Gay Tennessee 12-Year-Old Kills Himself After Christian Bullying

Grieving parents go public to plead for love and acceptance

This is the most difficult story I’ve written in ages

I spent hours yesterday digging for facts. Nightmares disturbed my sleep last night. That similar horrors often happen in the U.S. should give anyone nightmares. Sadly, this story of a gay child tormented by his Christian schoolmates has not gripped the nation and probably will not. Could I ask you to give this story your attention for a few minutes? Could you think about why LGBTQ adolescents are five time more likely than their peers to attempt suicide? Can you think about how we as a nation can foster love instead of hate?

Eli Fritchley was a 12-year-old at Cascades Middle School in Bedford County, Tennessee. He loved Sponge Bob, playing trombone in the marching band, and painting his nails. He told fellow students he was gay, and they taunted him mercilessly on religious grounds, telling him repeatedly that he was going to hell. Eli’s parents, who knew about the bullying, thought he was okay, thought he was tough enough to shrug it off, which he seemed good at.

Eli’s religious bullies were the daughters and sons of Evangelical Christians, who make up more than 50% of the population of Tennessee, one of only four states in the union where that is true. In rural counties like Bedford, the percentage shoots up far higher.

As reported in the Los Angeles Blade, Eli’s mother walked into his bedroom last week and discovered his lifeless body. He killed himself, and I will not write about the disturbing details.

Eli’s parents, who emigrated from northern England, are beside themselves with grief, and they’ve gone public in a heart-wrenching video produced by WHNT News 19 of Huntsville, Alabama. They want the world to know their son was a peaceful soul who loved everyone he met and did not deserve the torment that filled his school days.

Eli’s community is grieving and calling for anti-bullying efforts, but the response misses a critical point

“We are absolutely shocked and devastated by this news,” Bedford County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Tammy Garrett said in a statement. “Anytime someone takes his or her life, especially a child, it is nearly unbearable. Our hearts go out to his parents and family as they deal with this terrible loss.”

Garrett told WHNT that counselors and support teams were “immediately put in place” at Eli’s school. She said the school system will “further efforts to support social and emotional learning in the schools, especially stepping up support programs at the middle and high school levels.” She added that, “Raising caring, kind, resilient children is all of our jobs, and parents are not alone.”

I want to be careful how I word the next paragraph, because Dr. Garrett’s reaction is welcome and supportive, lightyears better than reaction two years ago after 16-year-old Channing Smith killed himself over anti-gay bullying in nearby Coffee County. Many days passed before administrators reacted to his suicide, and his school had to be pressured to bring in counselors.

I don’t doubt Dr. Garrett’s sincerity or question her grief, but I must gently point out that her response avoids core issues in Eli’s death, and her proposal to improve social and emotional learning in school is unlikely to reduce future suicides of LGBTQ children, whom she did not mention. Eli’s peers tormented him on religious grounds because he was gay. They were emulating their parents and other trusted adults in their community and region, and unless the community faces that problem squarely, little is likely to change.

Tennessee children lived surrounded by Christian anti-LGBTQ animus

Tennessee’s state legislature debated and passed a law this year that lets parents opt their children out of classes in which LGBTQ people or issues are mentioned. Debate was rancorous and highly publicized, filled with Christian condemnation of trans and gay people. While enforcing the law will be next to impossible given the prominence of LGBTQ people on the national stage, Eli’s classmates certainly saw much of the coverage and undoubtedly internalized messages that LGBTQ people are immoral and unfit to mention in school.

That’s just one law. 2021 was a brutal legislative year for LGBTQ people in Tennessee, and little pitchers have big ears.

In another rancorous move this year, Tennessee politicians cancelled measures to honor country music star TJ Osborne because he came out as gay. Eli’s schoolmates learned being gay is worthy of scorn.

Intense controversy broke out this fall in Franklin, 50 miles from Eli’s school, when two girls on an LGBTQ homecoming float reacted to sustained boos and jeers by kissing for less than one second. Controversy erupted throughout Tennessee as people demanded children be protected from “sexualization” at public events. The chaste peck documented on video morphed into lurid lies about french kissing, hip grinding, and groping. Nobody mentioned a much longer, unobjectionable kiss shared by the homecoming king and queen in public later that night. Eli’s classmates learned that gay people are disgusting.

