Gay Iowa Teen Takes Own Life After Bullying

The hate merchants at the "family values" organizations, the Vatican and Catholic bishoprics and the Southern Baptist Convention have another scalp if you will to hang on their belts as a trophy to their "godliness" - Kenneth Weishuhn (pictured above), a high school freshman in Paullina, Iowa, who committed suicide after being subjected to anti-gay bullying.  What drove him to take his own life?  An atmosphere of hate and anti-gay bigotry and animus nurtured and justified by the "godly Christian"who continue to depict gays as perverts, diseased, and any number of horrible things.  The result of this incessant drumbeat is that the ignorant and gullible feel free to make the lives of others a living hell.  As I have said before, these people - Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Brian Brown, etc., and those in the GOP who prostitute themselves to the Christofascists - literally have blood on their hands regardless of their disclaimers of any responsibility.   If indeed there is a Hell, these people have and deserve special reserved seats in my opinion.  Here are highlights from KTIV-4 TV:

PRIMGHAR/ PAULLINA, Iowa (KTIV) -  Kenneth Weishuhn was only a freshman at South O'Brien High School.   That's located in Paullina, Iowa.

Family and friends say the 14-year-old was happy.  But, beneath that smile, there was a lot of pain.  "He says, 'Mom, you don't know how it feels to be hated," said Jeannie Chambers.  Kenneth Weishuhn didn't know either, until he told his friends last month that he was gay.

"People that were originally his friends, they kind of turned on him," said his sister Kayla Weishuhn.

Teasing started in school, according Kayla, a sophomore.  She says it was the boys in her class, that bullied her brother over his sexuality.

"A lot of people, they either joined in or they were too scared to say anything," she said.  She says they took their teases online, to websites like Facebook, creating a hate group against gays and adding Kenneth's friends as members.  However, it was only the beginning, family say he started receiving death threats from South O'Brien students on his phone.

"When I'd question him about the phone calls, like he just blew it off, so I just thought everything was ok," said his mother.

According to Kenneth's mother Jeannie, those South O'Brien boys were given a warning, but she was never contacted by the school.  She's unsure whether she'll press charges against the students she says drove her son to his death.

"I really don't want to ruin somebody else's life, or take someone else's son or daughter from them.  But, I don't know what it's going to take to get it to stop," said Chambers.

What is it going to take.  I have a couple of ideas: (1) fire EVERY school administrator and teacher who refuses to take bullying seriously and expel students caught bullying others, and (2) all deference to Christofascists and "family values" organizations needs to cease immediately and decent people need to start treating them like the vile hate filled people they are in fact.  Call me terrible, but when I encounter one of these "godly Christian" folks, I want nothing to do with them and I immediately categorize them as foul and despicable individuals.  

Words fail to describe the rage I feel when I see beautiful lives like Kenneth Weishuhn's snuffed out so that horrible individuals can strut around feeling superior about themselves.  It makes me literally feel sick.  And each time I see and write about such suicides, I move further away from wanting to have anything to do with Christianity.  Conservative Christians are horrible modern day Pharisees and I feel certain that Christ would likewise find them a stain on His name.