Jason Mattison, RIP

Yesterday was the funeral of Jason Mattison, Jr. Jason was a 15 year old Baltimore student who was murdered last week in his aunt’s home. He had been raped, stabbed in the throat and head, gagged with a pillowcase and stuffed into a closet.

The perpetrator, 35 year old Dante Parrish, has confessed to the crime and is being held without bail.

It is always sad when children lose their lives, but Mattison’s death was especially difficult on me. He was a confident, popular, and excellent student with dreams of being a doctor, and he seemed to have the support of everyone who knew him.

Except his family.

Jason was gay, and coming out caused “some dissension in the family” according to the Baltimore Sun. His grandmother implied that he left his mother’s home to live with the aunt, but that has not been verified because neither the aunt nor his mother has spoken publicly about the situation.

If my suspicions are true, and Mattison was one of the twenty-six percent of gay youth who are kicked out of their homes after coming out, his death serves as a reminder of the need to create a wider safety net for gay kids whose families respond poorly to learning their child is not heterosexual.