An op-ed in The Daily Caller blamed the LGBT community for helping cause the tragic suicide of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen who took her own life after being rejected by her religious parents.
On Sunday, December 29, the 17-year-old transgender teenager took her own life by walking into traffic miles from her home in Ohio. In her suicide note, which she posted online, Alcorn described the difficult conditions she faced in her life: unaccepting parents, religious conversion therapy, and isolation from her peers.
Alcorn's death has become a rallying cry in the fight against transphobic discrimination and conversion therapy. LGBT youth raised in non-accepting religious families are much more likely to attempt suicide, and Alcorn's story is a heartbreaking example of the kind of anguish and hopelessness many LGBT youth experience when facing unwelcoming home environments.
But according to David Benkof in Daily Caller, it's the LGBT community that's to blame for Alcorn's suicide. In a January 7 op-ed titled “The LGBT Community's 'Suicide Strategy' Killed Leelah Alcorn,” freelance writer David Benkof argues that Leelah killed herself in order to help advance the LGBT agenda:
Because Leelah's death (she was struck by a semi-trailer after stepping onto a highway) grew directly out of the LGBT community's longstanding rhetorical “suicide strategy,” which goes something like this:
We need same-sex marriage because gay teens will kill themselves if they don't feel equal.
Leelah knew that the gay community habitually points to teen suicide as an impetus for social and political change. Sadly, she found meaning in trying to pitch in, hoping her death would further advance LGBT rights.
Leelah's death doesn't call for a retread of pro-gay advocacy. Instead, it should be a sober opportunity for the LGBT community to re-examine its suicide strategy, lest they continue to encourage more Leelahs.
Benkof goes on to argue that LGBT activists are “almost gleeful” about Alcorn's suicide because it gives them “one more opportunity to gather sympathy for their social and political goals.”
In August, Benkof blamed the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell for the rise of rape in the military. As Media Matters has previously noted:
Benkof (formerly known as David Bianco) once identified as a gay man, but in 2003, he announced that he was actually bisexual and would abstain from sex with men for religious reasons. Since then, Benkof has been a vocal opponent of marriage equality. He has urged the LGBT community to "let go of their obsessive insistence on being treated equally at all costs," and opposed even basic non-discrimination protections as "a threat to marriage."