Good Bye, Leelah

[dude]

This breaks my heart. Accepted at school, rejected at home.

[Bruin Fisher]

Leelah appears to have had supportive friends, just not a supportive home and family. It's usually the other way around. It must have been unbearable for her, evidently. Very sad news.

[dude]

Leelah's story went nation-wide on ABC's World News Tonight on New Years Day.

The mother won't be able to hide her guilt even at her church.

Shame shame shame!

[Guest Dabeagle]

One thing I've noted about this that no one has talked about - what about the poor bastard driving the truck Leelah stepped in front of?

[DesDownunder]

Another case where no one wins. So very sad.

[Chris James]

One thing I've noted about this that no one has talked about - what about the poor bastard driving the truck Leelah stepped in front of?

I wondered that too and found this:

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/12/28/boy-killed-by-truck-on-71/20968865/

I am not at all satisfied by the reaction of the family, but the mother saying that she had no idea about her son's feelings. Yeah, lady, that's why you sent him to Christian therapists...her BS makes me so angry.

[Guest Dabeagle]

Religion is just one of the ways we can apply willful ignorance to our lives - and at our peril.

[Hoskins]

Dabeagle, regarding the truck driver -

I think it's really a touchy subject to bring the truck driver into discussions regarding Leelah's suicide that involves her motives for killing herself. I think news organizations are deliberately trying to keep the truck driver out of the news (and there's probably a measure of giving the guy some privacy). I haven't seen much discussion within news articles about him, but I have seen a LOT of conversation about it in the comment sections of online newspapers and the like.

For some, it gets very close to blaming Leelah for the impact her act will have on the truck driver. Which is exactly what you see in those comment sections. Lots of back and forth about whether or not suicide is a selfish act, whether or not Leelah would have been charged with a crime for attempting suicide in such a way, had she survived.

Metafilter (an online site that I frequent) lost their collective minds over the issue. Metafilter operates by having people submit a post, and then users comment on the post. The posts are usually links to news articles. The posts and comments are moderated to keep people on topic, so that the post content is not derailed by the discussion. It is a strange place.

In the post about Leelah's suicide and why she committed the act, people began the "what about the truck driver" conversation and it got pretty heated, so much so that the site moderators basically had to tell people commenting about the driver to wait a few days and submit their own post about it later, to separate the conversations.

So: I think it's difficult to separate her suicide from the effect it will have on the driver, and news editors are cognizant of that, so you don't see a lot of his perspective, yet. I suspect we will see more from him (and hopefully his story) in a few days when things are more settled.

[DesDownunder]

One would hope, at the very least, that the driver would be offered counselling the same as train drivers are, under similar circumstances.

[TalonRider]

I think it depends on who the driver of the vehicle is. Here in my area we have the case of a 10-year-old boy crossing the street, with two friends, on their way to a sleep over at a friends house when one boy is struck and killed by a Police Officer in route to a call. The officer didn't have his lights or siren on at the time. The last I know, the officer had not been identified publicly and is on administrative leave.