Justice for Tyler Clementi

Filed in National by on March 16, 2012

Tyler Clementi was a Rutgers University student who committed suicide days after his roommate showed a video of him with his boyfriend to other students. And now, that roommate has been convicted of hate crimes, evidence tampering, and witness tampering in the case.

Mr. Ravi’s roommate, Tyler Clementi, jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days after Mr. Ravi viewed him on the webcam. The case became a symbol of the struggles facing gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers and the problem of cyberbullying in an era when laws governing hate crimes have not kept up with evolving technology.

Ravi had said all along that this was only a prank, that he didn’t hate gays and it was all a terrible mistake. But he couldn’t explain why he deleted twitter feeds telling people to view the webcam and making disparaging remarks about gays.

Ravi’s conviction will not bring Tyler Clementi back. But it should serve notice to all who think that those of us who are gay and lesbian will sit back and just “take it” when we’re made the butt of “jokes” or hate speech. Maybe it’s time for gays to bash back. Maybe it’s time for us to bash our oppressors where it hurts – the pocketbook and the voting booth.

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A rabble-rousing bureaucrat living in Sussex County

Comments (3)

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  1. AQC says:
    March 16, 2012 at 5:54 pm

    RIP Tyler 🙁

  2. Liberal Elite says:
    March 16, 2012 at 8:16 pm

    “Maybe it’s time for gays to bash back.”

    Maybe not. It’s OK to be a better person.

  3. Prup (aka Jim Benton) says:
    March 17, 2012 at 11:48 am

    I think MJ made a bad choice of words in saying ‘bash back’ — even though it was followed by ‘in the pocketbook or at the voting booth.

    But I think LE’s response is equally a bad choice. For too long — as i said in another post, at least since 1974 — Liberals have ‘lost command of the dialogue.’ We’ve fellen, unconsciously, for the Republican propaganda that goes (never this directly):

    “All minorities live in ‘ghettos’ whether they be barrios, Harlems, or ‘gentrified neighborhoods.’ Only those places — and liberal urban or college environments near them — are tolerant, the whole rest of the country really hates (insert minority here). So the only way for Democrats to keep earning the minority vote without ‘committing political suicide’ is for us to make strong pitches in the ‘ghettos’ and to be ‘vewwy, vewwy qwiet’ anywhere else. The one thing we may never do is attack a bigot for his bigotry — Fred Phelps accepted — because it will bring the house down on us. And especially we can never call a racist a racist if he wears a clerical ‘garb of protection.’

    As it happens, none of this is true, but we’ve fallen for it time after time. I have one suggestion for starting to turn this around, but I’ll make it in a separate comment.

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