So if a gay guy hits on me relentlessly, and practically stalks me, any negative response I have that isn't exactly the same as what it would be under completely different circumstances must be hate-motivated? I don't recall saying that at all.

I like apples, but I don't like tomatoes. If someone keeps giving me apples, I'll be pretty okay with it. If someone tries to give me a tomato, and then tries to wrestle me to the ground and jam it down my throat when I decline, the SITUATION might be argued to be a result of my dislike for tomatoes, but my response is going to be motivated by the fact that someone is trying to shove tomatoes down my throat.

Your hypothetical situations don't work because changing the gender or removing sexuality from the them completely changes everything.

That's the important part. I'm gonna throw another hypothetical situation at you: What if Larry hadn't been bullying Brandon? Would Brandon have killed him? If it's a hate crime, then as long as Larry's alleged sexuality was still common knowledge, the answer should be yes.

Hmm. Good points, although I'm not so sure the apples/tomatoes metaphor is all that fortunate here as it stands - I'd probably compare the situation to someone offering you tomatoes over and over again. Physical assault wasn't really on the agenda here until the gun came into play.

Something I meant to mention in another post but forgot is that I'm not too fond of the term "hate crime" in general. It strikes me as insufficiently defined and far too comfortable as a label to slap onto things. I don't believe this was a 100% homophobia-motivated murder, but I do believe it was a factor. I am, however, also aware that I may be biased and my judgement influenced by various outside factors, including my own image of American high school social structures and, not least, the fact that the only thing we have to go on here is one single Newsweek article (that didn't strike me as all that well-written).

To me it's obvious he was doing all that just for attention. I don't know about ADHD or autism but that sounds fishy as well. Brandon's reaction, although totally immoral and selfish, was probably not motivated by the fact Larry was gay, but, as BitVyper stated, that he was shoving his sexual inhibitions down his throat.

At this point, schools should be more prepared to face that kind of situations. Kids these days see queers and transvestites on TV and believe that's exactly what they should look like if they're gay. Some don't even know what gay means and will act as such just for attention.

I'd wonder if Larry really was gay actually.

I just read Scott McCloud's Zot! Omnibus, and in a commentary after one of his issues that talks about homophobia, He mentions Lawrence King being shot in computer class.

Well don't leave us hanging, what did he say about it?

He just mentions it. "At the time I'm writing this in 2008 I'm watching the news, an openly gay student, Lawrence King, was shot in the head by another student in his computer class, for daring to feminine clothes."

In the same issue, a non gay student is put into a wheel chair for the rest of his life when a bully throws a fire cracker, and it explodes right next to his ear. His siter, who is gay, goes to school proclaming to other student's in a sarcastic sense that saying "I'm a dyke." One student writes a paper about it in the school newspape and is threatend by the same bully, and another student comes to a realization that she's gay, but is too afraid to come out of the closet.

How does an exploding firecracker near your ear put you in a wheelchair with certainty for the rest of your life? Brain damage?

There's this little part in your ear that you need for balance. If that got broked, he wouldn't be able to walk anymore I don't think.

Yeah, your brain includes your cerebellum and if that gets fucked, you're pretty much in a wheelchair. It's not that you can't move your body (you're not paralyzed) but rather that you no longer have any real semblence of control over your body movements.
Your ear constitutes auditory and vestibular components and the latter is directly related to your cerebellum and has a great deal to do with your ability to balance. Of course I have no idea why your ear was given this function but, whatever. Interestingly, this also means that hearing loss tends to also have a vestibular component -- you can actually become a tad less coordinated as well as losing your auditory abilities, though you tend to lose your hearing first (and faster) because you're literally overloading your hearing cells to the point of premature death. But whereas the ear is the only part of your body involved with auditory processing it's one of several involved in the balancing process which is why extensive hearing loss / ear damage alone usually isn't enough to land one in a wheelchair.
Your ear acts sort of like a GPS system in regards to the balancing process -- it tells you what direction you're pointed in and where you're heading towards. While damage to the inner ear can cause someone to be rather disoriented on a permanent basis when walking, it usually doesn't lead to confinement in a wheelchair on its own. You still can walk, it's just a more disorienting process. Running is out of the question but a slow pace of walking is more endurable. I guess you might want to be in a wheelchair for comfort's sake but it's not a necessity. I'm guessing cerebellum damage was also involved here as that would really make a wheelchair a necessity at all times.

yeah, seriously put this way, I REAALLLY like pizza, but not ALL pizza, such as those with anchovies, peppers. I absolutely HATE salad. if someone kept obnoxiously offering me pizza, regardless of whether it had anchovies or not I'd say, "no, get the fuck away" and if they kept obnoxiously offering me salad, I'd say the same. both would stem from my desire not to be annoyed.
Back on the actual issue.

Yeah, he rediculously overreacted by shooting the kid because he was gay. If an ugly, rude-ass girl had continuously hit on him, he might have got mad and really hurt her feelings.
But trust me, I know kids, his friends made fun of him "hurr hurr, that fag keeps talking to you, you must be a fag, hur hur" stupid kids who were'nt taught any better think you can be "turned gay" so he got steadily pissed, and yeah, they would have done the same thing "Brandon loves fat Carla" but it woudl have been a "Dude shut up" a punch, maybe a fight, and it would have been over.