Young, Gay and Murdered

This week's Newsweek somewhat belatedly has a cover story on the murder of Lawrence King, the California teenager gunned down in a school classroom last February for being gay. While the saying better late than never I guess holds true, one does have to wonder why this story did not appear sooner. Moreover, in some ways, the article seems to blame King for some responsibility for his own death for merely being who he was without adequate condemnation of the homophobia that seems to have motivated his killer. It's more of the old blame the victim if the victim is gay rather than look at the sick aspects of society that motivated the killing. Worse yet, absolutely no blame whatsoever is put at the feet of the anti-gay Christianists who maintain a steady drumbeat or anti-gay propaganda capable of convincing the Brandon McInerneys of the world that it's OK to hurt or kill gays. I was so ticked off that I posted the following comment on the Newsweek article:

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Sadly, totally absent from the article is the fact that much of the fear/hatred of gays that Brandon apparently internalized stems from the constant anti-gay message disseminated by allegedly Christian denominations and organizations in this country. One need only look at the initiative to amend the California Constitution to "protect marriage" from gays. But for that relentless message - which the media lacks the guts to confront head on - I suspect Lawrence King would be alive today. As for Larry's father's resentment of gays appropriating his son's murder as part of a larger cause, there's a good reason why that this has happened. So many of us have suffered at the hands of homophobes and uncaring school officials that we want to make sure NO ONE has to go through what we have or die like Larry did due to hate and intolerance.

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The sad reality is that anyone of us gays could have been Lawrence King. I for one was beat up several times in school by bullies because I was perceived to be a "sissy" or a "pansy" merely because I was not mean and aggressive. Equally disturbing are some of the comments to the article posted by those of a Christianist mindset which are down right hateful and scary and/or parrot much of the same old bull shit put out by the James Dobsons and Peter LaBarberas of the world. To be blunt, some of the comments are downright frightening. Equally obscene, many of those posting the hateful comments claim to be Christians. In response to one of theses comments I posted the following:

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Babyfacemagee recites the same tired old drivel put out by anti-gay Christianists that a lack of a father and a dominant mother are what causes a boy to become gay. Funny, I had a very dominant father and often too submissive mother, yet I turned out gay. Guess that theory doesn't hold water. The truth is that through some combination of genetics, hormones while in the womb, etc., work to cause one's sexual orientation. What is the most amazing is that many of the Christian Right figures that recite the story line quoted by Babyfacemagee have gay kids themselves - e.g., Beverly LaHaye, Randall Terry, Alan Keyes, and Phyllis Schlafly to name a few. Maybe they aren't the best authorities after all since under their theory they failed their own children.

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Here are a few selected highlights from the Newsweek story which will hopefully get non-wingnut lunatics thinking:

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But on the morning of Feb. 12, Larry left his glitter and his heels at home. He came to school dressed like any other boy: tennis shoes, baggy pants, a loose sweater over a collared shirt. He seemed unhappy about something. He hadn't slept much the night before, and he told one school employee that he threw up his breakfast that morning, which he sometimes did because he obsessed over his weight. But this was different. One student noticed that as Larry walked across the quad, he kept looking back nervously over his shoulder before he slipped into his first-period English class. The teacher, Dawn Boldrin, told the students to collect their belongings, and then marched them to a nearby computer lab, so they could type out their papers on World War II. Larry found a seat in the middle of the room. Behind him, Brandon McInerney pulled up a chair.

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Brandon, 14, wasn't working on his paper, because he told Mrs. Boldrin he'd finished it. Instead, he opened a history book and started to read. Or at least he pretended to. "He kept looking over at Larry," says a student who was in the class that morning. "He'd look at the book and look at Larry, and look at the book and look at Larry." At 8:30 a.m., a half hour into class, Brandon quietly stood up. Then, without anyone's noticing, he removed a handgun that he had somehow sneaked to school, aimed it at Larry's head, and fired a single shot. Boldrin, who was across the room looking at another student's work, spun around. "Brandon, what the hell are you doing!" she screamed. Brandon fired at Larry a second time, tossed the gun on the ground and calmly walked through the classroom door. Police arrested him within seven minutes, a few blocks from school. Larry was rushed to the hospital, where he died two days later of brain injuries.

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What you might call "the shrinking closet" is arguably a major factor in Larry's death. Even as homosexuality has become more accepted, the prospect of being openly gay in middle school raises a troubling set of issues. Kids may want to express who they are, but they are playing grown-up without fully knowing what that means. At the same time, teachers and parents are often uncomfortable dealing with sexual issues in children so young. Schools are caught in between. How do you protect legitimate, personal expression while preventing inappropriate, sometimes harmful, behavior? Larry King was, admittedly, a problematical test case: he was a troubled child who flaunted his sexuality and wielded it like a weapon—it was often his first line of defense. But his story sheds light on the difficulty of defining the limits of tolerance. As E. O. Green found, finding that balance presents an enormous challenge.

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. . . . Larry had suffered a fatal stroke. Larry was pronounced brain-dead that afternoon, and the family decided to donate his organs. The following day, Feb. 14, doctors harvested his pancreas, liver, lungs and the most important organ of all, which now beats inside the chest of a 10-year-old girl. On Valentine's Day, Larry King gave away his heart, but not in the way he thought he would.