Dealing with coming out young

This week's Newsweek has as its cover story, "Young, Gay and Murdered" about last February's death of 15 year old Lawrence King. It may seem like old news, but it took Newsweek a while to talk to parents, friends, students, teachers, and administrators. The last didn't talk much on the advice of their lawyers though their view will be presented during the trial of Brandon, the kid who pulled the trigger.

The story is about the conflict between gay kids (actually, all sexual minority kids -- Larry also had a strong transgender component) who are coming out at younger ages (average about 13, Larry did it at 10) and fellow students (and society at large) who don't yet know how to deal with it. Larry was quite the queen and seemed to be seeking attention (the story goes into his background, explaining why this might be true). He was doing this in a society (middle school) in which most boys are trying to prove how masculine they are and anything gay is a threat to that.

Here are some thoughts about what went wrong and how we might go about preventing another such murder. Some of these are from the story (Newsweek, regretfully, offers very little on how to change the situation), and some of them are mine.

We have a "shrinking closet" factor. How do we balance a kid's self-expression with inappropriate behavior? What about the balance between pushing boundaries and safety? Kids seem to be playing grown-up without knowing what that means. What's the line between expression and being in-your-face about it?

Larry loved to taunt boys to see them squirm, playing into their homophobic buttons. Brandon felt terrorized when Larry professed his love, which subjected Brandon to ridicule from his peers who took it as a sign that Brandon was gay too. In a sense, Larry was being the bully and that bit of self-expression wasn't nipped in the bud. But Larry had little guidance on how that behavior was unacceptable and, without a gay club at the school, had no way to identify which boys were gay and might welcome his attentions.

On the other side Brandon did not know how diffuse the situation, to decline Larry's attentions firmly without getting upset over the comments. This has to be coupled with efforts to make the situation less explosive, so that Brandon's friends wouldn't threaten him with a loss of masculinity over Larry's advances.

Many schools, especially middle schools, are simply not equipped to handle kid's questions on sexuality. This was an issue of middle school society gone wrong, yet the school didn't have enough social workers.

One of the assistant principals, a lesbian, was good at helping Larry with self-expression, but not so much about cautioning him about consequences (though that is an especially difficult task with a middle-school student).

I'm somewhat charitable about the article. Others were not. Here are other voices (and I refrained from reading them until I had written the above). I am specifically leaving out the comments on the Newsweek site, which (at least in this case) seems to have attracted quite a few slugs out from under their rocks.

This reaction is that the article is important and needed. But the first problem is that it seems the lesbian assistant principal gets too much blame -- let's find a gay to blame. The second is that by saying Larry should have been less in-your-face they are blaming the victim. If only the administrators could have straightened him up, this wouldn't have happened. One commenter suggests the lack of training in sexual issues is because of the Religious Right.

This second response sees the article as a hit-piece on Larry, a case of blaming the victim. Throughout Larry is portrayed using unfavorable terms, while Brandon is merely described as "smart" and "had his share of troubles." It is Larry who is the source of the trouble, "stalking" Brandon. The author even found a lawyer ready with the "gay panic" defense. Also implicated is the lesbian assistant principal with a "political agenda." Perhaps it is the case that Larry's acting out was self-defense, a response to the harassment he was already getting? That wasn't mentioned. Neither was that Brandon had lots of other options other than pulling a gun. There is evidence the author was biased (though I didn't follow the links to see the nature of the supposed bias). Outside of the author's control is a very public defense lawyer trying to spin the blame on the school, administration, and the victim, while the prosecution lawyer refuses to try the case in the papers. All of this means I'm contributing to the hit in what I wrote above.

Another, more recent comment, is that Brandon is the scapegoat. This week the court said that Brandon should be tried as an adult instead of a juvenile. This opinion says that in terms of justice it does no good, ruining Brandon's life. It also takes the blame off the churches who stirred up the homophobia that Brandon picked up and acted on and who have been silent on Larry's death since then (though they have defeated other anti-bullying laws in that time). Yes, Brendan should be tried and spend time in jail for his crime, but as an juvenile, not an adult.