UPDATE at end of post.Think the title might be too dramatic? Nope. Personally I don't think there can be a collection of words in any human language that cann properly express enough what this blogpost is about.
First lets use an anology.
Your sitting by a swimming pool. A child is in trouble, drowning, shouting for help intermittently. You can swim well. Do you rescue the child or ignore them?
What kind of monster would ignore them you may ask? A stupid analogy because surely only serial killers and the worst dregs of humanity would ignore them you might say. Why? Because the person is making a clear choice between simple effort and a childs death. They are murdering by deliberate negligence, they are choosing that the child will die.
But its been a while since the figures of GLB youth suicide has been out with a criminally high almost 30% attempted suicide rate and what has the government done?
Nothing.. they have sat by the pool and ignored the drowning child.
But what about groups like Beyond Blue? Well days ago when I was bringing up the suicide rate in my posts on the human rights community consultation online discussion forum I had a look and found... Searching for Gay I got three results.. the pdf of the horrific figures on their research page, an article about a dog with an owner named Gay and a piece about a womens circus act that had performed previously at the gay games...
In other words they turned to look at the drowning child and mumbled quietly something about 'oh look a drowning child' under their breath so quietly no-one else noticed and went back to reading.
And what about the Transgender youth suicide rate in Australia?
At Beyond Blue the word came up not at all.
Oh well the studies haven't looked at that! Overseas there are figures as high as
53% which is as high above the gay rate as the gay rate is above the average.
Looks to me like there's a crowd sitting by the edge of the pool ignoring drowning children!
Some few are trying to speak up!
http://www.theage.com.au/national/gays-ignored-by-beyondblue-20090627-d0lf.html (not much mention of TGs there though is there?)
Everyone who has seen these figures and had a possibility of acting and done nothing, they have chosen that children will die. Not just one but many! They have murdered-by-negligence. They have blood on their hands!
Every government official who saw these figures and did nothing has blood on thier hands. Every charity leader who has seen or heard of these figures and done nothing has blood on their hands. Every single group that has oppossed measures to stop these deaths or who have argued that the current system is adequate despite these figures is a bloody murderer pretending to themselves, lying to themselves with whatever justification they use to sleep at night that ignoring a drowning child is not murder or that somehow its just too hard to get your feet wet to save them or that its ok to let some kids die, just not others.
Well I for one am making this clear. If your making a choice between inaction-resulting-in-predicted-deaths and action-resulting-in-effort-but-less-deaths and you choose inaction then you are a bloody murderer. And there is no reason to play nice with lesser language about that, you instead need to accept the fact that your a bloody murderer.
And every one of those bloody murderers need to live their lives in shame and guilt and penance and save many lives for every one they allowed to die or they are no better than the people we lock up in jail and heap hatred upon for murdering and neglecting children. You may escape jail because the law doesn't cover your responsibility but you cannot escape truth.
And yes, I'm angry, and no Its not because of a personal loss. It's because i have enough brains to imagine the scope of loss to the world of each of these deaths. And honestly.. dead kids. Seriously
dead kids! what language can possibly be severe enough to express the horror we should feel in the face of the figures of an epidemic of
DEAD KIDS! and people sitting by and letting them die?
Some people have decided that if the kid is Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Undecided then its fine to let them die.. and if they are Transgender then it's fine to not even look to see if they are dying.
UPDATE: Some TG figures were past on to me. "...Professor of Psychiatry at Newcastle [NSW] university Steinbeck's estimation of 40% in the chapter he contributed to the founder's of the Monash Medical gender reassignment Centre book, 'Transsexualism and Gender Reassignment' by Prof Michael Walters and Dr Michael Ross last published by Oxford University Press in 1991."
Well an estimate of
40%... in stats over
a decade old... I wonder how many TG kids succeeded in killing themselves in the last 18 years? While better than 53% can we at all consider that
40% is at all acceptable and not demanding immediate substantial attention?
Lets start washing the blood off our hands and start saving these kids.
