Month: February 2013

Tyler Clementi Center Opens at Rutgers University

Family of Suicide Victim Dedicates Research Center on February 4, 2013

Two years after the suicide of their son Tyler, a freshman at Rutgers University, Jane and Joe Clementi and their sons James and Brian unveiled the Tyler Clementi Center at Rutgers. Tyler, in September 2010, took his own life after becoming the victim of cyberbullying. He discovered that his roommate used a webcam to spy on him having sex with another man.  Two days later, he jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

The Center Itself: Near Rutgers Campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey

The Center will draw from academic disciplines across the university and throughout the nation to create new programs and approaches to address issues that confront young people, specifically vulnerable youth making the transition from home to college. The new programs and policies to assist first-year students and high school seniors may be used as models for institutions of higher education throughout the country.

It will offer lectures, training and symposia on such topics as the use and misuse of new technologies and social media; youth suicide, especially among LGBTQ youth, during the transition to adulthood; adjustment and assimilation into college life, bullying and cyberbullying, and promoting and understanding inclusive and safe environments.

The goal of the center is to provide scholarly support for the work of policymakers, social activists, community leaders and other advocates for vulnerable youth or as Jeff Longhofer, associate professor of social work and co-director of the Tyler Clementi Center said the Center “will be devoted to putting theory and academia into action.”  Susan Furrer, executive director of the Center for Applied Psychology, is co-director. Its first lecture in March will be “growing up digital.”  In April, there will be a conference on transgender issues.

What the Center Means to Clementis and College

According to Tyler’s mother Jane, the center’s aim is to “continue the conversation that began twenty-eight months ago.” “ Our hope,” said Mrs. Clementi, “is to take a terrible newsclip and turn it into something positive.  By keeping the dialogue going, we believe we can hopefully make a change in other youths’ lives.”

Joseph Clementi stated that he would like to see the center be “proof that people listen. That people worked harder to reach our youth and help them get through their dark times. That the conversation changed to make sure that personal respect and human dignity was conveyed in person and in the online community.”

Rutgers University executive vice president for academic affairs, Richard L. Edwards, stated “Tyler’s death deeply touched the Rutgers community and brought the issues of cyberbullying and the suicide of gay youth to the attention of the world.  Rutgers has a history of being responsive to the needs of our LGBTQ community as well as offering forward-thinking scholarly work to impact broader cultural change.  It was our sincere wish to work with the Clementi family to turn this tragedy into an effort that would help young people not only at Rutgers but beyond. There are young people like Tyler in every community and in making life better for them we transform Tyler’s experience and enormous promise into a global opportunity for social change.”

Washington Trying to Honor Clementi’s Name as Well

On Capitol Hill, local lawmakers are still fighting to get a bill named after him passed.  The proposed Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act would require all universities to have an anti-harassment policy.

 

 

 

 

 

Wyoming Gives Mixed Messages

Kills Marriage Equality Bill But Approves Domestic Partnerships

On January 28, 2013, Wyoming lawmakers approved, 7-2, a measure to institute domestic partnerships. The House Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee advanced the bill. This move sends pro-gay legislation onto a full floor debate in the state Legislature for the first time.  The bill will now move on to a general vote.

The Benefits of Domestic Partnerships

The bill, sponsored by Representative Cathy Connolly, a Laramie Democrat and a lesbian, would give same-sex couples the same property and hospital-visitation rights as heterosexual couples. It carries most of the legal rights of heterosexual marriage. Connolly is also the sponsor of the Marriage Equality Bill which was shot down, 5 to 4. Co-sponsors are Rep. Dan Zwonitzer (R-Cheyenne) and Rep. James Byrd (D-Cheyenne).

Representative Connolly said that within this session, she expects the domestic partnership bill to pass the full Legislature along with a bill pending in the Wyoming Senate that would outlaw discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual orientation. The raison d’etre for the vote to advance the domestic partnership bill, according to Connolly, is “societal changes. It’s the reality that everyone now is touched by someone who is gay or lesbian in their lives, their friends, their neighbors, their churches.”

Others, such as Jason Marsden of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, concur.  Marsden testified on January 28th that he and his partner, former Mayor of Casper, Guy Padgett, have no rights as a couple even though they have been together for fifteen years. He argued that Wyoming legislators are becoming more aware that there are same-sex couples in every county in the state. “With the turnover in the Legislature, there are more legislators in the majority party who actually know gay couples. Some of them have children, and I think the actual lack of legal protection for those families has come to legislators’ attention: medical decision-making, parenting issues, inheritance issues….”

“Please Stop Carpetbagging on our Civil Rights Movement”

Not everyone is in favor of the LGBT bills. Take Republican Representative Lynn Hutchings from Cheyenne.  A black woman serving her first term in the House, Hutchings was quick to comment on the remarks she heard from gays and lesbians who equated their struggle for civil rights to the efforts of mixed-race couples to secure the legal right to marry in the late 1960s: “Please stop Carpetbagging on our Civil Rights Movement.”

Hutchings believe, as many do, that homosexuality is a choice.  She even volunteered that an ex-fiance had once been gay but decided to turn straight.  “Being black is a result of genetics, it is inborn.  Homosexuals may choose who they want to be” said Hutchings.  Zwonitzer and Byrd remarked that they found Hutchings’s comments distasteful.

Future of The Bills

Republicans outnumber Democrats 78-12 in the Wyoming Legislature. Consequently, the bills face steep challenge in a state, that in 1998, witnessed the horrific murder of a gay college student left to die on a fence.

 

 

 

 

Egalite pour LGBT en Francais Possible

Same-sex marriage bill debated beginning Jan. 29.

On a leisurely Sunday, January 27, over 125,000 demonstrators marched in Paris to show their support for a same-sex marriage bill that lawmakers would begin to debate two days later. According to the police, the march drew twice as many people as a similar demonstration in mid-December. Two weeks ago, police estimated that an even greater number – 340,000 people opposed to the proposal, demonstrated in Paris.

President Francois Hollande’s Campaign Pledge

Gay marriage was one of Hollande’s campaign pledges during his bid to become President. When he took office in May 2012,  Socialist Hollande promised to legalize gay marriage within a year. France is one of a number of European nations that already have civil unions for same-sex couples.  The civil solidarity pact, one Parisian lesbian claims, “provides limited protection and is not a marriage.  It’s simply a contract between two people – marriage is bigger, it symbolizes much more.”

The Marriage Equality Bill

The draft law redefines marriage as “contracted between two persons of different sex or of the same sex,” and the word “parents” replace “mother and father.”  The bill also allows married same-sex couples to adopt children.

The law, known as Marriage for All, simply “ gives the same rights to and confers the same duties on homosexual couples: the conditions of marriage are unchanged,” according to the Minister of Justice Christine Taubira. The French Institute of Public Opinion poll released on January 26th shows that sixty-three percent are in favor of same-sex marriage and forty-nine percent favor the right of same-sex married couples to adopt.

Just this week, two straight-with-children members of Parliament, socialist MPs Yann Galut and Nicholas Bays joined the ‘Marriage for All’ protests as allies.  They kissed to show solidarity with homosexuals and their kiss went viral.

Opposition to the Bill

Opponents of the Bill include senior Roman Catholic, Jewish and Muslim leaders who believe “the law alters the natural order of procreation and will lead to moral confusion and the erosion of the centuries-old institution of marriage in the name of a small minority.”

However, even in a predominantly Catholic country, the bill is expected to pass in Parliament. Even with the long legislative process, the bill could become law as early as May.