Dying so others may live: the case of Leelah Alcorn.

ORDINARY CITIZEN'S NOTES. 1 JAN 2015. THUR. N3.
Dying so others may live: the case of Leelah Alcorn. 

THERE IS SOMETHING extraordinarily tragic in the death of Leelah Alcorn. 

Hers is a test of will, and her will was against her parents who did not understand, or refused to understand that their son, now their daughter, is really a daughter and not the biological son she/he was born into in this world. 

This world is an unruly place, so many people, wiser than us, have said a long time before we remember that some people, when pushed against the wall, have only but on thing left for them to do: To do the unthinkable. 

Moral theorists--and yes, ethicists--have a name for this: a no-choice choice. 

That is the context in which this life of Leelah must be interpreted: this choice that is not a choice at all. 

She had not problem in school, Leelah' schoolmate, friend, and neighbor has said. She was accepted there, not as her former self, but this new self she has effectively identified herself with. 

She is--was--Leelah and the discussion stops there. 

But her home, the supposedly safe haven where she could be herself, was hell. Her mom would not here of it, and we can imagine the days of purgatory she went through, infernal, meaningless, vacuous. 

One can only live in vacuity for some time.

One cannot live in vacuity forever, and Leelah, in that home situation, must have sensed that. 

Suicide is a silent killer. 

While it may be a case of biochemical reaction in the brain, there is much social psychopathology involved here, as there is individual psychology. 

I remember now a colleague's daughter while I was still teaching at a state university somewhere else in da Filipins.

That daughter was an instructor in fine arts at a privately-owned university. 

She was talented, spoke Mandarin, spoke other languages, painted the world in its multiple hues, and wrote poetry. 

But one day, just one day, in the middle of her teaching at a fourth floor classroom, she got out all of sudden, went to hallway that leads to an open garden four floor below, removed her shoes methodically, climb on the ledge of the hallway, stood on the left, and dove head first. 

In the case of Leelah, her suicide is going to be symbolic. 

This is going to be a wake-up call for us to finally affirm--and we have not right not to--the other communities like the LGBT. 

We have a problem: we are not willing to open our mind. 

We have a problem: we look at the world with the logic of convenience and comfort and anything that challenges that, we go berserk and summon the tyrannical god in our unknowing heart. 

Leelah, in her courage, said that she hopes her death will have some sense, some meaning, some truth, some advancing of the case to be more human and more humane. 

Let that happen.

Rest, rest, rest in the quiet of your Creator, Leelah Alcorn. 

HON/