Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Another Tennessee Gay Teen Bullied to Death

Phillip Parker, 14: Bullied for being gay, he felt life was not worth living.

Gordonsville, Tennessee – The body of a 14-year-old gay boy was found by his parents and grandparents Friday, along with a suicide note begging his mother to help him. Phillip Parker committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied for his sexual orientation at Gordonsville High School. WSMV reports that Parker’s parents learned the magnitude of the bullying problem in the school only after he took his life.

This latest gay teen suicide takes place in a state riven with anti-gay controversy.  Recent “Don’t Say Gay,” “License to Bully,” and anti-transgender “Bathroom” bills are making their way through the Tennessee State Legislature, all attempting to stigmatize and debase LGBTQ people. Correlations have been made between high profile anti-gay news stories and a heightened number of violent incidents involving LGBTQ people around the nation.

Young Phillip was the person most likely to tell friends they were beautiful.  His mom said he was energetic, loving, fun, and happy.  But his grandmother reported to WSMV that he confided to her that he was burdened by the bullying, “like he had a big rock on his chest.”  The family said they had complained about the bullying to school officials, but the problem only got worse.

News 5 reports that over a hundred contacts with the Parker family after Phillip’s death added details to the bullying situation at the school. The family said some of these stories showed just how obvious the anti-gay bullying had become there.  His grandfather, Paul Harris, said to News 5: “Because he was gay, he got mistreated physically, mentally by several people out there at the school, and I am very resentful as a result of it. A sweet kind person like Phillip took it out on himself, he killed himself to get out of the pain.” 

No cause of death has yet been officially released by law enforcement authorities.  School officials have not returned calls for comment to the press.

January 23, 2012 - Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bullycide, Bullying in schools, gay teens, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, LGBTQ, LGBTQ suicide, Tennessee, transphobia | , , , , , , , , ,

3 Comments

  1. The more I read about the violence against Gay people or anybody who is not a fascist, the more I see the same patterns and similarities as in the 1930s in Germany. We all know what happened then. USA country of the free????? Forget it. The problem with fascism is that society does not recognise it in their own back yard. I live in New Zealand where Gays are free people and where any discrimination against homosexuals is highly illegal and unheard of. How come that your christian communities have so much hate? Or is it that the sexual repression of the christian churches is coming home to roost?

    Gerald New Zealand

    Comment by Gerald Moonen | January 24, 2012

    • The problem with fascism is that people like you attribute it solely to people like Christians or places like the US. Homosexuals are executed in places like Iran, rounded up by militias and killed in Iraq, sentenced to jail and lashes in Saudi Arabia & Kuwait, and murdered on a daily basis in places like Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. Honor killings by family members is the norm. In black south africa suspected lesbians are gang raped as a form of ‘correction’ to ‘make them straight’. They are beaten savagely and often killed. A man on the street interviewed said he was in favor of ‘rocking’ (stoning) and raping lesbians, but he didn’t have time to rape them himself. In Sweden gay people have all rights, they can get married, and the only people harassing them here are muslim immigrants.

      Stop bitching about ‘evil christians’ in places like the USA where violence against gay people is NOT the norm.
      This boys suicide is horrible and intensely sad, but for each gay teen who kills himself over bullying, there are another 10 or 20 straight teenagers who kill themselves over bullying.
      BULLYING and harassment is the ultimate culprit, the fact that he was gay just gave the shit bullies a reason to harass. I admit, I get angry when the bullying suicides of gay teens receives international attention, while only a few highly publicized cases of suicides ‘by bully’ receive any media attention at all – and those are usually the girls. Boys kill themselves at a MUCH higher rate than girls.
      My son committed suicide at age 15. He was not gay. Why was his death apparently meaningless to the ‘world’ at large?

      Muslim immigrants in England, Sweden, and every other European country make clear their belief that gays should be executed, place up posters saying gays are not allowed within ‘their’ muslim enclaves, and even though they are SO against gays – teenage boys and young men are still victims of rape at the hands of the ‘non-gay’ muslim immigrants.

      Considering the population of 350 million citizens in the United States, the rate of violence against gays for being gay (at the hands of alleged Christians) is much lower than other forms of ‘hate violence’, for example the now everyday violence against whites at the hands of blacks, which receives little media attention and the police always say ‘you can’t jump to conclusions that it was racial’ (even though the attackers were screaming things like ‘we hate white bitches’ ‘that was for Trayvon’ or the flash mob that beat down several people only attacked whites, while chanting ‘this is our world, this is a black world’ NO HATE CRIME in that). Muslim immigrants in the United States persecute homosexuals on a constant and often violent basis.

      In places like Minnesota, where the cab industry is now upwards of 80% somalian, muslim cab drivers refuse gay passengers and are known to stop the cab and kick them out upon realization that they are gay. I recently watched a video recorded by 2 gay men who had attended or were about to attend a gay pride parade or gathering, and were being followed by, screamed at, had rocks thrown at them by a group of Somalian immigrants whose ages ranged from 6 to 18. They kept saying ‘are you gay’ ‘hey, suck my dick’ called them the most disgusting things you could think of, aggressively demanded to know why they were being filmed, threw rocks at the men – who were doing absolutely nothing to provoke or respond towards their aggressors and said on camera they were filming it ‘because’ if anything happened they had to make sure the truth was on tape.

      THESE are the types of stories that are barely reported. Although they occur on a DAILY basis. This media bias does not serve any purpose of public safety, but, instead seeks to hide the problems related to mass immigration of FASCIST muslims.

      Comment by BunnyOlesen | November 19, 2012

      • love your comment Bunny. x

        Comment by pip hill | June 23, 2013


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