Larry King And The "Limits of Tolerance"

Just re-read that Newsweek cover report about the murder of 15 year old Larry King by 14 year old Brandon McInernery. It's all so heartbreaking, infuriating.

Both these kids were failed utterly by the adults that surrounded them--parents, teachers, school officials--and one boy is dead and another facing the possibility of a lengthy prison term, because of that failure. In the face of his death, the teachers who spoke to the press insist that they tried to support the complicated, boundary-pushing Larry, but I wonder for how many that is really true. He was different and now he is dead. I'm sure there's quite a bit of damage control going on right now, personally and officially, as everyone tries to put the best face on their own involvement (or lack thereof) in this tragedy.

No doubt the only thing everyone can agree on right now is that what happened should not have happened, that things should never have reached this point. But, beyond either ignoring Larry King or getting angry at him for behavior they didn't understand and didn't know how best to respond to, where were all these grown-ups as things slowly unraveled for Larry and Brandon? Were they standing out in a field somewhere, watching cloud formations?

Put aside for the moment the McInerney boy and his issues (and ease of access to a loaded gun)--where were the adults when kids started mistreating and ostracizing King when he began coming out at age 10? It wasn't just Larry King that needed help navigating the rough seas of puberty and sexual and social identity. All those classmates who taunted him--the girl who started the "Burn Book" to punish King, the boys who "pushed him around" in the locker rooms--were obviously coping, badly, with their own identity questions, anxieties and fears. Larry King could not have been the only gay, or eccentric, or defiantly flamboyant, or troubled, kid in the various schools he attended--what happened to those kids? What's happening to them now?

King is said to have been a "bully" and to have bullied the boy who would be his executioner. Where was the outrage--the acknowledgement--of the bullying King experienced?

How Brandon McInerney chose finally to resolve the problem of Larry's allegedly determined and unwanted attentions was horrifyingly inappropriate--to say the absolute least--and he should, he must, face the consequences for his actions. That said, it's impossible, reading the Newsweek piece, not to feel some sympathy for him as well, and anger at all the adults around him who apparently didn't take seriously enough his rising embarrasment and distress and intervene in a way that might have defused what was becoming an explosive situation. If McInerney is tried and sentenced as an adult, the harassment he experienced from a lovestruck classmate will be nothing compared to what eventually he may be forced to confront in a prison setting.

And what of the school's lesbian (former) assistant principal, Joy Epstein, who counseled and befriended King? According to the Newsweek story she was not out to the students, but she was to fellow staffers (Epstein kept a photograph of her life partner in full view on her desk), not all of whom were accepting, and it seems she is now being looked upon with great suspicion--indeed, if it's not King himself being blamed for his death, it is Epstein, with both parents (including Larry King's father, Greg, who was accused by his son of abuse, leading to Larry's temporary removal to a group home) and disapproving faculty accusing her of having had an "agenda."

Ah, yes--the fabled "gay agenda." Apparently any gay teacher or adult with access to kids who is supportive of gay kids particularly, counseling them on their rights, is obviously attempting... what? World domination?

Seriously, what's it supposed to "mean" when teachers are proudly and openly gay and positively acknowledge queer and questioning kids who come to them for support and advice? What would they be doing that is supposedly so inappropriate, so suspect? Are out gay teachers and counselors truly expected to counsel gay kids not to be? Not to be what? Not to be out and proud? Not to be gay? And what exactly is the "agenda"? I've yet to hear (or read) an answer to any of these questions from any such accusers that I have not found convoluted, irrational, and downright hysterical.

Poor Larry King. For all the turbulence of his young life, he seemed to me a bright, imaginative, and incredibly ballsy teenager who just might--with a lot more sympathetic support, guidance and protection and a lot less over-reactive judgement--one day have had the fabulous life he dreamed of.

As it is, now he--and we--will never know.