By Rev. Susan Newman

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” I remember being told that when I broke down crying to my first grade teacher because a boy on the playground was calling me names because I was fat. That old saying about “sticks and stones” isn’t any more true or comforting now than it was back then.

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover

On Easter Monday, April 13, when many children were enjoying a holiday from school and still eating chocolate bunnies, 11 year old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover of Springfield, Massachusetts, was being eulogized.

Carl, an African-American boy, hung himself by tying an electrical cord around his neck, fastened to a support beam in his home after enduring another day of being taunted by bullies in his middle school. There’s nothing to confirm this 11-year-old boy’s sexual orientation, but we know that he killed himself because he could not survive the constant berating and taunting from his peers.

Carl’s mother, Sirdeaner L. Walker, said in one article that, “They were always saying, ‘you’re gay, you must be gay, you act like a girl.’”  She told The Advocate that Carl “played football, baseball and was a Boy Scout, but a group of classmates called him gay and teased him about the way he dressed. They ridiculed him for going to church with his mother and for volunteering locally.

“It’s not just a gay issue. It’s bigger. He was 11 years old, and he wasn’t aware of his sexuality. These homophobic people attach derogatory terms to a child who’s 11 years old, who goes to church, school, and the library, and he becomes confused. He thinks, Maybe I’m like this. Maybe I’m not. What do I do?”

What was the purpose of the constant verbal attacks?  Was it to build his self-esteem and affirm his worth?  I think not.  Carl was debased because he was “other.” Many people of all ages, races and backgrounds have become intolerant to the point of hating anyone who is not the same as they are.  We don’t know if Carl was gay or not, but for these bullies he was, and this put him in the category of “other” and therefore fair game for abuse. Boys who learned somewhere, somehow to hate the “other” that Carl represented thrust their words into his heart and mortally wounded him.  Boys who received the message that the lives of gay people are not as worthy of respect, dignity and honor as the lives of other people.

The American Journal of Public Health reported that homosexual or bisexual middle school and high school boys are seven times more likely than heterosexual boys of the same age to report suicide attempts. According to TheTrevorProject.org, the nation’s only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) “youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide due to a myriad of increased social challenges and risk factors, including being subjected to bullying and anti-gray sentiments at school, at home and in public.”

Same gender-loving people often experience oppression through this kind of homophobia which, while dangerous and tragic in itself, sometimes escalates into violent hate crimes. One of the best-known cases is that of Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who was brutally tortured and murdered on the night of October 6, 1998, targeted because he was gay.  His murder brought national as well as international attention to the issue of hate crime legislation at the state and federal level.

When a person is victimized because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability, that is a hate crime.  Verbal attacks often escalate into physical attacks.  In Matthew Shepherd’s case, boys who may well have been hateful bullies grew into murderous men.

Every individual’s life is valuable and sacred, and even one life lost is too many. There is ample evidence that violent, bias-motivated crimes are a widespread and serious problem in our nation. Reported data from the FBI indicates that in 2004 there were 1,197 hate crimes against LGBTQ victims.  The Bureau’s most recent data, compiled in 2007, reports 1,265 attacks, indicating slight increases each year.  It is not the frequency or number of these crimes alone that distinguish these acts of violence from other types of crime; it is the impact these crimes have on the victims, their families, their communities and, in some instances, the nation.

Words have tremendous power, and words hurled with the intent of attacking someone at the core of who they are or might be are potent weapons. Let us not allow them to forget one another’s humanity. In honor of Carl and Matthew and all hate crime victims everywhere, we must learn to give more power to what connects us than to what might make us different.

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, a Jewish merchant, Shylock asks “I am a Jew.  If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?  If you poison us, do we not die?”  We all are born different from each other – individuals with different gifts and graces to offer the world.  Let us teach our children to be welcoming and affirming of others.  If we must call others who are not like us names, then let us start with “Child of God.”

The Reverend Dr. Susan Newman has had a 33-year career as a pastor, a community advocate, a teacher, a chaplain, and author. Hailed by Ebony Magazine as one of the Top Black Women Preachers in America, she is the President of Sincerely Susan Ministries, and is an Adjunct Minister of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, DC.  Her web site is:  www.sincerelysusan.com