Another senseless murder of a child.

February 17, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I am distraught with this past week’s news of the killing of a 15 year-old, in school, by a 14 year-old—the end of a rash of school shootings that is absolutely numbing to think about. Thousand of people are grieving for a child we never met. But what caught me in the throat was that this was an effeminate boy who only recently began to admit to himself and classmates that he was or might be gay.

It is hard to imagine being 15 again. I do remember that I was scared to be myself and that I hid my feelings and my questions. What puts young gay boys or lesbian girls at such risk nowadays is that they are more self-aware, at earlier ages, and are growing more confident because of the relative acceptance in society. In the 1960s there was NO acceptance, period, as well as no information. So when I was 15 I didn’t even have a name for who I was and was bright enough not to ask questions out loud.

  Photo: Ventura County Star

Young Lawrence King became a martyr for relative acceptance. Like Gwen Araujo, a 17 year-old M2F transgender person, decent society is outraged at his senseless killing. It is small comfort that the 14 year-old killer is to be charged as an adult for a hate crime. But two lives are still destroyed: one in tragic death, the other who will almost certainly serve an appreciable number of years in detention or prison.

Clearly, “LGBT rights” haven’t gotten very far if it is still not safe to grow up gay or lesbian or transgender. The expansion of hate crimes statutes is long, long overdue.  According to a U.S. Department of Justice November 2005 report, 18% or nearly 1/5 of hate crimes were related to sexual orientation. Who is standing up, besides Barack Obama, for stronger hate crimes legislation?

Why is there so much hatred and fear of what is simply different? Why must there be martyrs to bring decent people out, and get moral people to proclaim their shock and intolerance of violence loudly enough to suppress (at least temporarily) such violence in a local community?

Wasn’t the murder of Matthew Shepard over nine years ago enough to get all of America to demand an end to such hate and such violence?

Answer to that rhetorical question: No, it wasn’t enough. America loves violence, perpetuates violence, tolerates violence, promulgates violence. Like Spaniards who still relish bullfights, Americans simply want to channel violence ever-so-slightly to protect some people.

I would personally argue for greater gun control. The equally senseless killings in Illinois by a recently-deranged bright college student illustrates this. He bought the guns legally, which means that our laws aren’t doing the job that guns rights advocates pretend they are.

Yes, I know the counter-argument: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Blah, blah, blah.

If it were that simple then hey why can’t individuals legally purchase nuclear weapons? Nuclear bombs don’t kill people, people kill people.

The fact is that too many people, even in a free and allegedly decent society, are nut cases. They are disposed to hate, disposed to judgment of others and of anything that is foreign to their experience, and disposed to violence. Should millions of potential nut cases have access to the trigger or the button on a nuclear bomb because, it is argued, bombs don’t kill people, people kill people? Of course not.

Most violent crimes are committed by people with weapons that rightfully do not belong in the hands of individuals—from “Saturday night specials,”—cheap handguns—to assault weapons.

The surface reason we don’t have meaningful gun control in America is that politicians are pressured by gun lobbyists and nut cases disguised as conservative voters. The underlying reason is that politicians have no backbones. Remember, folks, these are the “leaders” who cannot even stand up the current administration to say that America will not torture people. If they cannot say No to George Bush on waterboarding, would they have the spine to stop the senseless killings of effeminate boys?

Obviously, we will have thousands more senseless killings of children by children before the public outcry is loud enough to stop the NRA’s death grip on America.

But my heart goes out to the family of Lawrence King, and the families of others who tried to protect their young child from the hatred of others, only to see their loved one hurt, killed, even tortured as was Matthew Shepard. My heart breaks for any children who suffer unspeakable violence. But my heart is also angered by all the complicit evil, in the name of “liberty”or “family values” or any other quackery that claims every life is sacred and then turns a blind eye to hatred, torture, violence and murder.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

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