Anti-Bullying Post 1: "Christians Who are Silent are Complicit"

Image by trix0r via FlickrIt's been month now since Rutgers student Tyler Clementi commited suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.  It's a horrible account.  Tyler's roommate supposedly took a video of Tyler engaging in some homosexual act and posted it on the internet.  Now, I'm not sure if this has been proven, but the information is out there.
The following is found on AOL News.

The Rutgers University students charged with streaming a classmate's gay sexual encounter on the Internet prior to his suicide appear to be in hiding, refusing to defend themselves publicly even as criminal charges pile up and anger builds on their college campus and around the world.

Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, both 18, were charged earlier this week with two counts each of invasion of privacy for allegedly using a camera to view and transmit a live image of fellow 18-year-old Tyler Clementi "making out with a dude," according to Ravi's Twitter postings. Clementi was Ravi's roommate, and he killed himself on Sept. 22 by jumping off New York's George Washington Bridge after finding out about the Web video.

This has led to various responses of support for those in the LGBT community and a call to stop this kind of cyberbullying for all persons.

And, as Christians, we should care.  We should care because we have a Savior who loves us and loves those who are being bullied (and, indeed, the bully-ers).  And, frankly, if we don't stand up against the bullying that takes place in our midst then we are complicit in it.  It's our sin, then.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about this since the Tyler Clementi incident.  But I've always been big on combating bullying and people picking on others or stripping them of their power or humiliating them.   Just this past year I participated in the Special Olympics' "Spread the Word to End the Word" -- The campaign to stop the use of the word, "retard."

So, the church needs to stand up for those who are victims and love them with the love of Jesus.  Otherwise, we have a sin of omission on our hands.