(Dharun Ravi) In Rutgers Sentence, Advocates for Gay Rights Fear Excess
In the two months since he was found guilty of using a webcam to spy on his roommate, Dharun Ravi has gone from being a symbol of anti-gay bias to being something of a folk hero, with rallies of his supporters urging the court to “Free Dharun.”
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With Mr. Ravi set to be sentenced on Monday, many of them have argued against the jail sentence prosecutors have recommended. They say Mr. Ravi is being punished for the suicide of his roommate, Tyler Clementi, although he was not charged in it, and that pinning blame on him ignores the complicated social pressures that drive gay teenagers to kill themselves. As repugnant as his behavior was, they say, it was not the blatantly bigoted or threatening actions that typically define hate crimes. Some fear that a sentence that overreaches might provide tinder to anti-gay sentiment — a New Jersey talk radio host complained soon after the verdict of the “gay lobby” railroading Mr. Ravi.
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In an op-ed article in The Star-Ledger of Newark this month, Jim McGreevey, who resigned as governor after declaring himself “a gay American,” argued that Mr. Ravi’s conviction “showed how far we have traveled from the hateful, homophobic past.”
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Richard Kim, the executive editor of The Nation online, who wrote after Mr. Clementi’s suicide about his own experience growing up gay in New Jersey, said he was wary that expressing opposition to a prison sentence would make him appear to link hands with those who accuse gay men and lesbians of seeking “special treatment” with laws against bullying.
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Dan Savage, a gay columnist whose video campaign, “It Gets Better,” began in response to other suicides of gay teenagers just before Mr. Clementi jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, argued that simply locking up Mr. Ravi was a lost opportunity to talk about the other institutions and people “complicit” in Mr. Clementi’s death.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/nyregion/Some-Gay-Rights-Advocates-Question-Rutgers-Sentencing.html?pagewanted=all
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Editor's Letter: Set Ravi Free
4.27.2012
By Aaron Hicklin
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The spotlight on teen suicide in the gay community was overdue, but it has also left us reaching for simplistic answers where there are none.
When the jury in the Dharun Ravi trial delivered its verdict on March 16, it was possible to feel, at least temporarily, a grim satisfaction that the horrible circumstances around the death of a young gay man had been properly acknowledged. We have not always been able to rely on the courts to treat our lives with dignity and respect, and it’s validating when they do. Ravi’s conviction was a compelling signal that harassment and bullying of LGBT people carries penalties. Yet the verdict also left a bitter aftertaste, as if what was being satisfied was not justice, but revenge.
Ravi did a terrible thing, but he was not on trial for Tyler Clementi’s death, nor should he have been. He was on trial for the nebulous crime of “bias intimidation,” but anyone who believes the case would have gone to trial if Clementi were still alive is kidding himself. Ravi was convicted because Clementi is dead. In that sense, at least, Ravi took the rap for colluding in a culture of bullying and stigmatization that is pervasive. You need only see Bully, an urgent new documentary, which tracks a handful of middle- and high-school students as they negotiate a gauntlet of physical and verbal abuse, to understand that the story of Clementi and Ravi has deep roots. It may have ended with a webcam, but it did not begin with one. Whether Clementi felt ostracized at school, we do not know. But we know he felt ostracized at home: “Mom has basically completely rejected me,” he wrote to a friend shortly after he revealed his homosexuality.
It’s an all-too-familiar narrative, but it’s also a reminder that the experiences that shape us are complicated. The spotlight on teen suicide in the gay community was overdue and necessary, but it has also left us reaching for simplistic answers where there are none. That is not to excuse Ravi, who did a terrible thing, but it does beg questions around what purpose his imprisonment would serve. Does it honor Tyler Clementi’s legacy? Will it prevent other kids from killing themselves? If you think the answer to those questions is no, as I do, we should have the compassion not to wreck another life as some kind of atonement for the one that was lost. Ravi faces up to 10 years when he is sentenced on May 21. A wise judge would set him free.
To understand the seeds of Ravi’s behavior, it’s worth watching Bully, a moving exploration of teen bullying that had been slapped with an R rating because of a few bad words—a decision that producer Harvey Weinstein is exploiting in a crafty publicity drive. I wish the director had compromised a little (and maybe he will), because his movie deserves as wide an audience as it can get. Changing the ratings system is a worthy cause, but Bully has an important mission, and bleeping a few expletives won’t dilute it. Filmed largely in Sioux City, Iowa, it illuminates the extraordinary degree to which children exploit perceived weaknesses and differences to enhance their status in the social hierarchy. Those who stand by silently—as kids are punched, stabbed with pencils, and verbally threatened—are collaborators whether they realize it or not.
Watching the movie, I was reminded how small and claustrophobic the world can appear when you are young, and how trapped one can seem. When 12-year-old Alex Libby quietly admits, “I feel like I belong somewhere else,” it’s as profound a distillation of the insidiousness of bullying as you’re likely to hear. Bully shows how it might be possible to combat that culture, largely by building support groups that challenge the passive collusion of schools and students. But it also shows the power of self-affirmation, particularly in the case of Kelby Johnson, a young transgender teen from Oklahoma, who is shunned by her town after she comes out. She is lucky to have a supportive family and a small cadre of loyal friends, but she also reflects a spunky determination to control her own destiny. Like Johnson, most of us find the fortitude and resilience to survive the vicissitudes of adolescence, but we still have to work out how to help those who don’t.
