Tyler Clementi’s Parents Demand Apology From National Organization For Marriage

President of Ruth Institute Criticizes Tyler in Iowa State University Speech

Last month, Jennifer Roback Morse, President and founder of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage for the promotion of men/women marriage, spoke to a group of Catholic students at Iowa State University.  In that speech, Dr. Morse urged students to influence gay youth, after befriending them,  to use sexual restraint as an alternative “ to the gay influences” in their lives who may pressure them to have sex.

The Offensive Remark

Morse went on to refer to Tyler Clementi as “that kid Tyler Clementi who killed himself – who threw himself off the George Washington Bridge.” She continues, “ I mean, there was a much older man in the picture…And so I think friendship is what you have to offer.  There are a lot of situations where people are doing something sexual that’s probably not the best thing for them and it would be better if they had somebody who’d be friends with them without coming on to them or without judging them.”

What The Clementis Have to Retort

The Clementis denounced Morse’s comments as “ludicrous,” for connecting their son’s suicide to support from other members of the gay community. “To exploit our late son’s name to  advance an anti-equality agenda is offensive and wrong.  By doing so, National Organization for Marriage proves that not only is there no low they will not sink to, to advance their cruel agenda- but that neither they nor Ms. Morse have any grip on reality.  The very idea that Tyler’s tragedy happened because of too much support – instead of not enough – is ludicrous.  Shame on them.”

Tyler’s parents weren’t the only ones who were offended.  GLAAD (Gay, Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Equality Matters, and the Human Rights Campaign all demanded an apology as well.  The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified The National Organization for Marriage as an anti-gay group. GLAAD’s President Herndon Graddick said in a statement that “they’re using Tyler’s story to pit young people against their own peers. This is among the more reprehensible tactics we’ve seen seen from NOM.”

How The Clementis Have Honored Tyler’s Name

Two years after their son’s suicide in 2010, the Clementis dedicated a Research Center, Tyler Clementi Research Center at Rutgers University (where Tyler was a Freshman).  The goal of the center is to provide a scholarly support for the work of policymakers, social activists, community leaders and other advocates for vulnerable youth.

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.  

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Furniture Mogul Behind Effort to Open LGBT Museum in Washington, D.C.

 

Gay Couple Mitchell and Tim Gold Are Collecting Artifacts and Donations for Museum

North Carolina furniture magnate Mitchell Gold and his husband Tim Gold are raising money and collecting artifacts to open a LGBT museum in our nation’s capital. The museum is expected to cost $50 to $100 million to open and operate.

The Museum’s Purpose

“We are going to tell American stories.  We are going to tell American history, but we are going to do it through the lens of the LGBT story. The museum is particularly for the LGBT youth.  That high school boy or girl who comes from a community that’s not so accepting, maybe a family that’s not so accepting, from a church that’s not so accepting, and at the very least they should be able to walk by this museum and know that it’s o.k. I want anyone walking through the door to be able to take something away from the experience, ” commented Tim.

Museum Goers Won’t be Walking Through the Door Anytime Soon.

Contributors kicked off the building campaign with $300,000. Supporters include the Arcus Foundation that promotes LGBT equality, the Velvet Foundation, a charitable group, which since 2008, has been gathering donations, and individual donors.

Tim Gold is a former Smithsonian researcher, and his husband Mitchell co-founded the $100 million home furnishing company Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams. Mitchell does philanthropic work on behalf of gay youth and edited a book of coming-out stories. They are spearheading the effort.

The Planning Board

The couple live in North Carolina, a state that banned same-sex marriage last year, but legally  married in Iowa.  They have enlisted the help of a lawyer to arrange their fundraising, a museum design expert, Richard Molinaroli of MFM Design, a Bethesda firm that creates exhibits for Smithsonian museums, to develop the ideas and a real estate broker to locate and acquire property needed for a 100,000 –square-foot museum.  Tim envisions an exhibition hall as part of a mixed-use space that would include a performing arts theatre, a cafe, offices, and a research center.

“Here I Am”

The museum’s forty-page strategic plan, titled “Here I am” explores stories of gay men and lesbians and their searches for identity. It would teach visitors the roles that LGBT Americans have played in the country’s history such as:  gay men and lesbians and their searches for identity, among them lesbian performers at Harlem blues clubs in the 1920’s, photographs of gays at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 and nationwide protest signs from nationwide demonstrations. There is a sign saved from the closing in 2010 of the Dupont Circle bookstore Lambda Rising and the violin and music stand owned by Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers Freshman who committed suicide. The Museum of Sex in Manhattan has contributed a filmstrip of a 1970 Gay Pride  parade in New York.

So far, Tim Gold has acquired 5,000 items which are stored in a climate-controlled warehouse in Forestville.  He has been travelling the U.S. visiting the homes of gay rights activists, such as Matthew Shepard’s mother, where he is given historical mementos from their attics.

Rutgers U. Gets Top Rating by Campus Pride

***** Rating
Last week, Campus Pride, an organization that rates schools by the inclusiveness of their policies, gave Rutgers’s New Brunswick’s main campus *****. Rutgers scored 31 out of the 32 possible categories in which a school can distinguish itself.

College WAS famous for Homophobia Just Two Years Ago

A Rutgers freshman named Tyler Clementi committed suicide after he learned that his roommate Dharun Ravi mocked his sexuality by spying on him and another man having sex, recording it, and inviting friends to watch the recording. This 2010 tragedy brought the college national negative attention and his roommate a 30-day jail sentence.

GLBTQ Services Have been Expanded

Although Rutgers was one of two student groups in the U.S. in 1969 to have a gay student league ( “Rutgers Homophile League”), since September 22, 2010 when Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge, the college has been trying to improve its tarnished image.

The Support that GLBTQ Rutgers Students Can Expect

  • Four specialized housing options, three of them new.
  • A service to pair students with like-minded roommates.
  • Rainbow Perspectives, a floor in a residence hall organized around common interests. It’s not just for GLBTQ students, but also heterosexuals who like living side-by-side with those of different gender identities.
  • Delta Lambda Phi, a predominantly gay fraternity.
  • Official campus liaisons consisting of 130 trained staff and faculty members.
  • Training program for allies meant to be friendly to GLBTQ causes.

Campus Resources for “queer issues” is 92 pages long in the 2012 handbook.

 Increase in Resources Attributed to Suicide

The New York Times on September 22, 2012, “Rutgers, Tainted by Webcam Spying Case, Expands Campus Services, claims that since Clementi’s suicide on September 22, 2010,  “the university has increased its efforts, propelled by a vocal campus community, an energetic administrator and an urgent need for damage control. Even some of the students have been startled by the strength of the Rutgers’s embrace.”