Leelah Alcorn

Leelah Alcorn (November 15, 1997 – December 28, 2014) was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. Prior to her death, she had posted a suicide note to her Tumblr blog about societal standards affecting transgender people and expressing the hope that her death would create a dialogue about discrimination, abuse, and lack of support for transgender people.

Born and raised in Kings Mills, Ohio, Alcorn was assigned male at birth and grew up in a family affiliated with the Churches of Christ movement. At age 14, she came out as transgender to her parents, Carla and Doug Alcorn, who refused to accept her female gender identity. When she was 16, they denied her request to undergo transition treatment, instead sending her to Christian-based conversion therapy with the intention of convincing her to reject her gender identity and accept the gender that she was assigned at birth. After she revealed her attraction toward males to her classmates, her parents removed her from school and revoked her access to social media. In her suicide note, Alcorn cited loneliness and alienation as key reasons for her decision to end her life and blamed her parents for causing these feelings.

Alcorn used Tumblr's queue feature to publish her suicide note online several hours after her death, and it soon attracted international attention across mainstream and social media. Her parents, who defended their behavior by reference to their Christian beliefs, were severely criticized for misgendering and deadnaming her, and suppressing her identity. LGBT rights activists called attention to the incident as evidence of the problems faced by transgender youth, while vigils were held in her memory in the United States and United Kingdom. Celebrity tributes were realized for her, including songs and dedications, and multiple Twitter hashtags and other forms of online activism were formed. Petitions were formed calling for the establishment of "Leelah's Law", a ban on conversion therapy in the United States, which received a supportive response from then-president Barack Obama. Within a year, the city of Cincinnati criminalized conversion therapy.

Life

quote="When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won't do anything but make them hate them self . That's exactly what it did to me." — — Alcorn's suicide note She described herself as one of several children being raised in a conservative Christian environment; she and her family attended the Northeast Church of Christ in Cincinnati, and she had been featured in a profile of that church published in a 2011 article in The Christian Chronicle. As of 2014, the family lived in Kings Mills. She stated that this made her hate herself, and that she developed a form of depression. According to a childhood friend, Alcorn received a positive reception from many at Kings High School, although her parents were appalled. There, she revealed that while her parents had never physically assaulted her, "they always talked to me in a very derogatory tone" and "would say things like 'You'll never be a real girl' or 'What're you going to do, fuck boys?' or 'God's going to send you straight to hell'. These all made me feel awful about myself, I was Christian at the time so I thought that God hated me and that I didn't deserve to be alive." On Reddit, Alcorn also disclosed that she was prescribed increasing dosages of the anti-depressant Prozac. Alcorn's computer was recovered near the site of her suicide. It contained conversations showing that she had planned to jump off the bridge that crosses Interstate 71 days before the incident, but then contacted a crisis hotline and, as told to a friend, "basically cried [her] eyes out for a couple of hours talking to a lady there".

Death

Prior to her death on December 28, 2014, Alcorn scheduled for her suicide note to be automatically posted on her Tumblr account at 5:30 pm. A second post appeared shortly after; titled "Sorry", it featured an apology to her close friends and siblings for the trauma that her suicide would put them through, but also contained a message to her parents: "Fuck you. You can't just control other people like that. That's messed up." An additional, handwritten suicide note reading "I've had enough" was found on her bed, but then thrown away by Alcorn's mother after police made a copy. She died at the scene. It is believed that Alcorn walked from her parents' Kings Mills house before being struck.

By the morning of December 31, her suicide note had been reposted on Tumblr 200,000 times. The suicide note was later deleted after Alcorn's parents asked for it to be removed, and the blog was made inaccessible to the public. According to the family minister, the Alcorn family decided to hold the funeral privately after receiving threats. Alcorn's body was reportedly cremated. On Twitter, American LGBT rights activist Dan Savage argued that Alcorn's parents should be prosecuted for their role in bringing about their daughter's death, commenting that through their actions they "threw her in front of that truck". He cited the successful prosecution of Dharun Ravi following the suicide of Tyler Clementi as a legal precedent for such an action. He added that legal action should also be brought against the conversion therapists who had counseled Leelah, and suggested that the Alcorns should lose custody of their other children. She expressed concern that users of social media thought her to be a "horrible person", but defended her actions in dealing with her child, stating for example that she had banned internet access to prevent access to "inappropriate" things. People magazine quoted Johanna Olson, Medical Director for the Center of Trans Youth Health and Development at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, as stating that "Did Leelah's parents love her? Yes, I'm sure they did. Did they support her? No, they didn't. And that's a tragedy."

