An Open Letter To A Young Victim Of Homophobia

For two years, I co-facilitated a weekly group for LGBT teenagers and young adults.  I was a volunteer and had to stop because of changes in the scheduling of my paid work.  However, I wonder how much longer I would have continued as a co-facilitator.  Few things I've done were more rewarding. However, few things are more  heartbreaking than to see a fourteen-year-olds who were cast out of their families or bullied out of their schools and communities because they were--or people perceived them to be--members of the LGBT communities.

I can only imagine how I would have felt had I known Zachary Dutro Boggess. He is the four-year-old boy whose mother thought he would become gay. "He walks and talks like it.  Ugh," Jessica Dutro wrote to her boyfriend, Brian Canady, whom she instructed to "work on him".  

Work on him they did.  Someone should have seen this tragedy unfolding, as Ms. Dutro had a history of abusive behavior toward other kids and her message to her boyfriend was not her only or most virulent expression of homophobia.

Now Rob Watson--himself a gay father--has written this open letter to Zachary, whose life ended so terribly:

Dear Zachary,
Goodbye. We, the world, have failed you little one. You came to us, bright and full of promise, and we left you in the hands of one who did not appreciate your brightness, and in fact, she sought to make you suffer for who she thought you might be.

I am sorry. I did not cause the force that killed you, and in fact, I fight it daily. You are dead, however, and for me, that means that I did not fight hard enough, not nearly hard enough.

You were killed by homophobia, my child. It came through the hands of parents, through the very hands and arms that should have been there to grab you, and hold you and love you. It was the force of homophobia that killed you however, not just those physical blows that delivered it. While your parents embodied that hatred, it was not created by them, it had been given to them in many ways from the world around them.

I am sorry you were born in a world where too many voices tell you not to be you. No one should have to fight for the right to be themselves, least of all, a 4-year-old child.

I am sorry you were born into a world where so many feel that the ability to physically make a child is more important that the ability to love and nurture one. Where people are writing court papers vilifying parents who do not physically procreate, they should be writing briefs condemning parents who do not love. Birthing a child is merely bringing it to life. Loving a child is truly giving it a reason to live.

I am sorry you were born into a world where people believe in misinterpreted Bible passages and tired dogmas. They hold onto them only so they can rationalize hating something they don’t understand. Something they see in you, even in your innocence.

I am sorry for all the beauty, magnificence, talent and life that you represented that is now gone. I miss the adult you were to become: the father, the artist, or the hero. I mourn the children you did not get to raise and the better world you did not get to help build.

A man named Fred Phelps died a few weeks ago, two years after you did. He lived his life being hateful, trying to get people to be more homophobic. He failed and his efforts made people not want to be like him. Homophobia lost. You lived your life being loving, and your efforts made two people hate you. Homophobia still lost however, because I will never ever forget you.

I pray that your short life is held up as the horrible cost of the homophobic mindset. That mindset is not an opinion. It is not a right to religious beliefs. It is a deep and ever-present danger that kills the innocent. I pray that your life robs homophobia of its glory and helps shame it into non-existence.

Nothing will replace the life we lost in you. You were our child and we allowed our world to inspire your fate. You deserved so much better.

With you in our hearts, little man, I promise you, we will do so much better. We will shut this intolerance, this indecency down even harder. We can’t give you back your life, but through your memory, we can take back our own lives and this world.

We have the power to make this world one of love, fairness and peace. You have reminded us why we need to do that for all the future little boys and little girls just like you. We owe it to them. We owed it to you. We will not fail again.