NBC’s Lester Holt spoke with the family of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who took his life after his roommate used a webcam to spy on him.
There’s an awkward moment in which Tyler’s mother, Jane Clementi, talks about her struggles to accept a gay son, while Tyler’s older brother, James, looks on.
James also is gay, and, to me, he appears pained as his mother speaks. I wanted to reach into the video to pat him on the knee or offer some assurances.
But the inner struggles Jane Clementi continues to battle are as clear as her good intentions. She and her husband, Joe, run the The Tyler Clementi Foundation, which fights cyberbullying and the idea that homosexuality is sinful.
“Sin needs to be taken out of homosexuality,” Joe Clementi said during the interview. “Our children need to understand — and adults need to understand — that they’re not broken.”
