New York City Gay Men’s Chorus presents two opportunities to hear Tyler’s Suite, a new collection of songs honoring the life of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman whose 2010 suicide brought national attention to the issue of cyberbullying. Tickets to both concerts available below.
“TYLER’S SUITE” features new music from composers Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin); John Bucchino (A Catered Affair); Ann Hampton Callaway (Swing!); Craig Carnelia (Sweet Smell of Success); John Corigliano (Academy Award winner for The Red Violin); Nolan Gasser; and Jake Heggie (Dead Man Walking); and lyricists Lance Horne and Pamela Stewart.
A Concert for Tyler
featuring the NJ premiere of Tyler’s Suite
Saturday, June 27 7:30pm
West Side Presbyterian Church
6 South Monroe Street
Ridgewood, NJ
Click here to purchase tickets
Must we uniformly regard Tyler Clementi as a martyr? Must we as a society now hang our head in shame for ever regarding sodomy as a horribly soul-debasing act? Is it wise to draw continuous attention to a troubled and unstable young man’s premeditated flame-out? With every mention of Tyler Clementi’s name in K-12 classroons, we lionize him further and risk motivating additional unstable young people to follow his example and commit the horribly selfish and sinful crime of suicide.
His passing is a true tragedy, period… in terms of your thoughts, …https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-archbishop-resigns-after-archdiocese-charged-with-coverup/ar-BBl9A7E?ocid=mailsignout
This is wonderful news. May the music drift on the airwaves up to heaven for Tyler and for all the victims of bullying.
P.S./8:03am, would you please elaborate as to how you feel the MSN article you identified relates to the subject at hand? FYI, this should not be taken as some kind of challenge to you or your opinions, as it is a sincere request for an explanation.
Its just about hypocrisy, that’s all…not you, you’re obviously very devout but many of those who function as “shepherds of the flock” are hypocrites or worse… I admire Pope Francis’s comment of “who am I to judge?”… and I laud the NYCGMC’s tribute and the efforts of the family to confront these terrible bullying situations…
The circumstances of Clemente’s death are being morphed into a modern passion play. This is wrong, and we should not permit ourselves to be manipulated in this way.
Jesus, entirely sin-free, willingly endured false accusations without seeking retribution and was murdered for challenging and publicly condemning self-serving religious leaders who acted more like preening peacocks than faithful shepherds of the flock . Tyler Clementi, it turns out, once he was free from his parents’ supervision, was intent on overturning every stone relating to sexual pleasure. And such condemnation as he may have experienced for his behavioral choices was decidedly passive and indirect, in keeping with the anything-goes type of mores to be found on any given college campus today. In fact, an argument could be made that the response by his dorm-mates was really just short of “seargent shultz” style resignation (i.e., “I know nothing!!”) when one considers how little energy they invested in it. This was certainly no deep-seated religious jihad directed against homosexuality.
Moreover, for the good of society, Clemente must be held personally responsible for his own demise. We as moral adults interested in getting to the truth of the matter should not refrain from saying that, other than the relative proximity in time, nothing really adequately explains why Clemente’s dorm-mates should be tagged with responsibility for his suicide. They certainly had disgust for his sexual misbehavior, and there is no question that they expressed their feelings in in an immature manner likely to displease Clemente. But Clemente’s abrupt plummet from being a seemingly normally well-adjusted freshman to becoming an immediate suicide risk was far too dizzying and precipitous to be explained by the haphazard vignettes involving the roommate’s amateurish and awkward use of his own computer web-cam. The live-feed video display it produced, as it turns out, did not reveal much, and was absolutely nothing compared to what Clementi himself had already previously used his own Web cam to show to the public at large. (A gay blogger, moved by Clemente’s suicide but determined to give the public a full picture of his pre-suicide lifestyle, at one point identified another salacious website, this one almost solely dedicated to live-feed sexual exhibitionism, having determined that Clementi personally frequented the site. The blogger published both Clementi’s user name and images from that website showing that Clementi apparently willingly used a webcam in conjunction with the website to engage in live solo sexual exhibitionism. So Clementi was by no means in the closet by the time his new roommate foolishly trained his own webcam on him.)
Clear-eyed perspective seems rarer and rarer these days, as journalists are forever seeking to advance a narrative closely aligned with their own political perspective, rather that report things in a straightforward manner, and progressive ideologues similarly seek to deny or make up facts as necessary to move their own narrow agenda forward. We really need not all worship at their deranged secular altars.
