Lady Gaga: ‘I Am Meeting With President Obama’ In Wake Of Boy’s Suicide
Sept. 22 2011, Published 9:18 a.m. ET
Lady Gaga says she plans to meet with President Obama in wake of the heartbreaking suicide of a boy in Buffalo, New York who was taunted by bullies at school about his sexuality.
“I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey,” she tweeted Wednesday.
The Born This Way singer mentioned the boy by name as she called on the President to enact laws making bullying a hate crime.
“Jamey Rodemeyer, 14 yrs old, took his life because of bullying. tinyurl.com/6e7n49s. Bullying must become be illegal. It is a hate crime,” she tweeted.
The singer also spoke of how his death had personally impacted her. “The past days I've spent reflecting, crying, and yelling. I have so much anger. It is hard to feel love when cruelty takes someones life,” she wrote.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Jamey killed himself on Sunday only a few months after he had posted his own “It Gets Better” video in an effort to support other teens who, like him, were being bullied at school.
In the video posted May 4, Jamey recalled how he was the target of homophobic barbs from classmates and users of the online Q&A forum Formspring. (A look at that account revealed one user wrote, "JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!;" another said, "I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!")
Toward the end of the video, Jamey praised Lady Gaga as a role model whose message made him "so happy."
"She lets me know that I was born this way," Jamey said.
At the end of the clip, the boy implored viewers to "just love yourself and you're set. And I promise you, it'll get better."
Unfortunately, however, Jamey continued to receive the brunt of abuse from cruel classmates, as a September 8 posting on onto his Tumblr account foreshadowed his tragic fate.
“No one in my school cares about preventing suicide, while you’re the ones calling me gay slur and tearing me down,” Jamey wrote, following up with a September 9 post that read, “I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens. ... What do I have to do so people will listen to me?”
Local investigators had not commented on the case or released a cause of death as of early Thursday.
His father Tim told local TV station WIVB, "To the kids who are bullying they have to realize that words are very powerful and what you think is just fun and games isn't to some people, and you are destroying a lot of lives."
RadarOnline.com has reached out to the White House to find out if Gaga has officially set up a meeting with President Obama to discuss the issue.
We’ll keep you posted.
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