Let's see, Larry took things too far and pissed off the wrong person. Yes, Brandon is completely in the wrong for killing him, but this he didn't do it just because he was gay. From what I get Larry got really abusive to get his attention.

He was cat calling boys, which if they had been girls Im sure he would of been suspended. He was stalking Brandon and may have been doing more than that. He spread rumors about Brandon dating him. Heck, Brandons falling GPA could of been related to him(he went from a 3.9 to a 1.5), but that was not said so I can't state that as fact. If Brandon were a girl, Larry would of been expelled, Im sure.

However, Larry was gay and they had an openly gay Vice Principle who took him under his wing. He got away with a lot due to this even against teacher and student complaints(heck his brother even complained he was getting bullied due to Larry's brashness). He had become a disruption at school, but they wouldnt do anything. If they had, Im sure things would of ended up differently.

If they had disciplined Larry, Im sure the school would be under fire for discrimination instead of not stopping the murder. Our society is to litigious and there are going to be casualties due to the fear of stepping in before its too late because you will get sued.

Actually I think the worst thing that Larry did was he, being fully aware that being homosexual is something that can get you bullied and mocked at his school, threatened to tell people that he and Brandon were dating unless Brandon did what he wanted. And also the part where he went around saying that he and Brandon had dated and broken up, which everyone who knew them said wasn't true.

I see "PC" brought up a lot as something that's inherently negative. Why is that? To me being politically correct just means thinking about what you say so you don't needlessly upset a person or group. Is that a bad thing to do?

Political correctness needs to be balanced with honesty. But that's just my opinion and it often gets me in trouble. The truth of the matter is our society is full of bullshit double standards and people get all up in arms because someone, somewhere, might get offended, maybe, by nearly anything, but God help them if they don't act offended by any number of those potentially offensive things regardless of where they are or who they're with because they somehow think someone they meet in ten years will know they didn't come to the aid of their then-invisible group and will shun them forever or something.

But that's a different Discussion thread.

The problem with discussing this is that none of us will likely ever know if Brandon would have reacted the same to similar behaviour from a girl or nonsexual bullying from Larry.

Eh, I don't think that's too important. It'd be an entirely different situation, anyway. The bullying couldn't even have really happened in that case. The point is that he didn't just up and decide to kill a gay guy because he hates gays; he was retaliating. It's still murder, and it was still the wrong thing to do, but it wasn't a hate crime.

Non-sexual bullying from Larry probably would have gotten him punched in the face or something. Really, it'd just be unrealistic, as I'm given to understand Brandon was in one of the upper castes. And if it had been coming from a girl, it might not have even been unwanted, and certainly wouldn't have been as big of a deal as a guy telling everyone they were dating.

Well, then he did kill him because it was a gay guy, didn't he?

Mind you I'm not trying in the least to, I dunno, defend or justify either of them, but look: if person A kills person B over something B did, and B is gay, and there's a potential person C who could exhibit behaviour similar or identical to B's but is not gay and would definitely not get killed for it by person A for it, then the gayness does seem to be a huge factor here, doesn't it? I dunno if I'd call that hate crime or whatever because I'm very queasy when it comes to word bubbles, and if I did I'd still distinguish between "personal grudge plus gayness" crime and "someone kills the first person they see carrying a rainbow flag" crime, but I think it's still definitely in there.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is: this is a very complex situation that opens up several cans of worms and there will not be a definite "Guy Y did the right thing, Guy X did the wrong thing" type of outcome here.

I think the strongest potential gay-rights argument that could be made in reference to Larry and Brandon's situation is that it does seem to strongly imply that we still live in a society in which the heterosexual majority can't take gay crushes as a compliment.

I mean as previously alluded to, even if an ugly-ass girl had a huge crush on Brandon and lied about the nature of a past relationship, I don't think Brandon would have been nearly as offended. He'd probably be a little ticked off if she proposed to date him on Valentine's Day in front of the entire basketball team, and she'd still be crossing a line there. But he wouldn't respond to the situation with a gunshot to the head, I'm fairly confident in saying that despite not knowing the guy.
So while I strongly believe that Brandon shooting Larry wasn't a gay-discrimination situation -- he was retaliating to bullying in a totally revolting and unnecessary and brutish way -- there's a more general society-wide argument that could be made in regards to needing to find a way to encourage heterosexuals to take homosexual crushes as compliments.

That was a huge issue for me in high school. I found out a gay guy in one of my classes had a crush on me and nearly had a breakdown over the issue. I wasn't the type to resort to violence on any level as a kid but I certainly felt angry and disgusted by it. On the other hand, when girls had crushes on me -- even the girls I found absolutely unattractive -- I took it as a compliment and felt great about their interest in me. I didn't ask the "ugly" or "personality-devoid" ones out on dates but I wasn't infuriated with them either.
It took me until college to finally get into a situation where a guy was really interested in me and I could say "Wow, he really likes me. I sure don't like him back in that way, but he's still a great guy and for him to be interested in me, that's a compliment." I was able to let him down gently and we remained friends (I still don't understand why a small minority of gay guys have actually assumed I was gay -- I'm not terribly effeminate. I guess it just happens.)

So I do hope there's a way we could educate younger generations into understanding that it's not an insult to one's livlihood if a gay guy thinks you're good looking. Larry's problem in regards to Brandon was that Larry took it several steps over the line of decency by bullying Brandon in ways that were inappropriate and borderline-stalkerish. Whether you're homosexual or heterosexual certain pursuing behavior just isn't right. But the sheer concept of a person of the same gender liking you should, ideally, be taken as a compliment. Anytime anyone thinks you're worthwhile enough to date, that's a good sign, and it doesn't automatically imply that there's anything wrong with you whatsoever.

I still percieve middle school as just too early a time period for such displays of sexually-charged pursuit, but again, that's just me and back in my middle school days I was a prude.

I think, actually, there is something to that, especially in light of the fact that children are apparently shooting other children over the matter.

In an ideal world my post would have had this message because it's what I wanted to say.

Not to stir up old drama, but on RaiRO, we used to have a problem with people using the word "gay" as either an insult, or an adjective to describe something unpleasant. It was in an old thread Fao made.

I grew up with an aunt who was gay and lived with her partner. My mum was pro-gay, and my dad was on-the-wall at the time but supportive of his sister. I fought with kids at school that being gay itself was not a bad thing. I also argued for a long time the using of the word 'gay' as a negative adjective. However, I gave up on that for my own reasons.

Solid makes a good point in that quite a lot of people are close minded these days. That might come out wrong, but in a way it's the truth - if we're getting upset to the point of committing murder (no matter how much we're provoked) than something needs to be done.

Everyone knows my views enough that I don't have to voice them, and everyone else seems to bring up a lot of good points. I will agree with Demetrius, to an extent; while the parents should've played some role, Blue's right in noting that other factions could've helped.