Trenchant commentary today from Ann Barnhardt (seemed to relate to this discussion, your mileage may vary):
The second reason that the sense of duty has been suppressed is another post-Christian, post-modern phenomenon, anti-intellectualism. Those of us who are riding the Bell Curve multiple standard deviations forward have been shamed into not just silence, but a suicidal desire to cede our duties of leadership in society to the very people that require our leadership. Did you just cringe when you read the first clause in the last sentence? Did you just cringe when I said, using the first person plural, “Those of us who are riding the Bell Curve multiple standard deviations forward…” I’ll bet most of you did. Why? Because it has been drilled into all of us that we must bow to the lie that we are all “equal”, most especially in terms of intellect, and thus one may NEVER, EVER acknowledge that one is of above-average intelligence, most especially if it is true.
Humility – TRUE humility, not the false Pope Francis perversion of the concept – is honesty about one’s self, BOTH in terms of what we are, and what we are not. Those of us who have been given much, as Our Lord said, have proportionally greater societal duty, and we are expected to discern this. Now Pope Francis and his ilk, being Marxists, nincompoops, and moral cripples, take these words as purely material, twisting them to falsely justify progressive taxation schemes and forced wealth redistribution, but the material sense is at the bottom of the list. Closer to the top of the list are the intellectual gifts that God has bestowed upon us very, very unequally.
The point of this is that unless and until the intelligent, wise, morally upright people on this earth stop cowering in shame before psychopaths, imbeciles and moral degenerates, and face up to the fact that they must reassert themselves and reclaim their place in society WHICH IS THEIR DUTY, there is no non-supernatural remedy to any of this, and it will continue to spiral into hell.
I’m not optimistic.
Does anyone remember this story, which happened after the Clemente suicide?
Teacher leaps to death off GWB amid sex probe
nypost.com
A teacher and coach at an elite New Jersey boarding school leaped to his death from the George Washington Bridge – on the same day investigators showed up at his campus to investigate allegations of sex between a student and teacher.
Popular teacher Donovan Dickson, 24 – whose Facebook page features several photos of him posing with students at the co-ed Peddie School in Hightstown – jumped from the New York side of the GWB last Friday around 11:30 am, authorities said.
That same day, police were sent to the $50,000-a-year Peddie School to investigate possible criminal charges against a teacher, officials said.
“Detectives were sent to the Peddie school last Friday to assist Hightstown in investigating allegations of inappropriate sexual contact between a teacher and a student,” a spokeswoman for the Mercer County prosecutor’s office told The Times of Trenton, which first reported Dickson’s leap and the school probe.
Authorities would not say if the two incidents are related or whether Donovan had been part of the investigation into teacher-student sex allegations.
Prosecutors did not release the name of the teacher involved and no charges have been filed in the underage-sex case, the Times reported.
Dickson, a New Hampshire native, had been teaching math at Peddie since 2011 and also coached the boys’ cross country, track and wrestling teams.
A Port Authority spokesman said Dickson was spotted on the bridge, near the Manhattan side pillar, by a police lieutenant last Friday morning.
“He apparently jumped from the south walkway and did not land in the water,” spokesman Joe Pentangelo said.
Dickson’s body was identified by his brother.
Piddie Headmaster Peter Quinn sent a letter to parents and students Tuesday about the “troubling events” and said he had met with students about the incident on Monday. He said it was a “sacred trust ” for faculty to ensure student safety at the high school, but did not give any details on the alleged student-teacher sex assault.
”The broad outlines of those events are known; the details I cannot discuss,” Quinn wrote in his letter, according to the Trenton Times.
Dickson was “loved and admired by his students and colleagues at the Peddie School,” an online obituary for the teacher noted. “He injected happiness and spirit into every occasion.”
A Dickson family member wouldn’t comment Friday, other than to say a memorial service was being planned.
An early comment made by someone who incorrectly thought the teacher was guilty of the predatory behavior reported at the school (he was address other commenters who presumed the teacher was gay because of his appearance):
You are all idiots. You think you can tell whether someone is gay or not based on the way they look in a picture? All you’re proving is that gay idiots are just as ridiculous as straight idiots (who agree with you, by the way; like you, they’re convinced that they can tell whether or not someone is gay by the way they look). Congratulations, you’ve achieved true equality: you’re as moronic as the bigots.
