I'm getting a little tired of this chorus of "he had other options". I think it presumes a lot about Tyler and his state of mind, and it trivializes the extent of the personal violation and emotional pain he must have felt to take his own life.
I have always been an openminded freethinking independent sort, even when I was young. I grew up in a family that was relatively supportive of individuality and not particularly prone to bigotry. When I was about Tyler's age, I was 'outed' to my parents by a family friend. This 'friend' decided to write my parents a letter detailing certain things she had discovered, essentially from spying on me. A copy was mailed simultaneously to me at college out of state. I remember opening my mailbox in the student union. The next thing I knew I was lying in bed clutching a letter, and I had no idea what it said. I must have blacked out in a sense and somehow made it back to my room. I don't know how much time had passed, possibly hours.
For the next several days I moved in a fog of confusion and overwhelming dread, avoiding friends, skipping classes, refusing to respond to concerned phone calls placed to the common dorm phone by my parents. Though I knew a few gay people at school, I coudn't bring myself to talk about it to anyone. Finally I forced myself to do the inevitable, traveling to a phone booth late at night far from campus to place a private call to my parents. After some tears and expressions of concern all around, I came away relieved and feeling supported. Life was good again.
My situation in no way compares with Tyler's or others facing this dilemna. In fact, my story could be a fairytale by comparison. For starters, I didn't consider myself gay, but maybe in an experimental stage of bisexuality. I attached no stigma whatsoever to people who were gay. I wasn't publicly humilated by having my intimate private sexual activities broadcast publicly. I am a strong, resilient person, not given to suicidal thoughts, and not particularly shy. I had a loving family who supported me. And on and on. Still, I remember how helpless, hopeless and paralyzed I felt for several days, how I felt I might never recover from this irreversible turn of events. I have no idea what Tyler's personal circumstances were, how mature he was, what kind of family or other support he may have had in theory, but I somehow doubt that he felt he had the resources and the wherewithal to move forward that I did. I can easily imagine that he felt so mortified, devastated and alone that he thought his only escape was to jump off a bridge.
I think it is presumptuous and a bit condescending to expect some young person one whose mindset you cannot possibly know to respond with detached objectivity and explore "other options". As I said, I think it trivializes the immensity of the tragedy and what we can only speculate he must have been feeling.
