist against homophobia and bullying.

Approximately of the 4500 teens that commit suicide every year, 450 of them are gay. That’s basically a third of our school.

Jamey was openly gay and blogged about the torment and hate he received every single day because of this. He was told that he was disgusting, that he was going to hell because being gay was a sin and that he must just die, everyone would be happier if he did. When he was at school, people would call him a fag and constantly abuse him. Throughout enduring all of this, Jamey still remained brave and supportive to the followers on his blogs.

Jamey committed suicide on September 18^th, 2011.

How many more teens should have to end their lives for people to realise that they need to do something about the bullying. At our own school, this form of bullying takes place every single day, it just shows what unintelligent, narrow-minded fools we have in our midst. So what if someone is homosexual, it’s not something they chose, just like you did not choose to be straight. So the next time one of you even dares to pass a comment, or act like it’s a contagious disease, remember, you’re just contributing to someone’s pain and suffering and you don’t know how long, or short a period of time it’ll take for them to break down. Hate speech is illegal and it is punishable by law. Remember that the next time you call someone a fag."