Gay/Lesbian Teen Suicide

THE THE SECRET OF HIDDEN GAY TEEN SUICIDI EPIDEMIC BY RICHARD NATALE for Disease Control," says Marj Plumb, health policy director for the National Gay and Les- bian Task Force. But such subjects as gay teen suicide are still a low priority. KNOW "Some people at the federal level are the real reason Billy Joe more interested in denying the findings of the McCallister jumped off the Tallahatchie previous research than in exploring the ques- Bridge. tion further," says adolescent researcher Dr. When the 1967 country-and-western Gary Remafedi of the University of Minnesota. ballad "Ode to Billy Joe" was a Top 40 hit, the Even if one disagrees with such findings, or most popular theory for the boy's mysterious their methodology, Remafedi argues, the anec- death was infanticide. He'd gotten the song's dotal information alone is enough to warrant narrator pregnant, then the two of them threw further study. their illegitimate child off the same bridge But those researching gay teen suicide from which Billy Joe would later leap to his death. are caught in a Catch-22. Unless it's recog- nized as a mental-health crisis, the government Even then, I knew that wasn'ta plausible will not fund intensive research. And until explanation. The stigma of pregnancy and such a study is undertaken, it will continue to guilt in such a crime falls more heavily on be a non-issue. young girls. Billy Joe had another secret, one that he couldn't share with another living soul. He took that secret with him into the muddy waters of the Mississippi. (A later film based on EVEN the song confirmed my suspicions.) in a world in which glamorous He left fingerprints behind, though. lesbians grace the cover of Newsweek and the joys Nobody bothered to dust for them. of bisexuality are touted on Oprah, the world of gay and lesbian chic runs parallel to the lives of most adolescents. Being gay or lesbian is still not chic for teenagers, even in major cities like Los WHEN Bobby Griffith jumped Angeles and New York. from a freeway overpass, two months after his Gay teens are often alone with their dif- 20th birthday, he also left fingerprints. ferences, unaware of the programs and social Raised in the middle-class San Francisco facilities available to them. Ask Wilson how "in" suburb of Walnut Creek, Bobby had recently it is to be gay in South-Central. "In Hispanic and moved to Oregon. "To get away from my ser- black culture, gays don't exist," says the 15-year- mons trying to lead him to the path of right- old Latino. "You're either straight or you wait cousness," says his mother, Mary Griffith. to get beaten up. After his first suicide attempt four years "If they do beat me up, I hope they kill earlier, in 1979, Bobby confessed to his par- me instead of leaving me a retarded vegetable." ents that he was gay. "We knew nothing Despair envelops Wilson like an inert gas. about homosexuality, except the negatives," Between flashes of intelligence that make him says Ms. Griffith, despite the family's prox- appear wise beyond his years, he sounds emo- imity to a city with one of the largest gay tionally boxed in. He speaks dispassionately, his populations in the country. Her response shouldets pulling him down to the ground. Wil- was to take Bobby to a Christian counselor at son seems to view his life with alarming clarity. Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church. "I thought he two to three times more likely to end their lives. Half of But it's as if he's watching a catastrophe from needed to be cured," she says. "And if he wasn't, God afar, without any possibility of intervention. them make repeated attempts. would punish him in hell." That estimate doesn't include accidental deaths By the time he was 10, Wilson knew he wasn't straight Over the next three years Bobby became increas- (he identifies himself as bisexual). So he hid. He hid from ingly depressed. His mother viewed this as a sign of pro- (drug overdoses, car crashes) and "passive suicides" (drug his family, Honduran immigrants and strict fundamental- gress in his battle against degeneracy. "I believed that the and alcohol abuse, unsafe sex) that could be gay-related, ist Baptists. He hid from his friends. He didn't want to wind more depressed he got, the more God was working on him says Teresa DeCrescenzo, executive director of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services (GLASS). up like the other gay kids he knew. One is paralyzed after to change. being severely beaten. But gay teen suicide remains an invisible epidemic. "What really happened was that Bobby was slowly Another friend, Jeremy, "a rad person, a genius," giving up hope." "You can read volumes on suicide and not find anything about gays and lesbians," says Virginia Uribe, director of took his life last year. "Jeremy told me he was going to do Project 10, a counseling and education program for gay it. He couldn't put up with his mother, who kept yelling at teens through the Los Angeles Unified School District. him and blaming him." Jeremy's father left home after his SUICIDE son confessed that he was gay. The HHS report was suppressed by the Bush admini- is the leading cause of death stration, at the behest of conservatives. Only 2,000 to 3,000 "Thinking about Jeremy makes me sad. I might have among gay and lesbian teenagers. Even in a climate of tried to talk him out of it. But there are times I don't want increasing acceptance of homosexuality, gay kids kill them- copies were printed, compared to the usual 20,000 to 30,000 to be here anymore." selves at a rate wildly disproportionate to their percentage copies of other health issues. Health Secretary Louis Sulli- The first time Wilson tried to commit suicide he of the population. According to a 1989 report by the De- van distanced himself from the findings, saying they "un- dermine the institution of the family." injected himself with mercury from an old thermometer. partment of Health and Human Services (HHS), gay teens The climate in the Clinton administration is some- He was 14. Wilson had been reading about the element's account for 30 percent of all teen suicides. Of the 500,000 properties in science class and was convinced it would be annual adolescent suicide attempts, gays and lesbians are what better - "They at least meet with us or get us meet- ings with the National Institutes of Health and the Centers lethal. He was discovered lying on the bathroom floor by his younger brother. Two days later he tried again, hanging 20 LA weekly APRIL 29-MAY 5, 1994