The Suicides Of Openly Gay Joseph Jefferson And Raymond Chase Are Not Simply Statistics, Tulane Professor Outs Transgender Student To Classmates

The New York Times on the suicide in October of 26 year old Joseph Jefferson, whose death is far more complicated than befits a campaign insisting it gets better, and was widely misunderstood to be motivated by anti-gay bullying, mainly because one of the last Facebook wall posting he left read “I could not bear the burden of living as a gay man of color in a world grown cold and hateful towards those of us who live and love differently that the so-called mainstream.” The Times reports that Jefferson attended the Harvey Milk High School, an inclusive, progressive haven for gay youth, went on to work for a number of gay advocacy groups, including Gay Men of African Descent, and never spoke of being oppressed, a colleague at that organization, Symba Soler, saying “Bullying had nothing to do with this, and that’s what I want the world to know. Joseph has never been bullied.” Joseph had attempted suicide once before in 2008 and suffered from bouts of depression, particularly in the fall, a time that served as a reminder of the death of his mother in 2001. The article does emphasis that for Jefferson, like all gay men, homophobia has or is a part of the conversation, underlined in Jefferson’s case by the message he received from the church regarding homosexuality (an abomination) and his estrangement from his father, who “never fully accepted that part” of his son’s life. Jefferson was, like most, a contradiction, “ was an HIV outreach worker who kept his own HIV-positive status a secret from his own father and stepmother; a youth advocate who educated others about health services, but did not, so far as his loved ones know, avail himself of the services he needed when he suffered from depression.”

Johnson and Wales University undergraduate Raymond Chase, 19 years old, also took his own life last month, his death too misinterpreted as another in an alarming trend of gay youth committed suicides because of bullying and harassment. But as the Brown Daily Herald reports, his friend Christina Newell, president of the school’s Pride Alliance, of which Chase was an active member, says “He was out and proud. Ray was this awesome person.” Lisa Pelosi, the JWU Director of Communications and Media Relations, states that “Ray was very comfortable about who he was, an openly gay young man, and his friends were not aware of any threats or bullying.” Newell adds that she does not believe Chase was being bullied for his sexual orientation, and that the media “made Ray a statistic.”

The Tulane Hullabaloo reports on the unwarranted outing of a female to male transgender student, Max Wallace by his professor to an entire class. “I hadn’t gotten my name change yet, so beforehand I e-mailed (the professor), says Wallace. “He e-mailed me back confirming that it was not a problem, then in class called out my birth name. Finally, he called out chosen name and looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you wanted to go by Max, right.’” Tulane’s anti-discrimination and equal opportunity policies do not include gender identity and expression, making it an arduous task for students to protect and assert their identities. “You can’t get your name changed on campus without a legal document,” says Wallace. “People without money can’t make that happen. My gender marker still says ‘F’ everywhere in the system.”