Corrections and Clarification Appended: February 19, 2008Lawrence King, an eighth grader who identified as gay and wore makeup and nail polish, was 15 when he was declared brain dead on Feb. 13. The day before, he had been shot in the head in an Oxnard, Calif., classroom full of students. Police have charged a sweet-faced boy called Brandon McInerney, 14, with first-degree murder and with a hate crime. According to the Los Angeles Times and KTLA, McInerney and some other boys accosted King about his sexuality on Feb. 11. Students apparently often taunted King, who didn’t even have a safe home to return to after school: he was living in a shelter for abused and troubled children.
The crime, a chilling execution carried out in a typical suburban school — allegedly by a boy who probably hasn’t started shaving — has shocked Oxnard and captured the attention of gay and transgender activists around the country. On Friday, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force released a statement saying, in part, “Our hearts go out to Lawrence’s family — and to all young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kids who are — right now, right this minute — being bullied and beaten in school while adults look the other way.” Another group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network called for passage of the Matthew Shepard Act, which would dramatically increase the power of the federal government to prosecute hate crimes.
But while King’s short life and violent death are surpassingly sad, it’s not clear that officials at E.O. Green Junior High, his school, “looked the other way.” What’s more, the task force is exaggerating the frequency of assaults on gay kids, the vast majority of whom make it through school safe and happy.
GLSEN itself has published a great deal of survey data showing that most gay kids aren’t suffering the way King did. Though the organization paints a still overall grim picture for young gays, fully 78% of gay and transgender kids say they feel safe at school, according to a 2005 GLSEN report. According to another GLSEN survey released in 2006, only 18% of gay and transgender students said they had been assaulted in 2005 because of their sexual orientation . By comparison, according to a 2007 Centers for Disease Control report, 18.2% of male students and 8.8% of female students reported being in a physical fight at school in the last year. Of those in the GLSEN report who had been harassed or assaulted, more than one-tenth — 13% — said the incident wasn’t serious enough to report. When they did report the incidents, the response from school staffs was positive about 70% of the time. That’s not enough — it should be 100% — but it belies the dire picture painted by gay groups in the wake of King’s killing.
True, 66% of gay and transgender kids said they had heard homophobic remarks. But roughly the same proportion — 62% — had heard sexist remarks. Some 16% of gay and transgender kids said they had been harassed because of their sexual orientation, but 18% said they had been harassed because of “the way you look or your body size.” It’s difficult to imagine the teenager who has never been painfully teased about something. We forget sometimes that to be a teenager — any teenager — is to learn to cope with the turbid, inchoate bigotries of still-developing minds.
Of course, King wasn’t just teased — he was put to death. But GLSEN has found that the frequency of anti-gay harassment and assault at schools has dropped steady through this decade. Fully 57% of gay and transgender students now say they are comfortable raising gay and transgender issues in class, and 71% have discussed those issues with a teacher at least once. Perhaps the most encouraging statistic: 57% of all students in public schools now say they know a kid who is gay; 20% have “a close personal friend” who is gay. Those numbers were unimaginable even 20 years ago. As I have pointed out more fully before, research from Cornell’s Ritch Savin-Williams has shown that most gay teenagers are thriving and happy most of the time. They are periodically confused and depressed, but what teen isn’t?
Still, it’s hard to look at the photo of King’s fragile little face and not want to do something. Expanding federal power to prosecute hate crimes sounds like a good idea, unless you are opposed to the whole enterprise of criminalizing people’s thoughts. Others have made this argument at greater length
