April 18, 2008
By William Butte Even before 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King came out to the few friends he had at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, Calif., the sweet-faced, slightly built boy endured taunts and anti-gay slurs spewed at him daily across campus, from cafeteria to classroom. As one friend was quoted in the Los Angeles Times: "You'd hear, 'Faggot! Hey, faggot!' That was happening in every class. A lot of teachers knew stuff was going on ... I guess they just didn't want to get involved."
However, the taunts and slurs didn't engender the desired reaction of fear and silence, but instead seemed to have had the opposite effect. Larry gained the courage to come out to the few friends he had, and he began to wear make-up and girl's boots with his school uniform. He also started to flirt with boys who taunted him, as a way to get back at them.Larry told one boy, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, that he thought he was cute. Brandon hated that, and the fact that the remark caused his friends to rib him for being gay.
After the incident, early one morning in February, Brandon walked into Larry's eighth-grade computer lab class and shot him twice in the head. As those two shots rang out, Larry's voice was silenced forever.
As horrific as the final result was, if you think the daily harassment Larry received in school was an aberration, think again.
A nationwide study on bullying by Harris Interactive found that actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender expression are two of the top three reasons why students are harassed in school, and that within the 12 months prior to the survey, 90 percent of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students had been harassed or assaulted.
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