I love Jenny the Bloggess.  She is one of the most consistently funny people on the internet, and also, probably, in the three dimensional world as well, if her pictures and anecdotes are any indication.  In addition to her regular blog, she has perhaps the most entertaining advice column I’ve ever seen.  This week, though, she’s not taking questions, just giving an answer.  I hope Jenny will forgive me for excerpting the whole thing:

For the fifth time in the last month I’ve opened my computer to read about another child committing suicide. In all these cases they were young people who were being bullied about their perceived sexual orientation.

If you are anti-gay you can keep reading.  I’m not going to yell at you.  There’s already been too much of that.  What I am going to do though is point out that if your child takes your learnings and uses them to bully another child into suicide it will haunt your child forever.  They will never be able to escape the fact that their actions helped cause the death of a classmate.  It’s a horrible guilt to hold onto and one that no parent wants their child to go through.  Most parents of bullies have no idea that their child is involved in taunting others.  Talk to your children about bullying.  Explain that no matter what it’s important to not judge others and to stand up for them when you see someone being picked on…even if you don’t always agree with everything that person does.

You may think that your child already knows this but my guess is that the parents of the children who taunted these kids into suicide thought their kids knew too and now they have to watch their children being subjected to a huge backlash of people calling for justice against them.  They have only to look at the internet to feel the shame of people hating them even though they don’t even know them.  It’s a vicious circle and one we need to stop now.  If not for the sake of children victimized by bullying then for the sake of the children who will be haunted by their actions when they get older.  Think back.  Is there someone that you made fun of when you were a child?  I did.  I still feel ashamed about it and I wish I could go back and warn myself how I’d feel later when I was grown.  But I can’t.  All I can do is teach my child to not repeat my mistakes and to be compassionate and loving.  Talk to your kids. Don’t just assume they know what bullying means.  Ask what they’re seeing in school and how it makes them feel.  Get involved and have them dig a little deeper.  Please.

Special note for the bullied kids reading this: It does get better. You may feel alone, but you’re not.  The world is changing, slowly, but for the better.  It’s a hard fight but one that will make you stronger if you don’t let it break you. Right now it’s hard to see clearly but there is a world of amazing people out there who have gone through the same thing and came out stronger and more compassionate and who will love you and respect you and cherish your contributions.  I’m one of them and I can’t wait to meet you.  Don’t let me down.

If you or anyone else you know is contemplating suicide, or if you’re just scared and need help, please call The Trevor Project at (866) 4-U-TREVOR [866-488-7386].

Now go read Jenny’s blog for laughing purposes.

Bruce wrote yesterday about the awful chapter of the Constance McMillen story that just concluded. After being assured that the prom thrown by parents would be welcome to everyone, the students and parents decided to let pig ignorance and cruelty win the day, their little kudzu-like black souls determined to stamp out any good that could have come from the situation: No one attended the prom at the country club, instead choosing to leave Constance and the disabled kids at that prom while they went to another, unofficial prom. Great job, bigots!

I’m talking to the children, but only halfway. But I’m really talking to the parents. Every single one of you has proven yourself to be unfit to be raising children in the year 2010 in a first world nation. The fact that you allowed your kids to participate in this act of unmitigated gall and cruelty is repugnant. That kind of shit might have passed for parenting during the Crusades, or back when you were a slave state, but not anymore. Anyway, way to teach your kids to hate people who are different from them! That’ll take them far in this world. (No. It won’t. It’ll keep them stuck in Fulton, where brain cells apparently go to die.)

So yeah, this Southern writer is disgusted, as is pretty much every other Southerner for whom a trip to Wal-Mart is an annoyance rather than a vacation.

Another Southern writer is approaching this differently, and I think we could all learn something from the truly admirable compassion she is trying to feel for these idiots. Perhaps it’s because she’s a Mom, and she’s able to speak to it from that perspective. You may be familiar with Jenny the Bloggess. If you’re not, take a moment to subscribe to her feed this instant, and thank me later. She’s usually the most reliably funny read on the entire internet; she’s bent, twisted, and wonderful. But tonight, she’s singing a different tune:

I know people who are intolerant or homophobic or full of fear or hate. And some of them I love in spite of it. I can’t help it. But I still have to say something even if it hurts them to read it.

You are wrong.

Our differences are what make us strong, what makes us unique and special. Fighting intolerance about mental illness, or race, or lifestyle or whatever labeled “flaw” we are saddled with makes us strong. And today instead of using my strength to say how much I hate every single person that thought that this horrible act of cruelty was in any way acceptable to do to a human being I’m using it to do something so much harder. I’m using it to say that I still love you. And that I hope for change. And that I know that I am imperfect and I am changing and that I hope you can too. Because I don’t want to live in a world where so many people send me emails of desperation and despair because they think that a girl on the internet they’ve never met is the only one who could ever understand them. These people? The ones emailing me who feel that their life is worthless? They are your children. They are the people we see every day. They are the men and women who will one day care for us when we’re old and feeble and can’t stand up for ourselves anymore.

They. are. us.

Yeah, Fulton. Everybody whose words you’re reading right now has a Southern accent and says “y’all” a lot. Deal with it.

Jenny finishes her post like this:

A special note to every single person reading this who thinks that they are alone or different or forever broken…you are not. You are part of a special tribe that you just haven’t found yet and we need you. All the best people are broken. Keep fighting until you find your place. It does exist. I promise.

And that was when Jenny made me cry. (Damn her for that, by the way.)

It’s amazing that there are everyday heroes out there fielding letters from depressed, broken kids. I’ve fielded a few in my time, but I can imagine that Jenny fields a lot, because of what she stands for and the way she spills her soul (hilariously) day in/day out; it’s likely made her a trusted confidant for many more hurting kids than she’d ever tell you. But it’s sick that people on the internet have to be stand-in parents and confidants for kids because their parents won’t support them. You know?

Anyway. Thanks, Jenny for taking a night off from the funny to give us all that message.