I’ve been hesitant to write about this, because the tendency to indulge self pity creeps in around the edges. But in the past year we’ve seen a rise in attention being paid to a great human tradition—bullying.
A gay youth outed by his peers committed suicide. Other gays under a microscope all over the country have found themselves driven to the edge. National “movements” to deal with this problem have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain. The last time we witnessed this level of discussion about bullying was after a couple of disaffected youths murdered several of their peers at their high school and then took their own lives, leaving behind ample testaments that what had driven them to do this had been years of bullying.…