Frankly, reading this story, my own high school experience came to mind. Everest was pretty cool about gay people. Some of the most awesome guys you could ever meet were gay, but they were respectful about it and didn't hit on other guys and stuff. Really, it came down to everybody knew, but nobody really cared or said anything, because they were awesome people. Then you had this guy named Gabe. He was a total ass. He got egged a couple times and I'd go so far as to say he deserved it for being such a prig. It wasn't that he was gay so much as he thought he was better than everyone else, and was rude, and treated people like shit in general, and then made a point to be as gay as possible while he did it. Nobody really cared about the gay part, but he was a jerk and it probably didn't help.

My point is, it shouldn't matter whether you're gay, straight, male, female, black, white, or anything else. If you're an ass, you're an ass.

Now did this kid deserve his brains splattered against a wall? A part of me says that if he tormented the other guy so badly that he did it, maybe he did. I mean it takes a lot to drive someone to murder. But then I also believe that nobody deserves to die, and nobody else deserved to see it happen, so 99.9% of me says no. There should have been other ways to handle it. What should have happened was a teacher should have pulled him over for clearly a lot of inappropriate and unwanted behavior towards a single other student. It should never have lasted long enough to drive another student over the edge. I don't really care about what would have been done about his clothes. Really, if he couldn't use them to torment other guys, he probably would have stopped wearing them on his own. If he didn't, he would have just had to deal with the social consequences of dressing like a girl. But the behavior had to stop, and it took an unfortunate turn of events to do so.

That's entirely up to the potential murderer. But I mean, hyper-sensitive hormone-driven socially awkward overcompensating emo-bag kid's in middle school? I would say this is the easiest stage in someone's life to push them over the edge. I'm a fairly mellow guy, and the 12-15 era is where I got into the only two physical altercations of my entire life.

If they did not listen to the program or the policy, they would most likely respond to the punishment that would come with breaking the rules.

Or just do whatever the hell they felt like doing at times and places the school has no authority over them. Kid's spend lots of their time just trying to figure out how to circumvent rules.

Kids want attention. The father of the kid that was acting out didn't even know if his son was gay... How much time do you think he spent with him?

The problem in the schools isn't where the solution needs to be made, it is in the homes and families.

It wasn't necessarily that so much as he said his son liked pushing the limits. I think he meant that, while his son might not have actually been gay, he was doing the wildest, craziest thing he could think of. I mean, chasing other guys through the halls in high heels? How many girls would run in high heels? They're not built for walking, much less running, and he's lucky he didn't fall down a flight of stairs or something. But it was wild and crazy, so he did it.

The article also said that the kid was acting out because he craved attention. That is the real issue that brought it about.

If the other kid had parents that spent time with him, they'd have seen how troubled their kid was and done something about it, heading the whole damn thing off.

The kid who got killed had lied about being beaten by his adoptive father and was living in a halfway house because he had parental attachment issues. He didn't want attention from the people who raised him, much less their guidance/interference.

The kid who shot him, though, yeah. His dad worked 60 miles away and didn't have time for him. And his mom would have been more damaging than helpful.


Frankly, both of them had issues. But then kids that age are generally to the point where they're breaking away from parental support, anyway. I don't think the shooter would have gone to his parents about it if he'd had them because it would have been embarrassing to say, as an athletic guy, that he was being tormented by a five-foot-nothing gay kid. Even with parents, SOMETHING would have happened. Hopefully something lesser. But with the situation at hand, and the people in it, it's not enough to say it's all on the parents. There could have been any number of ways this could have been avoided. The kid could have chosen not to torment his male classmates, or to dress normally in the first place, the school could have been less tolerant of his behavior, the girl could have reported the death threat like she was supposed to under everything I have ever heard from a guidance counselor, the shooter could have chosen fists over a gun, etc. It's not so easy as to say, "Well, the shooter's dad should have stopped him." There are multiple people to blame here.

Like others have said, murder, unless it is out of self-defense, should never be allowed. Wrath is a deadly sin, too. However, I hate the idea of hate crime laws. If there was someone teasing him but was straight and he killed him, would it still be a hate crime? Double standards piss me off.

Oh, and to however said that Brandon should've brought it up to the school, we all know that they probably would've been too afraid to come across homophobic and "un-PC."

Actually, I'm pretty sure the school knew about it. The teachers more or less said as much in the article.