One Week After Attending A Norman Oklahoma City Council Meeting Where Residents Ridiculed And Savagely Attacks The GLBT Community, 19 Year Old Zach Harrington Commits Suicide

One week after attending a Norman, Oklahoma City Council meeting September 28th when council, as I previously posted, passed a proclamation declaring October to be Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender History Month, 19 year old Zach Harrington committed suicide, reports the Norman Transcript. Norman Council voted 7-1 acknowledging the proclamation, but only after three hours of allotted support for and opposition against was heard. Among those in opposition, a man who said he moved to Norman because he thought it the kind of place that would never accept the GLBT community “with open arms.” A woman who referred to herself as being “bi-racial” said she was tired of the GLBT struggle for equality constantly compared to Civil Rights. A number of those in attendance expressed fear that passing such a proclamation would permit the members of the GLBT community to “infiltrate” the public school system, advancing an agenda of adding the teaching of the “gay lifestyle” to the curriculum. Council members spoke of receiving threatening e-mail and phone calls. The family of Zach Harrington, who describe him as a young man who “internalized his feelings and emotions,” said the “toxic” environment at that council session September 28th might have precipitated Zach taking his own life, his sister Nikki saying “When he was sitting there, I’m sure he was internalizing everything and analyzing everything ... that’s the kind of person he was. I’m sure he took it personally. Everything that was said.” Zach Harrington, like Tyler Clementi, was a talented musician, who graduated from Norman High School in 2009 after years of struggling with acceptance, his father Van saying that his son asked to leave school early during his senior year and complete his diploma in a separate program. “He feared for his own safety on many occasion at (Norman High), and other people like him,” said his father. “Even though he was 6-4, he was passive and I’m sure being gay in that environment didn’t help.” His son was a member of the band, orchestra, and “the first-ever male captain of the colour guard,” Van saying “He could have done whatever he wanted to do.” His father said he was not sure why Zach attended the city council meeting, especially after his experiences in high school. “I don’t think it was a place where he would hear something to make him feel more accepted by the community,” he said. “For somebody like Zach, it was probably very hard to sit through.” Zach’s family say that they do not resent the community that so savagely spoke against their son and others like him, Van saying “I don’t have any anger ... I just hope those people look inside themselves and put themselves in somebody else’s shoes before saying things like that. Maybe if more of us did that, well, maybe things would’ve turned out different.”