The Killing of a Gay Oxnard Student

Lawrence King: Punch-drunk Hate

Comments (0) By David Ehrenstein Wednesday, Feb 20 2008

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This past Sunday in Oxnard, a crowd of 1,000 teenagers, some of whom were friends and classmates of Lawrence King's at E.O. Green Junior High, along with many others who never knew him at all, publicly memorialized him at a rally promoting peace and understanding. I hope these kids get as much media attention as Brandon McInerney. But that's doubtful. Calm is less photogenic than violence. And these days there's no end of the latter. The King shooting was followed a scant 48 hours later by the massacre at Northern Illinois University, in which six people, including the gunman, were slaughtered and many more injured. And that's not to mention the daily ration of assorted horror visited upon the unlucky citizens of Iraq amid "civil unrest" that no surge seems able to stop. But the proud, smiling faces of the kids in Sunday's memorial rally tell a different story — one that might get through to those who didn't attend it. Acceptance of the sexually nonconforming has grown enormously since I was 15, though hatred certainly hasn't disappeared. Perhaps it never will. Still, those who continue to harbor hostility toward others regarded as smaller, weaker or in any number of ways "different," can always stop and think the way Charles did back in 1962.

And without throwing a punch first.