Picture this kid: his name is, or was, Christian Adamek. He thought about and planned this wild and crazy stunt knowing that he'd probably get into a little trouble at school, but had enough gumption to flip a finger at the 'system' and go for it! The exhilaration he must have felt, how alive! Possibly the best time of his soon to end life.
Then arrested and treated like a criminal, disciplined by his school and threatened with a lifetime status as a sex offender. Christian's college plans were ruined, his entire future in question. For all he knows he may go to prison, with all that entails. Young guy, gang rape. Then forever branded as a sex offender. That's the future he thought he was facing.
Because he streaked a high school football game.
Christian was just a kid, not competent to realize that the most serious charges were likely to be dismissed and it would all blow over. Maybe, maybe not; it's Alabama. All he could see was the fear instilled in him by his society and that left few options. Now he's dead.
Who the hell are we to do this to a youngster? WHY would we DO it? WHAT was his crime? Was his floppy little penis, barely visible from the grandstands, worth his death?
This story pissed us off when we first saw it, and it only gets worse as we re-read it. It hurts, folks. It really hurts that our society is so heartless and cruel. What the hell is wrong with us as a People? 'Land of the free, home of the brave'?
My ass. Not so free, and the brave are persecuted. We can easily envision a lot of Founders rolling around in their graves, wondering whatever happened to their concept of that nation of free people that they were willing to risk their lives to create.
We wonder too. Remember that this was a real person and his name was Christian Adamek. He no longer exists, will never fall in love and marry, will never have children who love or hate him. He no longer exists because an intolerant society placed ignorance and intolerance before humanity.
Christian Adamek is the name he wrote on his school assignments shortly before being driven to suicide. The name he so laboriously leaned to write only a few years before. Christian Adamek: a real person, a teenager, who is dead because WE taught him that it is wrong to be a little different and the punishment for that is worse than death. Are we proud?
Read the article HERE, please. This must end.
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