It's time to take tolerance one step further--to ACCEPTANCE.

Like millions of others this past week, I have been deeply disturbed and saddened by the rash of reported suicides among young men around this country.  When I came across the NPR story about Tyler Clementi on my Facebook feed, my heart sank, my jaw dropped, and my eyes welled with tears.  When I followed a link to an article listing three more teenage boys whose lives all ended in the same fashion--all in September--I nearly vomited.  And these are only the reported cases.  

Losing someone to suicide is horrible in its own right.  Losing a kid to suicide is even more horrible because he or she still has a whole lifetime to live.  Losing a kid to suicide because he or she has been mistreated so horrifically by other kids…now that's just unspeakable.  Completely unacceptable.  Despicable.  Outrageous.  Sickening.  And preventable.  IF we focus our teaching.

As parents, as teachers, as community leaders, as role models, as mature, open-minded human beings, it is so incredibly important that we teach kids tolerance, that we really work to make sure they understand that just because people are different from them, they don't need to hate and hurt them.  But you know what?  We MUST go one step further, and teach kids ACCEPTANCE.  It's unequivocally imperative.  We must MODEL acceptance for them.  We've got to show them what acceptance is and how to really live it.  In one of my classes the other day, a classmate made an interesting distinction between tolerance and acceptance that I have since embraced: tolerance is a decent first step but it is only a shallow "I can be OK with that" mentality; acceptance though is where we need to get to, for that is a true embracing, a true accepting of something.  It's genuine; it's from the heart.  We're all different in myriad ways.  But we MUST MUST MUST learn to accept those differences and to work together to make this world a better place.  For your survival.  For my survival.  For the kids' survival.  For OUR survival. 

No one, especially kids--who generally lack the maturity and emotional stability necessary to overcome such blows to their self-esteem--should have to endure bullying from others because of who they are.  NO ONE.  They should never feel that they have to hide how they identify themselves, whether that's heterosexual, homosexual, transgendered, questioning, or whatever else there may be.  Kids' lives are already hard enough, what with trying to figure out who the heck they are and even more, who they "think they're supposed to be".

HOW MANY MORE LIVES MUST BE LOST BEFORE WE SAY AND DO SOMETHING TO ENSURE ABSOLUTELY NO MORE?  HOW MANY MORE HORRIFIC STORIES LIKE THIS MUST WE READ AND HEAR AND BE DEPRESSED ABOUT?  HOW MANY?