Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyOctober 7th, 2010
The mother of Seth Walsh, the Bakersfield-area teen who committed suicide in response to a daily dose of bullying in school, quietly mourns the loss of her son. She is refusing to speak to the public, as are Seth’s friends. But Seth’s grandparents have opened up, and the world gets to see just a bit of the incredible kid that we lost:
Judy and Jim still laugh over his tastes. He colored his hair blond on occasion and wore it with a long swoop that partly covered his eyes. Judy took him shopping once, and he went to the girl’s department to find pants with tapered legs. He added a vest, and a few months later she noticed the style everywhere.
…He was a gentle child, they say, who preferred to “relocate bugs” rather than kill them, who made sure his younger brother got his share of Easter eggs and who once apologized to a bed of flowers when he picked one and placed it on the grave of the family dog.
But the Walshes realize that Seth’s gentleness made him a target, and they recall listening to Wendy (Seth’s mother) as she shared her worries about Seth and what he had to endure.
The teasing and bullying began in fourth grade. At first it was because he was different — more comfortable with girls, not interested in sports, neither aggressive nor assertive — and then it was because he thought he was gay. Once classmates found out and the news spread, the abuse became more focused and cruel.
When Judy learned from her daughter that Seth was gay, she became concerned for the challenges that lay ahead of her grandson.
“Life is hard enough,” she says, “but this makes it harder.”
“Especially in a small town,” Jim says.
The Los Angeles Times’ profile is a must-read.
Latest Posts
Featured Reports
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
“Google” is a trademark of Google Inc.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
John
October 8th, 2010
Please, click the link to read the entire article. If you have a heart, it will be painful but read it, anyway.
Regan DuCasse
October 8th, 2010
I read it this morning. Fresh grief. TERRIBLE grief over this cutie pie of a boy whose light would have been a balm to the world.
How many families have buried, ‘the gay one?’
How many?
Whether actually, figuratively, spiritually, physically or literally?
How many?
Can anyone in those anti gay organizations calculate the damages financially, and so on to those families?
What connection or support ‘the gay one’ might have represented to that family were they still whole?
There are elder parents with one less in the family who would have gentled them into their sunsets.
There are siblings without that one, who might have brought more support and interest to their lives.
Do these anti gay people ever consider the needs of the individuals over their abstract political needs?
The war on gay people has casualties not only in the adult world. But toddlers, and adolescents have died because of it too.
The worth of the gay life is only calculated by sex, NOT the worth of the whole person, the whole of their families.
How impossibly arrogant that this is so. Who decided that a gay life is worthless enough, even before it’s really begun?
Who decided?
Someone decided FOR Seth’s family. Someone decided FOR him that he deserved to be treated worse than a dog.
And we know where it began, and are having a hell of a time ending it.
How many?
We know that orgs like TVC, FRC, NOM and so on, couldn’t have cared less about Seth, or Lawrence, or Sakia…or Scotty Joe.
And how they left us.
I’m done with the empty words, and false sympathy by people from these groups.
Their children listen, the adults that teach these children are listening.
And to their end, Seth Walsh is gone.
And who do we have left? The heartless little savages who assaulted him for being a nice, gentle kid.
Our society trades down to those with their false sense of supremacy and teaching that dominance and control are moral.
Someone has to pay for this. I’m done when young gay children do, for the false sense of supremacy that straight people and their little savages think they have.
patrick
October 8th, 2010
How insightful and eloquent.
kat
October 9th, 2010
I understand the cruelty of children, but what I do not understand is how any adult can read this story and say to themselves, “he deserved it”. How could you possibly think that such a gentle, kind, soul deserved to experience such suffering and shame? How could you possibly think that suicide is a fitting end to such a wonderful life?
It sickens me that any person could look at this little boy and try to justify not only their own hatred and ideology but the pain that he felt and his family is now feeling. There can be no justification for that which drives young people such as Seth to suicide.
Leave A Comment