DeGeneres on Lawrence King's Murder
Ellen DeGeneres made a statement on her television show about the murder of Lawrence King, an eighth-grader in Oxnard, California. He was killed by a fellow student who apparently objected to King's saying he was gay, and to King's gender expression. It's a story that should leave homophobes in stunned silence at where their hatred has taken them and this country.
Thoughtfully, Andy at Towleroad transcribed her statement, which I think is worth repeating in its entirety:
"On February 12th, an openly gay 15-year-old boy named Larry who was an eighth-grader in Oxnard, California was murdered by a fellow eighth-grader named Brandon. Larry was killed because he…was gay. Days before he was murdered, Larry asked his killer to be his Valentine.
"I don't want to be political. This is not political, I'm not a political person, but this is personal to me. A boy has been killed and a number of lives have been ruined.
"And somewhere along the line the killer Brandon got the message that it's so threatening and so awful and so horrific that Larry would want to be his Valentine that killing Larry seemed to be the right thing to do. And when the message out there is so horrible that to be gay you can be killed for it, we need to change the message.
"Larry was not a second class citizen. I am not a second class citizen. It is okay if you're gay. I don't care what people say. I don't care what people think. And I know there are entire groups of people who face discrimination every single day and we're a long way from treating each other equally. All of it is unacceptable. All of it. But I would like you to start paying attention to how often being gay is the punchline of a monologue. Or how often gay jokes are in a movie. And that kind of message — laughing at someone because they're gay — is just the beginning. It starts with laughing at someone, then it's verbal abuse, then it's physical abuse, and then it's this kid Brandon killing a kid like Larry.
"We must change our country and we can do it with our behavior, we can do it with the messages we send our children, we can do it with our vote. This is an election year and there's a lot of talk about change. I think one thing we can change is hate. Check on who you're voting for, and does that person really truly believe that we are all equal under the law? And if you're not sure, change your vote. We deserve better. My heart goes out to everybody involved in this horrible, horrible incident."
Andy's blog article ("Ellen DeGeneres on Lawrence King: We Must Change Our Country") has, at the end, a number of links to his coverage of Lawrence King's murder.
[Update a few hours later:]
The segment has appeared at YouTube, and I wanted to help it get more views:
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Friday, 29 February 2008 at 15.52
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An interesting slip of the fingers in your title to this entry, Jeff. Though it's entirely natural to think of Matthew Shepherd when the subject is Lawrence King.
on Friday, 29 February 2008 at 16.28
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Indeed, Bill. I had Matthew Shepherd very much in mind, and also found that as I wrote about the "King Murder" it seemed necessary to write "Lawrence", since the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. is still so present in our minds when the topic of conversation is unequal rights and social injustice.
To avoid confusion, I hope, I've fixed the title but kept your comment.
on Saturday, 1 March 2008 at 01.23
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What happened is so wrong, so appallingly uncalled for and so disgustingly tragic, it's hard to comment on. Maybe this is what's to be expected when something triggers the synthesis of ignorance, lack of self-control and raging hormones in some especially immature individuals.
DeGeneres is right and is to be commended for speaking out.
on Monday, 3 March 2008 at 02.23
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Ok things aren't black or white. You don't condemn this killer because for all you know he had mental problems, how dare she speak about something she doesn't know, this killer was feeling harrassed and what he did was absolutley horrible, no doubt about it but you can't just hear "He killed him because he was gay" no because it's hard enough to be in middle school but to have a gay kid telling everyone he has a crush on you, not wanting anyone to think yourself gay on top of the problems you already have? I feel sorry for both these kids.
on Monday, 3 March 2008 at 17.10
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Thanks for your comment $1.20, but in fact the situation is exceptionally black & white.
Most 8th-graders are stressed and do not shoot their fellow students. Without facts, you overstate the case by claiming that "a gay kid telling everyone he has a crush on you" may be have been a reason–excuse?. I won't argue that I haven't heard that young Mr. King was "telling everyone", although I haven't; rather, I'll ask: what's the problem with that? Oh yes, young Mr. King was gay.
I've known of too many putatively straight boys who find it embarrassing, a perceived blow to their masculinity, to be the object of gay affection and who have a violent tendency to blame their discomfort on their admirers. It's a ridiculous and unacceptable response and there is no excuse.
I see nothing in the circumstances surrounding young Mr. King's murder that in any way mitigates this murderer's deplorable behavior.
on Monday, 3 March 2008 at 19.07
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Actually Jns my best friends younger sister attends the same school as these kids and has told me that Larry was telling a lot of people. And I'm not trying to make an excuse for this murder, not at all. But I find it unfair for us, the general public, to judge Brandon saying we wish him to jail for fifty years or I hope he suffers and what-not without actually knowing anything about him, like I said for all we know he could've suffered mental problems. And also, I'm thinking that maybe Brandon didn't murder Larry because he was gay, but because he felt himself a target of ridicule from the rest of his school where being gay is something to laugh at. But that is simply a guess for all I know he really could have just killed him for being gay. But the reason shouldn't really matter, gay or straight, he killed another.
on Monday, 3 March 2008 at 23.45
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Thanks $1.20 for the additional information. All of it makes for interesting background to the story, of course, because we always want to know "why?", I suppose in the hopes of learning and stopping it again.
However, I still don't have any trouble judging the murderer, even if my liberal side feels that there's plenty of blame to go around. I'm not quite liberal enough to say it's society's fault–I still feel that the murder is culpable.
However, what brought the murdered to that point? Plenty of things, I believe, that our culture should reject but has not yet rejected. To be embarrassed because a fellow student professes undying love — it happens. Why do some people, including those who influenced the murder's ideas about the situation, feel that shooting is an appropriate response in this situation?
He may not have killed young Mr. King because King was gay as such. But would he have killed, say, the head of the girls' cheerleading squad if she had professed undying devotion? It seems unlikely to me, and that's a disparity for which I've gotten tired of hearing excuses.
on Monday, 31 March 2008 at 16.07
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jns, to piggyback on your analogy and take it a step further, would Brandon have felt "justified" if the person telling others of a crush on him had been the average-looking nerdy girl? No, he wouldn't. He would have made snide remarks and would have blown her off, most likely simply ignoring her completely, pretending she didn't exist. He would have put up with some mild harrassment from his friends over the situation, but it would have blown over in a short period of time and life for everyone would have gone on.
Why, then, would he have felt that the same situation involving a gay young man required or justified anything else? Why did he think that the comments made by young Mr. King were so horrible that he was willing to spend the rest of his life in prison to prevent them from being said again (at least by that one person).
Ironic, isn't it. He was so disturbed by the possibility of having a gay boy like him that he's willing to go to prison and endure …….
on Monday, 31 March 2008 at 17.02
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Susan, thanks for your thoughts. I know the questions are rhetorical–because they seem so inexplicable–but that doesn't stop me from observing that, tragically often, such bizarrely over-reacting homophobia turns out to hide deeply repressed homosexual desires. Sometimes denying any hint of the homosexual can seem like a survival imperative, unfortunately.