Gay Jr. Highschool Student Murdered
 

I just finished reading a pretty interesting story that is apparently all over the place, and naturally I checked NPF to see if it was already being discussed. Which, it wasn't!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/147790/page/5

I wasn't really taken aback that it was used to bolster the rights movement, crimes of these sort usually are (most likely with just cause a good deal of the time), but it did surprise me that they are this unequipped to deal with it. I was also pretty surprised to hear about kids coming out at earlier ages. So, I'm curious to know, when can an adolescent really know for sure what his sexual identity is (legally and otherwise)? What are the rules for condoned behavior in school, when "discovering" one's identity? And though they seemed to be slinging the word "sexual harassment" around concerning 13-15 year olds, what really counts as sexual harassment for kids? I had thought it was lewd suggestions, actual physical abuse, or something along those lines.

I am quite tired and possibly not thinking correctly, but doesn't the article say that the kid who was killed was harassing the other kid and pushing the limits of stuff for attention? Like I said, the synapses aren't all firing correctly at the moment, but didn't the article say he was stalking the other kid?

Greg King's son is the one who died...

It seems like this is another sensationalized tragedy, and pinning it on the sexuality of a kid who is high on hormones doesn't seem right.

So, if Larry had been straight, and Brandon a girl, how would they be treating this? I mean, you've got the school openly admitting it was their fault for letting Larry get away with so much, students who obviously agree that it wasn't hate-motivated, and Larry's own father saying his son was "pushing as hard as he could."

You know, normally in a situation like this, someone just punched someone else. We didnt execute each other during a history test.

Brandon's response to the situation was wrong, but I think it'd be wrong to label this a hate crime or a "gay rights issue." The problem was that Brandon was harrassed (whether he was harrassed by a gay man or a heterosexual man or a woman really doesn't matter), but he chose a disporportionately extreme response to the harassment, as opposed to seeking proper help to deal with the issue.
(Actually, "disporportionately extreme" is a bit of an understatement. Shooting a guy point-blank like that is, as Cid Highwind noted, absolutely ludicrous and morally bankrupt.)

So would I charge Brandon with murder? Yeah.
Do I really believe this is an issue of gay discrimination? No, because Larry wasn't behaving in a way appropriate for men of any sexual orientation. Whatever your sexual orientation is you have no excuse to stalk and attempt to emotionally terrorize someone who doesn't like you. As a heterosexual guy if I had tried half the crap that Larry did (but to women as the targets) I'd have practically been expelled.

Gay men, just like heterosexual men, should have the rights to express themselves as individuals -- the way Larry dressed or the openness with which he handled his preferences doesn't really bother me -- it's the way his sexual expression was "protected" in a way that even heterosexual sexual expression would have been considered wrong. And middle school is really too early to promote any kind of sexual identity, heterosexual or homosexual, in children. (But I'm a bit of a prude in that sense -- I'm the type who thinks children should be expected to not know a damned thing about sex until well into high school, at a minimum.)

Well, I would have to agree that Larry wasn't the innocent victim. I tried to put it in my first post that in a good deal of situations the whole "using it for the cause of ____ rights" seems to be justified a good deal of the time. But you do get cases like this. I am still not quite convinced that this was sexual harassment in the context with which are familiar, however. Larry had no experience, and his comments seemed to be more about INCITING anti-gay sentiments than simply harassing other kids.
I considered the situation, with it being a heterosexual case, and I surmise that the girl would be annoyed, eventually angry/feeling stalked/etc. and have it brought to the principle; not necessarily with any violence involved. I'm not saying it's a double standard, but I think it's messier in this case precisely because of the still present homophobia in mainstream culture, and how Larry used that. Maybe Larry was even more at fault for playing with fire? I don't know. Obviously shooting him twice in the head with cool precision was about the furthest thing from justified. My confusion still lies with where the lines should be drawn, as far as condoning and encouraging kids at this age to "come out", as well as the other behavior reported. Personally, I stand somewhere close to Solid Snake on this, that is, when it comes to the appropriate time for an adolescent to really begin thinking about/exploring relationships and such.

