Boys Will Be Boys
The dark side of teenage angst
Published On Wednesday, February 27, 2008  1:05 AM
By JULIET S. SAMUEL

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=522150

On Monday, police in the small, liberal town of Oxnard, CA, declared last week's school shooting of a 15-year-old boy to be a hate-crime, motivated by the victim's sexuality. The boy, Lawrence King, recently came out as gay to his peers at his junior high school. A few weeks later, a classmate shot him dead.

On the face of it, the Oxnard shooting is another tragic case of a gun-toting kid with inappropriate access to a deadly weapon. But this incident has implications beyond gun control laws (California's are some of the nation's strongest). The killer, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, murdered King not because he had access to a gun, but because King had declared his "abnormal" sexuality both explicitly and, allegedly, by dressing and acting in what was perceived to be an inappropriately feminine manner.