Also in Franklin County, in 2016, intense controversy broke out when a group of LGBTQ students formed a GSA (Gay/Straight Alliance or Gender and Sexual Alliance) support group in their high school. As Scalawag Magazine reports, the local community organized protests, and large crowds turned up to express opposition to LGBTQ students. Confederate and Christian flags flew as some protestors (like the man in the photo above) displayed Nazi and other white supremacist symbols.

Chris Guess, the public affairs officer for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, expressed support for the protestors and opposition to the GSA club. He dismissed reporters’ concerns about white supremacists. “It’s just a misdirect from[LGBTQ people’s] real intent, which is to indoctrinate people from the earliest possible age that it’s ok to be gay or lesbian or transgender. But everybody don’t (sic) believe that way.”

Sgt. Guess, who serves on the Franklin County School Board, later targeted the GSA by pushing a new district-wide policy requiring students to get parental permission before joining any non-curricular club. “I will not be browbeaten, threatened or bullied into compromising my values or belief system,” he said, after telling parents at a school board meeting that he morally disapproves of trans and gay people based on his Christian beliefs. He did not explain why he refuses to be tolerant of differing beliefs or why LGBTQ students should not be free to seek support from one another.

GSA clubs, which I’ll discuss more in conclusion, are constitutionally protected. Courts have consistently shot down school board attempts to disallow GSAs. Any school that allows any non-curricular club must allow GSAs, but the parental permission tactic Guest copied from other GSA opponents has proven effective at chilling LGBTQ students’ organizing.

Local hero pledges to break law rather than tolerate LGBTQ people

In Coffee County about 30 miles from Eli’s school, Craig Northcott successfully ran for district attorney in 2018 after promising voters he would not prosecute domestic violence crimes against married gay people, saying they aren’t “married in God’s eyes.” He promised county clerks he would not prosecute them if they refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, urging them to “stand on God’s truth” rather than “succumb to the rule of law.” He won the election by a landslide, and even though he point-blank promised to defy Tennessee law and encouraged others to do the same, the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility let him keep his law license in a decision issued earlier this year.

Northcott, who has become a local hero, showed Eli’s classmates that Christian values support mistreating LGBTQ people even if they have to break the law to do it.

Gay Christian man fired from popular restaurant because he married a man

I’m going to cite on last example because it was widely publicized in Tennessee not long ago, and because it’s directly relevant to the Christian-based taunting Eli suffered.

AJ Celento was fired from his job at Demo’s restaurant in Murfreesboro Tennessee, about 30 miles away from Eli’s school, after managers learned he was married to a man. The popular restaurant considers itself a Christian establishment. Celento’s trainer told him gay marriage goes against management’s Christian values. Celento protested that both he and his husband are practicing Christians. He was fired anyway. The case made headlines around the state.

Eli’s classmates learned a powerful lesson in Christian intolerance.

Children do not randomly decide to torment a gay child on religious grounds

They learn that behavior from respected adults. They model their Christianity on their Christian elders. Elis’s classmates modeled their language on language they heard at church, at home, and on the news. They heard parents expressing disgust over a quick same-sex kiss. They heard adults like Sgt. Chris Guess state outright that it’s not okay to be gay or lesbian or transgender. They heard respected adults morally condemn a music icon just because he came out as gay. They heard Christians insisting that gay Christians aren’t real Christians.

They tormented Eli for that. And he killed himself because he couldn’t take it anymore. His parents are suffering terribly and will for the remainder of their days. I can’t imagine their unbearable pain.

Can we learn from this? Can we do better?

I learned yesterday that none of the middle schools and high schools in the Bedford County School System have GSA clubs. I don’t know if administrators have resisted student efforts to form them or if students haven’t asked, but I urge Dr. Tammy Garrett and other administrators to contact GLSEN, an LGBTQ-advocacy organization that works with schools to foster tolerant and accepting school environments. I urge administrators to look at data that shows how active GSAs dramatically reduce anti-LGBTQ and other bullying at schools across the United States.

I urge Dr. Garrett and parents in the district to take a long deep look into the circumstances surrounding Eli’s suicide, to face those issues squarely, and to work to resolve them with genuine Christian tolerance and love.

Eli’s mother says he was an angel, and I believe her. He didn’t deserve to be bullied for being gay. He didn’t deserve to be taunted about going to hell or to experience Christianity as a force of hatred and stigmatization.

To the Christian parents in Bedford County, I can only ask this: What would Jesus do? What would he do today in Bedford County to ensure nothing like this ever happens again?

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James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, a regular columnist for queer news outlets, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].