Organizing your writing life

REMEMBER LAWRENCE KING: Fifteen-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King was shot in the head last week in Oxnard, California for being gay. This story is only now starting to get media coverage, although some of the reporting is such bullshit that it falls into the yellow journalism category. Case in point, the slanted, distorted article in Time magazine that, if you read between the lines, puts the blame on Lawrence for wearing jewelry and nail polish to class. The "sweet-faced" 14-year-old who pilled the trigger, Brandon McInerney, had been taunting Lawrence about being gay for weeks. 

McInerney "allegedly" walked into the junior high classroom, put the gun to Lawrence's head, pulled the trigger in front of dozens of other students and, like the coward he is, ran. This begs so many questions: where does a 14-year-old get a gun? Have we learned nothing from Columbine, Virginia Tech, et al? Who taught this kid how to hate? Why didn't school officials step in to stop the harassment that had been allegedly escalating between Lawrence and McInerney for weeks? Where is the serious debate on gun control? When is the Matthew Shepard Act (to make violence against the glbtq community a hate crime) going to be taken off the back burner in congress? According to a report in the LA Times, text messages were passed between students that McInerney was planning the murder and he's now sitting in juvie hall refusing to cooperate with police. I say lock the little monster and his parents up for life. 

If you believe the Time magazine article -- and you shouldn't -- all gay teens are happy, healthy and embraced by their peers. The claims of harassment and bullying are just hysteria drummed up by the gay rights groups with an agenda. Did I mention the writer of the Time article, John Cloud,  claims to be gay, but doesn't believe there should be federal legislation against hate crimes? He says we'll probably never know what motivated McInerney to kill Lawrence, but we should be mourning instead of passing useless legislation. John, you should have your gay card pulled immediately. The straights can have you -- we don't need your kind of internalized homophobia, especially not in the media. 

Sarah Whitman's editorial in The Huffington Post hits the nail right on the head. We've lived under nearly eight years of a government that preaches hate is okay and is under the sway of the gun lobby. We've yet to see any of the candidates -- including Obama and Hillary -- step up and even mention this tragedy and what they will do to prevent others. 

This blog post is part of an effort to memorialize Lawrence and to spur blog action and make sure this story is not swept aside, as it's been done by the national media for the most part. Visit the website Remembering Lawrence to find out more information and to find out about memorial services being planned around the country.

Thanks to Kate Evans and C. Dale Young for bringing this story to my attention in the first place.