I finally got around to reading the excellent Rolling Stone story about the suicide cluster in the Anoka-Hennepin school district in Minnesota - nine teenagers in two years. Because four of the dead were gay or perceived as such, the article focuses on the anti-gay climate in the district, and the district's bizarro Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy, which has just been repealed.

This is the sort of article you read and feel like almost every adult in it should be punched in the face FOR DOING NOTHING WHILE CHILDREN KILL THEMSELVES. Some of the adults actually indicate that if you're "choosing" to be gay, then you're choosing a lifestyle where you're more likely to kill yourself, and that's your responsibility. Another thing I picked up on is the general sense from these jokers is that being gay will send you directly to hell, and being harassed and bullied and urged to become straight isn't as bad as all that, especially if you do reject the dreadful "homosexual lifestyle" and thus spare yourself a trip to hell.

You don't have to be gay to be offended by the stupidity of the Anoka-Hennepin school district. You just have to be a decent person. And if you've been bullied in school, as I was, you'll relate to the frustration of watching a bunch of cowardly adults refusing to do anything about it. You might even relate to the feelings of one kid who, having just completed his freshman year, couldn't believe he had to SUFFER THROUGH THREE MORE YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL. I remember feeling that way myself - three more years of this crap? It does get better, as they say, but sometimes that can be hard for 14 and 15-year-olds to understand.

The Rolling Stone story also pairs well with the recent New Yorker story on the Rutgers suicide last year, which involved a gay student and an insensitive roommate who thought nothing of violating has privacy and gossiping about him with other people.