‘Lack of Acceptance Took a Toll’ Trans Student Takes His Own Life
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Henry Berg-Brousseau, who was a trans student at Louisville Collegiate School, and found himself in the national spotlight when he urged a state Senate panel to vote against a bill that would require students to use restroom facilities of their biological sex in 2014, is dead.
Berg-Brousseau took his own life.
His mother, Kentucky Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, announced in a statement Tuesday that her son, who was transgender, died by suicide last week.
Berg-Brousseau was 24.
Berg said her son spent his life “working to extend grace, compassion and understanding to everyone, but especially to the vulnerable and marginalized.”
“As the mother of a transgender son, I gave my whole heart trying to protect my child from a world where some people and especially some politicians intentionally continued to believe that marginalizing my child was OK simply because of who he was,” Berg wrote. “This lack of acceptance took a toll on Henry. He long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.” Berg-Brousseau had recently received “a big promotion” at work for the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization advocating for LGBTQ people, where his colleagues described him as “an absolute light,” according to the statement.
Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said Berg-Brousseau was “deeply passionate, deeply engaged, and deeply caring.” “In honor of Henry’s life, we must come together and speak out against injustice,” Robinson wrote in a statement. “We must fight for our transgender family. We must celebrate his light, and honor him by continuing to fight for full equality for all.”
He’d also previously worked for the Fairness Campaign, an organization dedicated to LGBTQ advocacy in Kentucky. In a social media post, the Fairness Campaign said Berg-Brousseau “made significant contributions to the LGBTQ rights movement.” Berg’s son gave testimony to a panel of lawmakers against a 2014 bill that would require transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex or to seek special accommodations. Berg-Brousseau told lawmakers at the time that all he wanted was to be treated “like a normal kid.”
“The message is clear with this bill: We don’t belong,” Henry said during his testimony. That bill did not make it out of committee. On the Senate floor, Berg frequently cited her son’s experience as a reason she spoke against legislation that she viewed as anti-trans.
I’ve taken on some tough fights in Frankfort, including one that is very personal. Right now, my colleagues in the legislature are moving quickly on SB83, a bill to ban trans kids from playing sports — kids who know that this is a deliberate attempt to exclude them. 1/3 https://t.co/mXnYRV51jo
— Karen Berg (@karenforky) March 22, 2022
In a statement, Berg said the “hateful and vile anti-trans messaging being circulated around this country” took a toll on her child. “In one of our last conversations he wondered if he was safe walking down the street,” Berg wrote. “The vitriol against trans people is not happening in a vacuum. It is not just a way of scoring political points by exacerbating the culture wars. It has real-world implications for how transgender people view their place in the world and how they are treated as they just try to live their lives.”
Quoting from Berg’s remarks, Robinson said that vitriol against trans people “sadly impacted how Henry saw his own place in the world.”
Robinson said Berg-Brousseau’s job meant that “he faced down anti-transgender vitriol every single day, and no one was more aware of the harm that anti-transgender rhetoric, messaging, and legislation could have on his community. He was brave.”
Berg-Brousseau was “an active member of the Stonewall Kickball League of DC, an avid knitter, and a lover of The West Wing,” according to his obituary. Berg-Brousseau attended Louisville Collegiate School and college at George Washington University, where he double majored in Political Science and History with a minor in Jewish Studies, per the obituary.
The national suicide prevention hotline has recently been changed to a three-digit suicide and crisis hotline. It is available 24/7 and can be reached by dialing 988.
More information can be found at 988lifeline.org.
Any young LGBTQ person can call The Trevor Project’s 24-hour crisis hotline at 1-866-488-7386, and transgender people of any age can call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860.
