{"id":1068,"date":"2010-09-30T10:47:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T08:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1068"},"modified":"2010-09-30T10:47:23","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T08:47:23","slug":"tyler-clementi-the-real-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1068","title":{"rendered":"Tyler Clementi: The real crime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in the township of Piscataway, New Jersey.\u00a0 It was a town of contradictions in the 1970s, where there was a large immigrant population, a large black population, a small Jewish population, and a well outspoken bigot and homophobe population.\u00a0 To be fair, this was not <strong>that<\/strong> uncommon in America for the 1970s- we were all learning how to get along with each other, still trying to learn the lessons that Dr. Martin Luther King gave his life teaching the world.\u00a0 Indeed a nearby Piscataway school was named after him, just like many were in the U.S.\u00a0 Piscataway, in fact, had a birds-eye view of what happens when people are oppressed just because they are somehow different: its neighboring town of Plainfield was the site of race riots in the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"350\" height=\"300\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/?ie=UTF8&amp;ll=40.517192,-74.456749&amp;spn=0.078299,0.120506&amp;z=12&amp;output=embed\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nGrowing up, my family and our neighbors got to know a fellow neighbor by the name of David.\u00a0 David was a wonderful sensitive boy who couldn&#8217;t hurt a fly.\u00a0 He took part in school activities, and he enjoyed flash.\u00a0 While I didn&#8217;t understand it at the ripe old age of 7, when David expressed interest in Elton John and Bette Midler, it later became clear that he was gay.\u00a0 I do not know all the dynamics within our neighbor&#8217;s family, but they were Roman Catholics, and David had a very difficult time in the house.\u00a0 Outside the house, he had an even more difficult time in high school, as he tried to find ways to express his personality.\u00a0 The bigots would \u201ckick his ass\u201d.\u00a0 Between his homelife and his school life, David&#8217;s self esteem was battered, and he later chose self-destructive behaviors.\u00a0 He ended up as one of the many victims of AIDS, his behavior \u2013 not really his sexual orientation \u2013 being a contributing factor.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThat was a long time ago.\u00a0 I miss my friend to this day, of course, but one thing I hope is that we will have learned from the tragedies of the past, in the same way they say that the regulations of submariners are written in blood.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe Washington Post story of a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/09\/30\/AR2010093000534.html\"> Rutgers Student in Piscataway killing himself<\/a> last week because he was filmed having sex with another man reminds me that sometimes, when &#8220;boys will be boys&#8221; (in this case I think one of the offenders is a woman), the  results are tragic.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure the two people who committed this gross  invasion of privacy could not have predicted the consequences.\u00a0 That&#8217;s in part because of their immaturity and in part because of their upbringing; because their parents didn&#8217;t impress on them the need to respect not only someone&#8217;s privacy, but to consider what it would be like if they were gay.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nI hope we remember the name  Tyler Clementi.\u00a0 What a sad loss, and for what?\u00a0 Why did he think what being gay and acting on those feelings was somehow wrong?\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Why was it wrong?\u00a0 Who did it hurt?<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThe worst thing about this sad situation is that there are many people today who won&#8217;t see this as a loss because they are so blinded by ideology, prejudice, shame, and ignorance.\u00a0 That to me is the real crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I grew up in the township of Piscataway, New Jersey.\u00a0 It was a town of contradictions in the 1970s, where there was a large immigrant population, a large black population, a small Jewish population, and a well outspoken bigot and homophobe population.\u00a0 To be fair, this was not that uncommon in America for the 1970s- &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=1068\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Tyler Clementi: The real crime&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4],"tags":[363],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-politics","tag-tragedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1073,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions\/1073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}