So basically Larry was more or less abusing Brandon to the point where it should have gone to the police, but it didnt, and now people are trating it as a hate crime just for the sake of treating it as a hate crime. I dont think Brandons motivation was out of homophobia here, I think it was out of hate for someone who was apparently sexually abbusive towards him, a hate which is entriely justified. Not saying the murder was, but the hate was.

I also agree with Snake that kids shouldnt be learning about sexual identity till they are much older.

??

It sounds a lot like Newsweek is saying that we should go back to the days of the airy, spacious, soundly locked closet, as though this was somehow a safer arrangement for gay people in which nobody was at any kind of risk of violence.

I mean really going by Newsweek's own telling of it this isn't at all different from pretty much any gay violence incident except with a victim who actually dared to stand up for himself and a whole lot of people looking to blame said victim for having done so. This Larry kid was getting bullied for being the effete sissy of the class, same as the effete sissy of the class has gotten bullied since time immemorial, but this effete sissy actually decided to stand up for himself and say okay I'm an effete sissy, so what? and start answering back at his tormentors, and a lot of school administrators decided that the major problem here was that the sissy wasn't learning to bear the relentless abuse of his peers silently and suffer in an acceptably non-disruptive manner.

The worst thing Larry did to Brandon here was what, he asked the kid to be his valentine. No definition of sexual harassment on earth involves a 14-year-old asking another 14-year-old to be his valentine, except inasmuch as "sexual harassment" has been redefined to mean "liking someone while being gay." Again by Newsweek's own recounting, Brandon seemed mostly to be set off by the fact that his friends were teasing him cause the gay kid liked him.

I'm pretty sure no conceivable power on Earth is going to stop 12-year-old boys from being interested in sex. I'm not sure where you think sexual identity comes from - the media? Sex-ed classes? But I'm pretty sure that where it does come from is that moment somewhere between 11 and 15 where your body says HOSHITS HORMONES and then you spend the next sixty years of your life trying to figure out what happened there.

Where are you getting that info? The Newsweek article seemed to paint Brandon as the victim of the abuse and Larry as the perpetrator.

Page 2 of the article.

You know, this seems to be very clear-cut. This kid went and shot his classmate dead. Is anyone going to excuse that by saying "well, he was really mad at him"?

I figure whatever the Larry kid did is a moot point. Unless there was some sort of threat on Brandon's life, which there apparently wasn't, murder is completely inexcusable.

I mean, if I had been hit on and stalked a lot by a gay guy when I was 14 years old, there may have been a fight, and I definitely would have gotten people to keep him away from me.... but shooting him in the head is just sick. There's no excuse, so I don't even know why they're attempting to rationalize it.

I don't think that's exactly what the Newsweek article is saying at all, though I do think the particular sentence you quoted was rather poorly written.
I think what Newsweek is saying isn't "geez, homosexuality is terrible and homosexuals shouldn't be protected or have the right to their free expression." I think what Newsweek is asking is "do middle school kids really have a sound enough conceptualization of homosexuality to even correctly define themselves that way, and should blatantly assertive sexual identities be encouraged in middle school atmospheres?"

In which case I'd say: public schools are public property...insofar as free speech should generally be unassailable and encouraged, there shouldn't be a problem with a kid's free expression in a unique identity (Lord knows I can relate to having been bullied, and that shouldn't be tolerated) but

I also don't think Newsweek is offering any justification for what Brandon did. (EDIT: Let me specify that this component of my argument, though I've been quoting and will continue to quote Fifthfiend, is directed to Swordchucks. I'm just too lazy to copy-paste and quote Swordchucks here. But I don't think Fifthfiend touched this issue much.) I'll say it before and I'll say it again: we can debate whether or not this was specifically a gay-hate crime, but on the matter of "does Brandon deserve to be tried for murder?" the answer is undeniably, unequivocably yes.

What Brandon did was beyond grotoesque and a perverse over-reaction to his situation. Even if Larry had sexually harrassed him (and it depends on who you ask, apparently -- I wouldn't be surprised if he did, wouldn't be surprised if he didn't,) there's no justification for Brandon's actions. The only feasible argument in regards to Brandon is whether or not he should be tried (and certainly found guilty) in adult or juvenile court. Personally, I'd actually prefer an adult-court trial -- a murder this well-planned and meticulously thought out deserves an appropriate court sentencing. There is no justification for what Brandon did. None.

I think that's a very biased generalization in favor of Larry's interpretation.
(Note: I'm not defending the kid for killing him, we're getting into another subject than the murder itself entirely.)
Alternatively, I got the impression reading the article that Larry had purposefully relied on a sexual identity he didn't even fully understand in order to grant himself protection and immunity from the more "popular bullies." That, I don't particularly mind -- it's not a morally prudent action but in and of itself, it's not really immoral either -- he's young, he's in the process of discovering who he is, and being "gay" is an identity to latch onto, though had he lived I'd wonder whether he'd still consider himself homosexual or bisexual five or ten years from now...even his own father seemed convinced the kid was in a state of flux.
What I did consider "immoral" among Larry's actions was the fact that he attempted to subsequently use his homosexuality as a weapon to frighten and/or terrorize other men. I mean there's a huge fundamental difference between "sticking up for yourself and being proud of your sexual identity" and "commenting to the boys on how you like to stare at their naked bodies in the showers, purposefully and malignantly "flirting" with boys who haven't incited you, and giving a boy a valentine in the middle of a basketball game with the intent of humiliating him in front of his classmates." When Larry decided to respond to the bullying by becoming his own variation of a bully, he in essence stooped down to their level.

I mean if Larry really liked Brandon and genuinely believed there was a chance that Brandon would date him? I doubt he'd hand him a Valentine in public, at a basketball game, in front of all the other boys -- particularly after Brandon had apparently expressed dissatisfaction with the thought of being pursued by Larry before. And if only Brandon and other "popular students" were saying that Larry was tormenting his classmates I'd be like "okay, they're probably covering their asses with lies," but the fact that a few teachers (from a town in California not exactly known to harbor conservative or anti-gay sentiments) expressed sincere concern with Larry's behavior is a pretty good indication he found that line and jumped right over it.

This is no justification whatsoever for what Brandon did: but I don't think Brandon shot Larry just because "Larry was gay." In that sense, it wasn't a gay-hate crime. (Hell, in the maturation time of hell and internal confusion that is middle school, I wonder if Brandon even had the mental and philosophical capacity and maturity to really even fully comprehend what homosexuality was, who homosexuals were, and if he really hated them as a group and/or wished they didn't exist.) It was more like "Brandon and other popular bullies tease Larry, Larry teases Brandon back and escalates the situation, Brandon becomes humiliated by one of Larry's stunts and may (or may not) have been harrassed, Brandon does the morally inexcusable thing and decides life-ending violence is the proper solution."

Which, unfortunately, happens with a lot of middle school kids period, heterosexual and homosexual, and it's why we have school shootings and beatings and bullying and other such serious issues all around the country. It's not an issue exclusive to the gay community: it happens to ethnic minorities and "goths" and "emos" and "nerds" and "hippies" and "gypsies" and "different kids" everywhere.

You see, this is why I justified my perspective by the qualifier that I am a prude and that few would probably relate with my opinion. You see, I didn't really start having sexual fantasies or desires or anything of that nature until my second year of high school, and the thought of having liked girls in middle school is absolutely foreign to me. I will say that in my personal experience, sexual expression of any sort (homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, you name it) was not a serious issue among me and my group of friends in middle school, and I'm thankful for that. Back then I was too young to think properly on the subject. Hell, I was called "gay" as a generic slur for the first time in 8th grade and actually thought the bully was calling me "happy!"
...Yeah, I had a sheltered childhood.

