"This indicated what FCC (a gay-accepting church) must have meant to him: probably the one good thing in his life," opined another friend.

Then he jumped and killed himself.

Suicide is a terrible thing. Not only is it a waste of what should otherwise have been great potential, it leaves irreparable holes in the fabric of a family. Unlike disease or even accidents, at the heart of every suicide is a corrosive question: What was it in his life that was so terrible and hopeless that he could be moved to override every self-preserving instinct hardwired in us?

Why didn't we appreciate the enormity of his suffering? What could we have done differently?

However many times people ask these questions, most will not find answers. Typically, the depth of despair is such that those who take their own lives feel that even communication is pointless, and they never quite tell us why they go.

* * * * *

 
I first lost a friend to suicide when I was barely 20. SH had been a classmate since Primary One. By our teenage years, my gaydar was picking up that he too was gay, but while I was comfortable with my identity, I sensed he was not. As I recall, he came from a conservative Christian family.

We parted ways after we left school at 18, but I met him again at a social event a few years later. Once again, my gaydar pinged, but the subject never came up. What I do remember of that evening was how subdued he seemed, like he had things to say, but never got around to saying.

Barely a year after that, I read in the papers that he had hanged himself. Why he did so, I will never know. I do remember, however, that the news hit me like a meteorite, and made me wonder if being gay had something to do with it. I didn't know then, but from what I have learnt in the years since, it's one of the likeliest factors.

On the internet, you read about reports that gay youth kill themselves at a rate disproportionately higher than straight boys and girls. "[A] Department of Health study indicates that gay youth are up to six times more likely to attempt suicide than straight teens, and gay teenagers account for up to 30 percent of all teenage suicides in the nation," says the Men Stuff website.

In Singapore, like in most other countries, we find it hard to talk about homosexuality. Instead most people uncritically adopt the attitudes they see around them and that we can characterise as either homophobic or dismissive.

The gay son or daughter, however, would most certainly notice it, and growing up in such a denigrating climate, cannot but be affected by it. He or she may even internalise these attitudes such that the demons that others conjure end up roosting in one's own mind. Deep depression and irresolvable conflict are then just a small step away.

The tragedy is that the family is more often than not the catalyst for such a vicious spiral, despite what they may think of as love, for the failure to understand the gay son or daughter and to see the world from his or her perspective is the critical missing link. Amid such ignorance, there tend to be demands, whether tacit or voiced, to change, as if sexual orientation is something one can set aside at will.

In such an environment, the lucky child is the one who keeps his distance from his family, leaving the parents wondering why their child is so cold, and accusing him of being unfilial. What they don't realise is that for him distance may be the most effective way of keeping his own sanity. The unlucky one is the child who feels so trapped, he ends his life.

As would be the one whose family ends his life for him.

* * * * *

 
Ahmet Yildiz wanted to go out for an ice-cream. He asked his lover if he wished to go along. "[As] I had just settled down for the night at Ahmet's flat, I declined," the partner later told the media.

"A couple of minutes later there were bursts of loud gunfire outside the flat." Rushing out of the Istanbul apartment and fearing the worst, "I arrived at the scene to see Ahmet's car reversing out of his parking space, trying to escape."

Fatally wounded, Yildiz, a 26-year-old physics student, tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital.

"I fought through some onlookers just in time to see him with his eyes open and asked him please don't die, then he shut his eyes."

Ahmet Yildiz 1982 -2008

 
But what was even more chilling was the likelihood that it was his family who ordered his murder. Three days after his death, his body had still not been collected from the mortuary. The refusal of families to bury their relatives is common after honour-related murders.

"We've been trying to contact Ahmet's family since Wednesday, to get them to take responsibility for the funeral," one of the victim's friends said. "There's no answer, and I don't think they are going to come." His friends have no right to collect the body for burial.

Honour killings are motivated by a family's misplaced sense of social shame. A Turkish government survey earlier this year estimated that one person every week dies in Istanbul as a result of honour killings. Nationwide, the death toll was estimated at 220 in 2007 with the vast majority of victims female. Yildiz's may be the first recorded case of an honour-motivated murder of a gay son.

Mazhar Bagli, a Turkish sociologist who has interviewed 189 people convicted of honour killings, has never heard of a death revolving around homosexuality but has no doubt that it could be used as justification. "Honour killings cleanse illicit relationships. For women, that is a broad term. Men are allowed more sexual freedom, but homosexuality is still seen by some as beyond the pale."

-- The Independent, 19 July 2008, Was Ahmet Yildiz the victim of Turkey's first gay honour killing?

A former neighbour and close friend added, "From the day I met him, I never heard Ahmet have a friendly conversation with his parents. They would argue constantly, mostly about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing."

The family pressure increased, the same friend explained:

"They wanted him to go back home, see a doctor who could cure him, and get married."

Shortly after coming out this year, Mr Yildiz went to a prosecutor to complain that he was receiving death threats. The case was dropped. Five months later, he was dead. The police are now investigating his murder. For gay rights groups, the student's inability to get protection was a typical by-product of the indifference, if not hostility, with which a broad swathe of Turkish society views homosexuality.

-- ibid.

The boyfriend, who holds a German passport, was advised by the consulate to flee for his own safety. He left the country the same night Yildiz died.

* * * * *

 
The above are just the extreme events that may (or may not) make the headlines. Fortunately, the vast majority of gay people do not kill themselves or get killed. Even so, the gulf of misunderstanding and non-communication is typically wide, and our dreams of supportive loving families are wrecked by silence and ignorance.

The worst misconception is that the problem lies with the gay child: It's him that needs fixing. That is not so, and in the main the solution doesn't lie with him either, though his personality can make the situation better or worse.

Families with gay children are in a sense even more impacted by the issue of homosexuality than gay people themselves. Most gay people eventually figure themselves out, find the information they need, connecting with helpful friends and eventually loving partners -– especially in a society like Singapore where LGBT networking is pretty good.

It's the families that are stuck in the twilight zone between knowing and not knowing, between social expectations and private shame, love and bewilderment, rage and despair. And not a clue to whom they could usefully turn.

© Yawning Bread