New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
Thursday called the suicide of gay Rutgers University freshman Tyler
Clementi an “unspeakable tragedy.”
Clementi's body was fished out of the
Hudson River on Thursday.
The eighteen-year-old student committed
suicide last week after learning that his roommate secretly streamed
live video of him having sex with another man onto the Internet.
Dharun Ravi and another freshman, Molly Wei, have been charged with
invading Clementi's privacy.
“I don't know how those two folks are
going to sleep at night,” Christie said.
Moments before he jumped off the George
Washington Bridge, Clementi wrote on his Facebook page: “Jumping
off the GW bridge sorry.”
Gay rights activists noted the death
was the latest in a string of gay teen suicides.
“This is coming on the heels of
similar tragedies across the country: Seth Walsh (13) from Tehachapi,
California, Billy Lucas (15) from Greensburg, Indiana and Asher Brown
(13) from Houston,” the New York-based gay rights group Empire
State Pride Agenda said in a statement. “It is difficult to say if
this is a trend, or if our society is becoming sensitive to this kind
of story that we have heard far too often in the LGBT community.”
Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden
State Equality, New Jersey's largest gay rights advocate, also
lamented Clementi's death.
“We are heartbroken over the tragic
loss of a young man who, by all accounts, was brilliant, talented and
kind,” he said in a statement. “And we are sickened that anyone
in our society, such as the students allegedly responsible for making
the surreptitious video, might consider destroying others' lives as a
sport.”