Friends of gay teen hope his death puts an end to school bullying

[Dan82]

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Fri...423/story.html

He was a troubled teen who took his own life last Saturday, but on Thursday, at Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Ottawa, Jamie Hubley was remembered as a "natural-born" performer who excelled in figure skating and theatre.

An overflow crowd of about 700 people packed the church to hear family and friends speak about the 15-year-old's sense of humour, his love of travel and even his cooking skills.

Father Pierre Champoux led the funeral service, which was marked by humour and stories about Jamie's life. On tables outside the church, books of condolence were filled with signatures and best wishes from many friends. There were also many cards, including a simple handmade card that read: "Different on the Outside, Special on the Inside."

Jamie kept a blog, in which he spoke candidly about his struggles with depression and surviving as an openly gay teenager. Incidents of bullying had hurt him deeply...

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Friends+teen+h...#ixzz1bSrIqwuD

[Just Adam]

Sadly im not sure any amount of needless deaths would stop hateful small minded people.

[sokk]

I'm starting to think that the only way to save kids is taking them out of school, and home school them. If they are relentlessly bullied every single day, how can you force them to go to school? these kids go through hell on a regular basis. Changing schools will not help either, you find evil people, bullies, in every single school. Taking them out of school and home schooling them is a good option I think. Yes, it's not optimal, but who cares if it can help save your son or daughter?

[FoxFire11]

Originally Posted by sokk

Taking them out of school and home schooling them is a good option I think.

Yeah but they shouldn't have to pulled out of school. schools need to get their shit together and deal with bulling. Rather than keeping their respective heads in the sand.

[NoName114]

I hate bullies, my tax money will pay for their jail cells. Also another unneeded death of a young teen because some single-minded simpleton breeder can't wrap his small brain around the fact that some people are different

[Chip]

The problem is that a significant portion of the bullies are themselves gay. Another portion of them have parents who are bigots and assholes, so it's nearly impossible to get the bullies to behave appropriately because the parents don't support the behavior the school is trying to promote. And in some schools, the staff and administration itself is bigoted.

So it's a multi-pronged problem. Homeschooling might be the answer for some, but laws and policies that make it clear that schools must be places of tolerance are also an important part of the solution. And then having the resources to ensure that those laws are enforced. We've made great strides in the US in eliminating discrimination based on ethnic identity (at least as far as African-Americans go, not so much toward middle eastern people yet) and I think we'll get there with LGBT people as well, but it will take time.