Known as EricJames to friends, he was a volunteer at the Trevor Project, an organization devoted to preventing LGBT teen suicides. Trevor Project spokeswoman, Laura McGuinnis, said, “He was a volunteer teaching suicide prevention, so he knew what counseling was available to him. Unfortunately suicide is so complicated, so rooted in mental illness, that it is difficult to know why he made that decision. It is very, very sad.”
He seemed like the last kid who would commit suicide, doesn't he? He worked with the Trevor Project, he made his own 'It Gets Better' video. He knew all about LGBT suicides.
But EricJames came froma family of "extremist" Christians, who called him "disgusting"and then kicked him out of their home last October.
For being gay.
His own parents, at one time, tried to perform an exorcism on him to make him straight, and therefore acceptable to their "lifestyle". EricJames also endured emotional and physical abuse at school which caused him to drop out of high school. But, in his video, he said, it had gotten better for him: “You will love, be loved, and I love you...You are not alone.”
EricJames also created a short film called “Invisible Creatures,” in which he shows both gay and straight couples expressing their affection in similar ways because, let's understand one thing, love is love, no matter what gender the couple.
This was a young man who might have helped other LGBT youth to fight the urge to give up, to keep going, to know that it gets better,. but, in the end, probably for one brief moment, EricJames forgot all that, and decided it wouldn't get better.
We'll never know what he might have done as a filmmaker.
We'll never know what he might have done to help LGBT youth.
We'll. Never. Know.
via Queer Landia and The Washington Post
