Leelah Alcorn, born with the name Joshua, was 17 years old and said she had been forced to undergo conversion therapy, which seeks to change sexual orientation through counseling.
The practice has been banned in two states on grounds it is medically unfounded and puts children in danger.
An advocacy group called for a national effort to ban 'conversion therapy.' And an online petition calling for the teen's family to use her chosen name on her tombstone has gathered 35,000 signatures, reports NBC.
Since Alcorn's death, groups supporting transgenders have called for a national 'Leelah's Law' to end conversion therapy, calling it 'psychological torture.'
Nearly 80,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org supporting the proposal.
The American Psychological Association has dismissed the idea that sexual orientation is a mental disorder and said mental health professionals should avoid telling clients they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.
Supporters of the practice say it is an effective way to counsel troubled youths.
Transgender adults took to Twitter after Alcorn's death, offering encouragement to transgender teens with the hashtag #RealLiveTransAdult.
'I didn't think I'd live to be 30 Don't give up,' one person wrote.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender teenagers are about twice as likely to have attempted suicide than their heterosexual peers, said a paper on the website for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.'Her story is not unique,' said Allison Woolbert, executive director of the Transgender Human Rights Institute.
'People see a 17-year-old who has struggled for several years, desperately trying to be herself. They are seeing a real-life instance of what this is like for a teen,' Woolbert said.
Alcorn, who committed suicide by walking in front of a tractor trailer in Ohio, left a heartbreaking letter in which she blamed her religious parents.
Leelah Alcorn, 17, died in the early hours of Sunday on highway I-71 in Warren County, Ohio, a few miles from her family home.
The high school student left a poignant suicide note accusing her devout Christian parents of refusing to acknowledge her gender and forbidding her from transitioning.
The suicide note was posted on Leelah's tumblr account through scheduled publishing just a few hours after her death.
The note begins: 'If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.'
Leelah, from Kings Mill, Ohio, writes that although she was born a boy, she began identifying as a girl at the age of four.
'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.'
Leelah goes on to reveal that her parents refused to allow her to transition and instead took her to 'Christian therapists' who told her that she was 'selfish and wrong'.
'I formed a sort of a “f*** you” attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock.
'Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them.
'They wanted me to be their perfect little straight Christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.'
'On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.'
Leelah then adds: 'I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself.
Local media and Leelah's former high school in Kings Mill have reported on the tragic news using her birth name Joshua.
Leelah's mother Carla Wood Alcorn posted a tribute to her child on her Facebook, but referred to Leelah as her 'son', used her birth name, and made no mention of a suicide.
The disregard for Leelah's wishes to be identified as a girl has angered many in the LGBT community, and a Facebook group calling for Justice for Leelah Alcorn has been set up.
