What Are We Teaching Our Kids?

Okay I was seriously too tired and emotional to read about this today, I even started tearing up here at work and had to compose myself.

On February 12th of this year, a 15 year old boy named Lawrence "Larry" King was murdered at his school in Oxnard, California. A few weeks before the shooting which took his life Larry had admitted to many in his school that he was gay and had started enduring harassment from many people around him. He had asked Brandon, the 14 year old boy who shot him, to be his Valentine, Brandon then showed up to school, entered their school's computer lab and shot Larry twice in the back of the head.

Ummm..... I really don't know where to go from here as I'm starting to tear up again. I'm just wondering how do we get to a place like this? How has society not risen above this sort of prejudice? What kind of message is society sending to kids that would make one act so violently towards another because of a simple Valentine proposal? Just what exactly makes a certain person disposable in the eyes of another?

It takes a lot of courage to come out to people especially at such a young age. It's perhaps been the most terrifying experience of my personal existance and I was in my 20's when I started telling people, I couldn't even fathom coming out at 15. But on top of that, to be met with hostility and violence for the sake of being truthful with yourself and with others just makes it all the more difficult. Everyone, Everyone, EVERYONE has the right to a peaceful state of mind and to love freely who they choose. That is everyone's God Given Right and to deny a single person that right is the purest form of hatred and cruelty in my mind.

My heart goes out to the families involved and to society in general for the way we treat each other. Tolerance takes a lot of time and I hope even in this high paced world we can work harder on achieving it together. I leave you now with this clip of Ellen Degeneres talking about this tragedy on her talk show last week as she is a lot more eloquent when it comes to matters like this, my head is far too jumbled. Please watch here and try not to forget that tragedies like this are occuring daily and we can stop it by helping to change our little portion of society. If you don't understand something (or you fear something) educate yourself on the matter, don't dispose of it or ignore it.

RIP Lawrence King. Peace Everyone.