GLSEN shares responsibility for homosexual suicides

By Bryan Fischer

A rash of recent suicides committed by homosexual students has prompted a surge of interest in policies prohibiting bullying on campuses. Each one of these deaths is a tragedy. It's heartbreaking to think of an individual reaching such a level of desperation that he would take his own life. It's a grievous thing to think of families and friends who have been deprived of a loved one, his life taken by his own hand.

We oppose bullying, period. No one should be bullied because of the color of his skin, his deeply held religious values, or his sexual preference. There is no place for physical assault, verbal ridicule or harassment on school grounds. Simple Judeo-Christian principles of courtesy, kindness and respect for human beings made in the image of God argue against any kind of mistreatment.

Because our culture has contemptuously dismissed the value of educating students in the teachings of Christ, his Golden Rule, and his moral truths, a values-free environment has been created on school campuses where people feel free to tee off on people of faith, for instance, and ridicule and mock their sincerely held convictions about God and morality. There is no excuse for this kind of harassment. It's time we once again introduced students in our public school system to the time-honored standards found in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Physical assault should be punished, again regardless of skin color, religious preference, or sexual preference. All victims should be treated as full equals before the law, and we should not give greater protection to some victims of assault than we do to others.

But this is exactly what bullying policies do. They give sexually normal victims of violence less protection than sexually abnormal ones. This violates the classic American value of equal standing before the law.

Several other things are worthy of note in this discussion. One of them is that disagreement is not bullying.

Homosexual activists are making an all-out effort to use these tragedies for blatantly political purposes, which is inexcusable all by itself, and trying to silence and intimidate critics of homosexual conduct. They are using these tragedies to pressure schools and communities into normalizing homosexual behavior and punishing its critics.

It bears repeating: speaking the truth about homosexual behavior is not bullying. Nor is it harassment, as much as the deviancy cabal wants it to be.

If criticism is bullying and harassment, then homosexual activists condemn themselves every day by the mean-spirited things they say about Christians and their views of homosexuality. Were the standards applied to them they want to apply to us, they'd all be locked up or kicked off campus in a matter of days.

It must be pointed out that homosexual activists are not wholly innocent in these tragedies either. Homosexuals cannot reproduce so they must recruit. Part of the agenda of groups like GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) is to urge students at younger and younger ages to come out and declare a disordered sexual preference. Sexually confused youth are pressured into locking into a sexual identity far before they are mature enough to do so.

We know that suicidal ideation occurs far more frequently among homosexuals than in the normal population, even in Europeans countries where homosexuality has been accepted for decades and critics of homosexuality can be thrown in jail. For adults who know this to urge students to self-identify as homosexual is to condemn them to yield to dark and ultimately tragic impulses. And students just aren't developed enough to handle it. I'm afraid GLSEN and groups like them may share more of the blame for these suicides than anyone.

Homosexual conduct is as risky and dangerous as injection drug abuse. No right-thinking adult would encourage a student tempted to shoot up to yield to such impulses and plunge headlong into a drug-addled lifestyle. In fact, we would be highly critical of any adult who would do that, and hold him partially accountable for the destruction that would follow.

Nor should we encourage students wrestling with same-sex attractions to take the plunge. Rather, they should be helped to resist these self-destructive impulses and redirect their sexual energies in healthy and life-giving directions. It can be done; in fact, it happens every day.

If we want to see fewer students commit suicide, we want fewer homosexual students. What all truly caring adults will want to do for a student struggling with his sexual identity is to help him resist dangerous sexual impulses, accept his biological identity as either male or female, and help him learn to adjust his psychological identity to his God-given biological one.

Along that path lies psychological, spiritual, mental and emotional wholeness. Along the path of sexual depravity lies loneliness, self-torment, disease, and even death. It is a cruel thing to help a sexually confused student walk down a path that leads to darkness rather than urge him to choose a path that leads to light.

The choice between life and death lies before America's students. Let's not punish the folks that will help them choose life.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

© Bryan Fischer