1. I'm pretty sure I knew I liked girls and only girls in late elementary school, when and where someone "discovers" their identity shouldn't be an issue.

2. What should be an issue should have nothing to do with rights (aside from the obvious one), from what I can see here the biggest problem of all is a middle school kid blowing away another middle school kid. Whatever happened to dodgeball?

The murder is in no-way justified. However, it likely wouldn't have happened if something had been done before the kid reached the point that he killed his classmate. Some people don't cope with things like that very well. Not saying it's in any way justified, just that it could've been prevented.

And just imagine the horror of the rest of that middle school class as they see another person's brains hit the floor for no reason.

There is no way Brandon's actions can be condoned, justified, or whatever - murder is murder, especially amongst kids. On the other side though, Larry's actions also were worth condemning, sexual harassment is also unjustifiable whether straight, gay, bestial, or whatever - it just never merits the harasser being executed in a computer class.

The problem in the future is that we have several different camps forming around this tragic event: the gay-rights movement is claiming a martyr (they shouldn't since the kid more or less was provoking others), the anti-gay groups are blaming Larry for Brandon's actions (in what little defense he has, Brandon did have a right to respond, only NOT with violence), and then we have the parents and teachers who are all milling around blaming each other instead actually working together to solve these goddamn problems facing kids today.

Am I the only one who got creeped out reading the "One day I'll be famous," line? I mean, what with the situation now?

I may be a really bad person for saying this, but I was more amused than creeped out. Irony does that to me.

There really isn't much more I can add that hasn't been stated already. It looks like a fairly cut and dry case. Boy meets other boy. Boy possibly has feelings for other boy, but also is a bit of a drama queen. Boy provokes other boy repeatedly. Imbecilic/incompetent staff/parents fail to take appropriate action. Other boy commits murder. None of any of this is justified.

Kind of a tragic story, really. Several lives completely ruined forever. One of them just doesn't go on....

I wish that Brandon had've gone to the school about being sexually harassed by Larry. I also wish that if he had done so, the school would've disciplined Larry. I'd rather deal with a possible furor over punishing a homosexual boy for sexually harassing a classmate than deal with the trauma experienced by every child who was witness to that murder, not to mention the grief that Larry and Brandon's friends and family must be feeling.

Rather than going through legal channels to alleviate the harassment, Brandon threw his and Larry's lives away. Schools need to adapt their sexual harassment policies for the changing times, and they need to educate students on what is appropriate and what is not.

how many kids you know would listen?

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.

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.

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.

You know, I really that this thread was done with. That was until I saw this at MSNBC:

Gay teen's family blames school for death

Well, I thought it was pretty well established that they had no control over him, considering he was living at a halfway house by the time he started crossdressing. Obviously, they have every right to be angry at his death, especially considering he lied about being beaten to get away from them before the trouble started, and they couldn't do anything about the situation because other people were enabling or encouraging him while they had no access to him to try to rein him in. A lot of people could have stopped the situation along the way, and his family isn't included in that number.

And from what I've read, they're really upset that the Vice Principal that everyone gave the complaints to, but never did anything about it, is simply being transferred to another school and not really getting any punishment what-so-ever.

From the looks of it, Epstein (the Vice Principal), was almost trying to make Lawrence a pet project. She was going to set an example of absolute acceptance of gays, and refusing to do anything about the complaints about how he dressed and acted, stating that he was simply who he was and they shouldn't restrict him. Teachers are going on record stating that they've had students complain about him rubbing up against them in the halls, but Epstein never did anything about it.

Frankly, I'm amazed she's still allowed to work in the school system. If I were more blunt, I'd say it'd probably look bad to fire a gay person after a gay student just got shot, but I guess it simply must have been easier to transfer her away.