On January 1, 2015, the Cincinnati-based LGBT rights group Support Marriage Equality Ohio hosted a vigil for Alcorn outside Kings High School. A candlelight vigil in Goodale Park, Columbus was held on January 2 by a group called Stand Up 4 Leelah.

A January 3 vigil was scheduled for Trafalgar Square in London; an organizer was quoted as saying that "[Alcorn's] death was a political death. When a member of our community is brutalised at the hands of oppression we must all fight back." Those who spoke at the event included politician Sarah Brown and novelist and poet Roz Kaveney. Marches were carried out in honor of Alcorn in both Northwest, Washington, D.C. and Queen Street, Auckland on January 10. The same day, a candlelight vigil was held in New York City's Columbus Circle. A memorial protest against conversion therapy and in memory of Alcorn took place in Lynchburg, Virginia, on January 24, 2015.

Among the transgender celebrities who publicly responded to the incident were Janet Mock, Andreja Pejić, and Laverne Cox, while the musician Ray Toro released a song, "For the Lost and Brave," in dedication to Alcorn. Joey Soloway, the writer of the television show Transparent, dedicated their Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series to Alcorn. During Diane Sawyer's interview with Caitlyn Jenner, which confirmed Jenner's transgender identity, Alcorn was mentioned by name and the message "Fix society. Please," was broadcast. In June 2015, the singer Miley Cyrus founded the Happy Hippie Foundation, an organization to raise awareness of homelessness and LGBT issues among young people, partly in response to Alcorn's death. To promote the organization, she released a new series of Backyard Sessions videos, the second of which, Dido's "No Freedom", was dedicated to Alcorn. After reading about Alcorn's death, British musician Declan McKenna was inspired to write a song, "Paracetamol," which was included on his debut album What Do You Think About the Car? and discusses the media's representation of LGBT communities. In 2015, the nationwide non-profit organization Ally Parents, operated by Stand with Trans, was created in response to Leelah's death.

Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Ohio newspaper The Cincinnati Enquirer, stated that the incident "raises important issues we hope will prompt conversations in families throughout our region." When contacted by The Cincinnati Enquirer, Shane Morgan, the founder and chair of transgender advocate group TransOhio, stated that while 2014 witnessed gains for the trans rights movement, Alcorn's death illustrated how "trans people are still being victimized and still being disrespected", highlighting the high rate of transgender people who had been murdered that year.

Under the Twitter hashtag #RealLiveTransAdult, many transgender people posted encouraging tweets for their younger counterparts, while other hashtags, such as #ProtectTransKids, and the term "Rest in Power", also circulated on Twitter. A Change.org petition was set up calling for Leelah's chosen name to be included on her gravestone, which gained over 80,000 signatures.

Under Ohio's Adopt-a-Highway program, a group adopted the interchange of Interstate 71 South and Ohio State Route 48—which was where Alcorn died—and dedicated it to her memory. As a result, the Ohio Department of Transportation erected signs stating "In Memory of Leelah Alcorn" along the road. Members of the group affixed a wreath to one of these signs; group member Lisa Oravec informed press that "We don't want Leelah to be forgotten... We want people in Cincinnati, or anybody driving down 71 to see the wreath. See the highway. If they don't know who Leelah is they'll Google it, educate it, and learn from what happened." As of December 2018, the "Leelah Alcorn Highway Memorial" group continued to meet four times a year to clean that stretch of road. Its creator, Elizabeth Littlejohn of Toronto, stated that "as a human rights activist who believes [in] the right for gender self-determination, I believe this story needed to be told."

Leelah's Law

A Facebook group called "Justice for Leelah Alcorn" was established, while a petition calling for "Leelah's Law," a ban on conversion therapy in the United States, was created by the Transgender Human Rights Institute to raise awareness of the psychologically harmful effects of such practices. By January 24, it had 330,009 signatures, and was named the fastest growing change.org petition of 2014. A second appeal demanding the enactment of "Leelah's Law" was posted to the We the People section of Whitehouse.gov on January 3, 2015, which garnered more than 100,000 signatures as of January 30. In response to the petition, in April 2015, President Barack Obama called for the banning of conversion therapy for minors.

In December 2015, Cincinnati became the second U.S. city after Washington, D.C., to ban the practice of conversion therapy outright; council member Chris Seelbach cited Alcorn's suicide as an influence in the decision and stated that "she challenged us to make her death matter, and we're doing just that." By October 2018, four cities across Ohio had banned conversion therapy, leading journalist Nico Lang to comment that "the Buckeye State has become an unlikely leader in banning conversion therapy at the local level."