Ellen Degeneres speaks from the heart about her thoughts on the murder of 15 yr. old Lawrence King, an openly gay student student from Oxnard, CA:
"...I need to talk to you about something that's really serious and really sad and if you know me, it's hard to talk about sad stuff without getting emotional but this is really important to talk about. On February 12th an openly gay 15-year-old boy named Larry who was an 8th grader in Oxnard, California, was murdered by a fellow 8th 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 wanna 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 get 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!"
18 Comments
Farhad2000Someone was really overly homophobic... thats terrible.
ZonbieWonder what Brandons parents are thinking? This is truly awful
Is this was some mental extremeists want? Kids killing others kids because they did something that was not "straight" (Larry could have been bi, and the same would apply)
( I refer to the "God Hates Fags" Church )
xxovercastxxOverall I'm with her. I'm not so sure about the 'gay jokes [...] lead to murder' part. That seems like some slippery slope BS. No one should be off-limits for a joke.
XaxThat's not at all what she's saying, and I don't think she's saying that this kid got killed because of gay jokes. I can see where she's coming from... it's still so common in our society to use "gay" as a negative term, like "that's so gay." And in movies and popular culture, I often see jokes along those lines, and I don't think it's cool. It's not that you can't joke about *fill in the blank*, but it's still just so casual and accepted to bash gays under the guise of humor, and I think that's unfortunate. I don't want my kids to think it's cool to joke about gay people because they're gay.
There's no doubt in my mind that Brandon's family failed him miserably.
BoneyDI wholeheartedly agree, Xax. I have long since ceased to find such jokes in television or films amusing, unless I am absolutely sure they are not intended with that subconscious demonising effect. But it is amazing how ingrained the thinking was as I had grown up. It took constant presence of mind to pull myself up when I was about to say "that's gay!" at something I didn't like. Because, I think, there is no strong mechanism in society yet which reacts against the use of such terms. People simply equate what you've said as "that's bad".
We have to take on this beast when it appears... tell our friends that that joke on TV was fuckin' bigoted and tell them why. This is not a problem limited to the US.
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gwiz665If that was the internet, you know there would be a single guy in there yelling "booo" when everyone else was clapping, just to get attention.
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