I didn't realize, or recall, that his brother is gay.
The older gay brother of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University freshman who took his own life in 2010 after his roommate used a webcam to secretly tape him having sex with another man, says the grief of his brother's death is still at times "overwhelming." Having written a series of letters to his brother in the March issue of Out magazine, James Clementi explained in an interview on my radio program on SiriusXM OutQ that he feels guilt as well, having finally come out to his parents, but only in the aftermath of his brother's suicide. And he wants the world to know what his brother was truly like, believing that Tyler's "humanity was lost" in the media barrage.
"It's been very bittersweet, I guess," 26-year-old Clementi said. "And I have really conflicted feelings about it. You know, I've always -- all my life I've dreamt of being open with my parents. And this is not the way in which I would have wanted that to come about. I feel a lot of guilt about the sacrifice that was made just so that I could be accepted by them. I don't think that that's the right way that it should have ever happened."
James says he always had a sense that Tyler was gay, but hadn't spoken to him about it until just months before Tyler jumped from the George Washington Bridge, taking his life.