Donny was straight. 100% straight. She was female, and 14 years old. Donny was a predator, plain and simple. It’s probably not his fault, he was probably abused as a child, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a sexual predator. I’m sure you agree with me — now that you know he’s straight, I’m sure you find his behavior abhorrent — but it sounds like a lot of you thought it was okay as long as they were both male. Apparently pedophilia is okay as long as it’s same-sex pedophilia? That’s exactly what society thinks you think — again, nice job perpetuating stereotypes.
I’ve never seen this website before; Google brought me here when I was looking for stories about Donny. There are probably thousands or even tens of thousands of people like me who have read your conversation and been absolutely horrified by your apparent willingness to excuse pedophilic behavior in homosexuals. You are doing a great disservice to the gay community and perpetuating age-old stereotypes that led my best friend to kill himself. Nice job.
—Anonymous
And here’s the punchline: the accusations were horribly false and slanderous:
To number 68. I have been told by staff and students that is a false rumour!!!!! Their words not mine! A young lady made up a story to tease another young girl about having a crush on Mr. Dickson. She then went home and told her mother what was going on and her mother called the police. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Donnie never touched an underage girl at the Peddie school. Sooner you realize this the better his family and the school are better off. You know how I know this? 1. Someone made up the story to run to the press and nobody wanted to confirm it. 2. If Peddie wanted to confirm it, it would be bad publicity on their end. 3. Cops don’t name dead suspects then say, “Were not allowed to talk about it other then we are investigating”! My God it’s written all over the page! Donovan Dickson killed himself for something he did not do! DEAL WITH IT!!!!! Yes, I have talked to several people who knew him and even they are saying he didn’t do it. Yes, I talked to several students about what happened “seniors” and they are saying the same damn thing! He was apparently distraught over something and that made him want to committ suicide. I just hope he is in a better place. AGAIN! There was not 14-15 year old girl that he was after! NONE!!!!! So stop with the rumours!.
—youmustbejoking
So Clemente is said to have performed his act of suicide due to his actual sexual behavior with an older man being broadcast to a few observers of a brief, dark and shadowy live webcam feed, while a popular male teacher performs the very same act in the wake of a FALSE public accusation of sexual activity with a 14 year old female student.
Suicide is madness! Similarly, blaming someone else for another person’s act of suicide is, in most (though admittedly not all) circumstances, madness as well.
The Donovan Dickson suicide has apparently been swept under the rug. Some surmise that his suicidality may have been brought about due to SSRI medication. Why the radio silence? Where are the suites of music written to honor Donovan Dickson’s life? The foundations and “Day One” initiatives started to teach children not to bear false witness against one’s neighbor?
_______
Are you sure?
2Sunday, 16 February 2014 23:26
No way
Since he died in October and you posted this in January, almost 3 months after his death, I was wondering if you knew this for a fact? From what I have learned from the students and parents at Peddie they were all told that another student made something up to bully another girl. Can anyone confirm this?
Reply
possible SSRI reaction
1Thursday, 23 January 2014 19:22
anonyme
The simplest answer to the headline question may be, (1) the teacher sought professional help in coping with the stress of a false accusation, (2) he was prescribed an SSRI, then (3) the drug caused him to jump off the bridge. SSRIs have been shown to double suicidality, especially in young people, and are toxic placebos at any age.
Anyone who wants an unbiased version of the story of Tyler Clementi can visit the following Web page (BTW, Dharun Ravi’s reputation held up well on trial, and Clementi is revealed as initially unfazed by the so-called invasion of privacy, and was only later talked into true displeasure):
https://www.weirdrepublic.com/episode134.htm
Maybe we can have a Gay Pride Parade in RW.
That would be a nice compliment to the July 4th parade…
or maybe next years July 4th parade theme can be gay Americans in US History
We need no such thing in RW, 8:37pm. On the contrary, it’s the propagandists bent on normalizing the sodomitical lifestyle who see the need to break into quiet, untrammeled places like Ridgewood in order to interrupt the smooth transmission of traditional parental teachings (to the extent we are still trying to do this) regarding morality, personal integrity and the high social and personal cost of sexual misbehavior by young people.