There is a dead girl in the ground with the wrong name on her headstone.

Over the break, I roamed the world of tumblr, which usually keeps me up to date on all the horrible things happening in the world that the news isn’t reporting. This break, I stumbled upon the tragic story of Leelah Alcorn. Alcorn was a transgender teen that committed suicide on December 28^th because her parents rejected her being trans.

Anti-LGBT groups state that being transgender is against God, and that God makes no mistakes. Leelah posted a suicide note on her Tumblr before she took her life. Her mother deleted her account, but others have re-uploaded Leelah’s note as it wildly spreads across the internet. Some argue that if her parents do not wish for the note to be on the Internet, then we should respect that, also stating that the note could spark copycat suicides.

In her suicide note, Leelah writes of always feeling that she was a girl trapped in a boy’s body and that she didn’t even know what transgender was until she was fourteen. When she discovered the transgender community, she told her Mom who told her this was a phase and how she was wrong. Her mother filled her head with how God makes no mistakes and that she could never truly be a girl. She was sent to a Christian therapists who told her she was selfish and that she should look to God for help.

At school, Leelah came out as gay hoping that would be easier for her parents to accept. Instead, they reacted violently and claimed she was attacking their positive image since they could not accept her as a “perfect straight Christian boy.”

She took her life by walking into the highway near her house. Her parents claim it was an accident despite the note.

I find it disgusting how any parent can claim to love their child, but reject them because of their gender. Transgender people have faced criticism for many years and have been made out to be freaks of society. Suicide in the transgender community is high and as for her note, I believe it is right for it to be spreading so rapidly.

What is most shocking to me is that even after Leelah’s death, her mother still labels her as a boy.

“I loved my son,” Mrs. Alcorn said in an interview with Christiantoday.com.

She also stated that they religiously did not support trans-sexuality. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I just think you should love your child no matter what they identify as and respect their wishes. When her mother refers to Leelah as Joshua (her birth name) it just proves how unaccepting and abusive she was to her own child.