We’ve got another new Why We Write essay to share today, from writer James Lantz. Read James’ project A STILL, SMALL PAW on blcklst.com now.
Take it away, James!
I’m haunted by hoodie strings, parking decks, and empty pill bottles. And in late April two years ago, that haunting landed me in jail.
At around 12:15 in the afternoon, I walked into the gallery of the Pennsylvania State Senate chamber, pulled a bottle of super glue out of an altered hand-sanitizer bottle I’d smuggled in, and glued my hand to the brass railing. Then I spent the next fifteen minutes loudly accusing Ryan Aument, a MAGA Republican state senator, of being culpable in the suicide deaths of five trans youth in his own county.
When he first saw me and heard me shout his name, he flinched and ducked low, then scurried beneath the gallery. He looked scared. I have a big voice.
Later I was unglued, handcuffed, arrested, and sent to the Dauphin County jail where I sat. After a long night of frantic phone calls and fingerprinting (they had trouble because my fingers were caked with glue) I paid a very muscled man who arrived in a jacked-up truck to ensure that I was good for the $5,000 bail.
I was eventually convicted of criminal mischief, fined $17,000, and put on probation, which I’m still on.
This is why I write — I’m a filmmaker who believes deeply that stories, especially in movies, can save lives.
The five kids were from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Five trans and non-binary youth, dead by suicide, all in eighteen months, all from a single county — the same county that elected Senator Aument, who I’d come to confront. He had sponsored and supported a string of anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans bills, and as the majority whip, he wielded lots of power.
After these five kids died, Senator Aument said nothing. He did nothing. He repeatedly ignored my requests for an interview. He also ignored a grieving father’s request to meet.
Later I met and communicated with some of the parents. What a profound tragedy. There are no words.
I also went to a memorial service. One of the five was a young trans man named Ashton Clatterbuck. He was a writer and activist who ran eighty miles a week. Much-loved in his community, he published opinion pieces in the hometown newspaper — a largely conservative readership — making the case for trans lives in language his neighbors couldn’t dismiss:
“Making it ‘illegal’ to be transgender does not stop people from being born transgender,” he wrote last May. “Closing your eyes doesn’t make us go away. The anti-LGBTQ+ political stunts we see around the country — masquerading as religious liberty and moral piety — are doing real harm to queer Americans.”
What a loss. I’ll never forget Ashton or what he stood for. He died on February 27, 2024. He was 22.
This is why I write. It’s the least I can do to honor the voices, lives, and legacies of these trans youth and hope, truly hope, that I can create a movie that can help and inspire LGBTQ kids living in these dark times.
I’m not your typical Black List writer. I was born back during the Kennedy administration. I have an AARP card. I had stage 4 cancer, but after eight years of surgeries and treatment, my doctors say I have no cancer evident in my body — and I intend to stay that way, long enough to see A STILL, SMALL PAW, my screenplay supporting trans and LGBTQ youth, on screens around the world.
I grew up a closeted gay teenager in Virginia in the 1970s. Christian, conservative, and rural. Back then, there was no representation of queer lives available to a kid like me. There were also no role models for parents — no story a mother or father could turn to and learn that maybe a parent might not want to be violent with a kid like me, as my parents were with me. Not slap. Not beat. Not, in a fit of rage, jam a dirty sock into the kid’s mouth.
The absence of any kind of representation took a toll on me that lingered decades and that I can still feel. I think about it every time I read another Trevor Project report: that more than a third of LGBTQ youth seriously consider suicide every year.
Think about that: a third of all LGBTQ youth seriously considered killing themselves in the past year. Imagine if a third of high school football players seriously considered killing themselves every year. Think of the uproar, the national hand-wringing, the legislation. The collective mourning.
Now think about our collective silence for LGBTQ youth. Shameful.
In 2024 I co-produced a two-minute micro-movie called NOT LOSING YOU. It’s nearing 3 million views on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. In over 5,000 comments, the kids and parents who viewed the film confirmed why I write:
“This is how lives are saved and improved.” “From a 15-year-old trans girl scared out of her mind — this keeps me able to stay alive for another day.” “As a trans girl who has felt like nobody cares about me, I feel like more people need to see this.” “I’m an overwhelmed transgender teenager; thank you for this.”
I’m a father and a grandfather now, and I am haunted by the suicides of these kids. I shudder at hoodie strings. At empty parking lots. At an unlocked rifle in someone’s mudroom. I think about the horror of a late-night phone call a parent never wants to get.
About the kids in Lancaster County, I think — and cannot stop thinking — what if I’d been there, just before. Could I have said the right thing to make them hesitate? What if a film I made had reached one of those kids a week earlier?
That’s what I’m writing for — that’s the only thing I’m writing for.
No child should ever die by suicide. Not ever. But especially not because of who they are.
I’m still haunted by hoodie strings. This is why I write.
Thanks to James!
James Lantz is an award-winning filmmaker and playwright whose three decades of work — Off-Broadway, nationally, and internationally — has always been activism-fueled.
A former high school teacher in rural Virginia, he was named Teacher of the Year. He has also written, directed, and produced over 300 films and videos for numerous companies including many Fortune 500 companies.
His festival-winning films include a Guardian-commissioned documentary short about his parent's support for Trump called THE SIGN, and a narrative short about climate anxiety called, A JUDDERING. His trans youth short NOT LOSING YOU surpassed 3 million views on YouTube and TikTok.
In 2024 he was arrested and convicted protesting an anti-LGBTQ MAGA Republican Pennsylvania state senator whose anti-gay legislation preceded five trans youth suicides in his own county.
James is a cancer survivor and the father of two sons. Three years ago, after decades in the closet, he came out as gay on National Coming Out Day. You can read his coming out letter to his wife and learn more at jameslantz.com
More Why We Write:
Jainaba M. Seckan on creating through loss and finding new purpose
Brandon Carbaugh on writing for his beloved brother
Ben Mehlman on the power of slowing down
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