We Are Not Helpless

Filed by: Nadine Smith
March 3, 2008 7:36 AM
We can be horrified, but we cannot be surprised.

Witness the death of yet another child who said he was gay -- the murder of another teenager who defied gender stereotypes.

On Friday, Feb. 22, 17-year-old Simmie Williams Jr. was gunned down on a street corner in Broward County. Just 10 days earlier, Lawrence King, a 15-year-old Oxnard, Calif., junior high student, was shot to death in his own classroom because he wore makeup -- because he was different.

And less than one year ago, Ryan Keith Skipper, 24, was stabbed to death in Polk County.

In Broward, police are investigating Simmie Williams' murder as a possible hate crime based on the words they say were exchanged before the shooting.

In California, Lawrence King, a constant target of harassment and ridicule, was shot in the back and in the head by a 14-year-old who told friends in advance that Lawrence was "having his last day."

Ryan's teenaged killers drove around town in his stolen, blood-soaked car bragging that they had "killed a fag."
Read more at the Bilerico Project: