SAMPLE
How many articles about murder have I skipped over? How often do I genuinely feel grief when I read about one?
The past few weeks I have been in mourning for a boy I never knew.
I heard about the killing of University of Pennsylvania student Blaze Bernstein on Instagram. Our mutual friends made me pay attention to the other things we had in common, causing me to fanatically read any new headline related to his case. An ambitious college student, likely unaware that being gay still posed a threat to his safety, Blaze was just like me. And he was killed for it.
Young gay men like us suspected his murder was a hate crime immediately. We share an unacknowledged fear, as do our family and friends, that we too, could be headlines as victims of unthinkable violence. Unthinkable, yet we constantly think about it, because if it can happen in privileged communities between high school friends, then it can (and does) happen anywhere. Unthinkable, or at least we try to push it aside, because for us, it is difficult to lead the life we want if we really consider the ramifications of doing so. It’s why many chose to not lead the life that would make them a minority, even in places that are paragons of progressivism.
Perhaps that shame led the accused Samuel Woodward to kill Blaze. Text messages to friends demonstrate that Blaze thought that Woodward hit on him, and Samuel made him promise to not tell. The media has hopped on any chain that can tie him to hate: neo-Nazi group association and feigned violence. It focuses less on the fact that the two boys were classmates, or the assumed air of intimacy, whether real or imagined, that brought them together that night.
My friends asked why Blaze would want someone, who identified as straight, even if he wasn’t? For college aged gay men like me, closeted “straight” men are associated with masculinity, a trait we strive to have. Even out men at my school look for partners who would never be seen as effeminate. It’s why I take pride when people say they were surprised to hear I was gay. It’s why the majority of my gay friends see the community as something which adds stress rather than providing support.
Despite progress, there still exists an overlooked inequity even in tolerant towns. The need for the LGBT community to act as a sanctuary has only heightened. On campus, many out gay men, like me, chose not to affiliate in LGBT groups in order to blend in. But until discrimination is eradicated, there isn’t an opportunity for us to both blend in and be advocates for those like us. Enhanced advocacy and visibility goes beyond simply mourning the loss of Blaze, and hopefully it will reduce bigotry in the future. We must address the endemic minority stress in these groups, even where homophobia isn’t overt.