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Clementi Family Use the Pain of Their Gay Son’s Death to Encourage Acceptance and Eradicate Bullying

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Tyler Clementi’s family could have stayed silent after he killed himself. They could have hid from the spotlight and attention thrust upon it when he jumped from the George Washington Bridge – a tragic event that happened after his roommate’s webcam captured him kissing another man inside their Rutgers University dorm room.

However, 4 years after his death, the Clementis have used their daily pain to encourage acceptance and eradicate bullying.

“We could have retreated. We didn’t want to see this kind of thing happen to other kids and have it affect other families the way it affected ours.”

Joseph Clementi

The Clementi foundation raises awareness of bullying and cyber-bullying, particularly in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Its initiatives include building support for LGBT and vulnerable youth through partnerships and legislative advocacy, as well as having family members speak to different organizations and groups to encourage more “inclusive environments.”

One of its key initiatives is turning bystanders into ‘upstanders’.

All too often people witness bullying but don’t do anything about it. Using his son’s case an example, Joseph Clementi said that if just one person had stood up and said something, it could have made a difference.

The foundation already partnered with Rutgers to launch the Tyler Clementi Center, which works within the school and with outside organizations to study young people in the digital era. But it hopes to become a national voice and “thought leader” on bullying issues, Joseph Clementi said.

Tyler Clementi’s mother, Jane, gave the keynote address last year at a small conference of Christians on LGBT issues, telling the gathering she had left the conservative church she had attended before his death. She also took part in a panel at the Washington National Cathedral last October with Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was killed in Wyoming in 1998. Matthew Shepard’s name is on the expanded federal hate-crimes legislation to cover crimes motivated by bias against gays, lesbians and transgender people.

Clementi’s death, along with a string of other suicides in 2010, raised awareness of the impact of bullying by associating specific stories with the issue, said Seth Adam, director of communications for GLAAD, an LGBT advocacy organization.

Before 2010, Adam said, LGBT bullying wasn’t a major talking point. The conversation after Clementi’s death ignited an expansion of LGBT bullying awareness and mixed with a larger culture shift that allowed other LGBT issues to gain momentum, he said.

But James Clementi said the cultural shift isn’t happening fast enough. The foundation continues to hear from those who suffer from harassment, he said.

“When young people are in so much pain that they literally want to die. The change that we’re talking about is happening at too slow a pace.”

Joseph Clementi

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If only the world was as “open-minded” as us… Alas, matters of sexual identity and equal love, often cause so much friction in the rest of the world. Here, find an open dialogue on the issues facing our LGBT community.

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