http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23847511
OXNARD, Calif. - Larry King was a gay eighth-grader who used to come to school in makeup, high heels and earrings. And when the other boys made fun of him, he would boldly tease them right back by flirting with them.
That may have been what got him killed.
On Feb. 12, another student, Brandon McInerney, 14, shot him twice in the head at the back of the computer lab at their junior high school, police sayPolice would not discuss McInerney's motive. But the day before the shooting, King told McInerney he liked him, eighth-grader Eduardo Segure told the Ventura County Star.
If King had flirted with the other boy, "that can be very threatening to someone's ego and their sense of identity," said Jaana Juvonen, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.McInerney was jailed on $770,000 bail on an adult murder charge that could put him behind bars for life. Prosecutors also filed a hate-crime enhancement, which could bring three more years if McInerney is found to have acted on the basis of the victim's race, religion, nationality or sexual orientation.
The shooting has galvanized Oxnard, a city of nearly 200,000 people about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles. Several vigils for King have been held, including a march that drew about 1,000 people to this strawberry-growing section of Ventura County.Can you really blame the kid? All this talk of tolerance and acceptance, and yet homosexuality is constantly labeled whether consciously or not as bad. The kid's reaction reflects the exact same kind of fear that many males possess of being considered gay, hence i do really hope the media doesn't spin this on the kid having psychological problems, when in reality this problem is still prevalent, it's obvious when you hear every day conversation in today's western world. You hear the words gay and other words associated with it constantly used in a perjorative sense, and god forbid you ever present any feminine demeanor as a male. Teenage life simply amplifies social realities, it's not just something that's only present there or something that happend because kids/teenagers are immature.A 2005 survey by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network found that more than 64 percent of gay and lesbian students report verbal, sexual or physical harassment at school, and 29 percent said they missed at least a day of school in the previous month out of fear for their safety. The group is holding its annual "Day of Silence" in memory of King on April 25.
Also, on a less related note, i'm starting to find it ridiculous how legally one is an adult at the age of 18, yet for some reason, we can arbitrarily decide to charge a minor as an adult if we consider the crime big enough. As if murder is something that is beyond a kid's capabilities/imagination, that if one commits it, it suddenly makes him all grown up, but only in the case of going to jail for life. Good fucking going, ruin the lives of two families now why don't you. I now patiently await for the heterosexual and homosexual community to miss the fucking point of this terrible event.