Leelah Alcorn committed suicide. On December 28th, she stepped in front of a truck that was speeding down the highway. After two years of alienation from her parents, she couldn’t take anymore. She was 16.

At the age of 14, she learned the word “transgender”. In her suicide note, she said she “cried of happiness” and that she “finally knew who I was.”

But her parents wouldn’t have it. They rejected her gender identity, they told her she was wrong, and that she’d never be a girl. They sent her to conversion therapy, where counselors and therapists told her she needed to reject her gender identity and turn to God.

Imagine, for a moment, if we sent African Americans to therapy to make then reject their blackness. Imagine a world where it is expected that African American people dress, act, speak, and live striving to be seen as white.

This is what we’re doing to our transgender youth.

Trans simply means “on the other side of.” So transgender people identify as other than what they were assigned at birth. Likewise, cis means same. So cisgender people identify as the same gender they were assigned at birth.

It is absolutely unacceptable that our society is okay with killing off our gender nonconforming youth. We teach hate. We segregate bathrooms like it’s 1980. We use “like a girl” as an insult. We are actively teaching our youth to not be true to themselves.

Don’t have a child unless you can love them unconditionally. Don’t become a parent if you can’t allow your child to be themselves. Don’t have kids if you cannot respect pronouns, gender, and sexuality fluidity.

The basis of human existence is change. We need to being accepting change in identity as an integral part of being human. Don’t let Leelah Alcorn’s life mean nothing.