On 14 February, Steven Kazmierczak, 27, killed five students and injured more than a dozen other people with a shotgun and pistols during a science lecture at Northern Illinois University, before committing suicide. The American media spent days overboard with the story, milking every last drop of emotional pain and bewilderment available.

Lawrence King

Yet, 2 days before Kazmierczak made the news, an equally shocking school shooting took place. 14-year-old Lawrence King was shot in the head by his classmate at E O Green Junior High in Oxnard, California. Young Lawrence was critically wounded and declared brain dead. He was taken off life support when donors for his organs had been found. This story received only a fraction of the coverage that the Kazmierczak story did.

You might say only one died, unlike at Northern Illinois University, where there were 5 victims. But the Lawrence King shooting had more novelty, if I may be so insensitive as to apply such a concept to something so horrific: 14-year-olds were involved, whereas after Virginia Tech you might think university shootings are "old news". Young men shooting wildly is even more commonplace. In the first six weeks of 2008 alone, there has been the shooting in a Salt Lake City shopping mall by Sulejmen Talovic, and another in an Omaha, Nebraska, shopping mall by Robert A Hawkins.

So why did the American media outside California virtually ignore the Lawrence King shooting? Might it be judged more difficult to milk sympathy out of this story because alternative gender issues are surfaced by this incident?

King sometimes came to school wearing makeup and high heels, eighth-grader Nicholas Cortez, 14, told The Associated Press. Other classmates gave similar accounts of Lawrence wearing feminine attire and getting harassed for it.

Here's a segment of the Ellen DeGeneres show where she talks about this tragedy:

According to the San Francisco Chronicle [1], Brandon David McInerney, also 14, has now been charged with murder with a hate-crime enhancement. Prosecutors said they would try Brandon David McInerney as an adult

The murder charge carries a maximum penalty of 25 years to life, with an additional maximum of 25 years for a firearms enhancement and an added one to three years for the hate-crime enhancement. Details as to why a hate crime enhancement was added could not yet be revealed, prosecutors said.

Personally, I have a lot of problem with charging 14-year-olds as adults, even for murder, but treating this as a hate crime appears reasonable.

The Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the Transgender Law Center, and Equality California issued a joint statement decrying King's shooting. "With young people coming out at younger ages, our schools -- especially our junior highs and middle schools -- need to be proactive about teaching respect for diversity based on sexual orientation and gender identity," said Carolyn Laub, executive director of Gay-Straight Alliance Network. "The tragic death of Lawrence King is a wake-up call for our schools to better protect students from harassment at school. As a society, we can prevent this kind of violence from happening."

Of course, lots more people believe that "as a society" we need to encourage more of "hate the sin", targeting all those who do not subscribe to the heterosexual straight and narrow. It's only God's work, they say.

* * * * *

American Evangelical Christianity is one of the greatest hate-mongers in the world today. Not only do they do their utmost to rouse intolerance for gay and transgender people, they promote an extreme xenophobia against people of other faiths, including Roman Catholicism.

In an exposé published earlier this month, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges wrote about how the Christian Right is now trotting out three former Muslims to encourage hate against Islam:

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani are the three stooges of the Christian right. These self-described former Muslim terrorists are regularly trotted out at Christian colleges -- a few days ago they were at the Air Force Academy -- to spew racist filth about Islam on behalf of groups such as Focus on the Family. It is a clever tactic. Curly, Larry and Mo, who all say they are born-again Christians, engage in hate speech and assure us it comes from personal experience. They tell their audiences that the only way to deal with one-fifth of the world's population is by converting or eradicating all Muslims. Their cant is broadcast regularly on Fox News, including the Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto shows, as well as on numerous Christian radio and television programs. Shoebat, who has written a book called Why We Want to Kill You, promises in his lectures to explain the numerous similarities between radical Muslims and the Nazis, how "Muslim terrorists" invaded America 30 years ago and how "perseverance, recruitment and hate" have fueled attacks by Muslims.

-- Chris Hedges [1]. Christian Right's Emerging Deadly Worldview: Kill Muslims to Purify the Earth
http://www.alternet.org/story/76686/

The three men tell lurid tales of being recruited as children into Palestinian terrorist organizations, murdering hundreds of civilians and blowing up a bank in Israel. Saleem says that as a child he infiltrated Israel to plant bombs via a network of tunnels underneath the Golan Heights, although no incident of this type was ever reported in Israel. He claims he is descended from the "grand wazir" of Islam, a title and a position that do not exist in the Arab world.

[snip]

"These three jokers are as much former Islamic terrorists as 'Star Trek's' Capt. James T. Kirk was a real Starship captain," said Mikey Weinstein, the head of the watchdog group The Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The group has challenged Christian proselytizing in the military and denounced the visit by the men to the Air Force Academy.

-- ibid

These three con artists are not the problem, Hedges reminds us, for there is enough scum out there to take their place. The real problem is the worldview that is being hawked about: a Christianist triumphalism that is "ignorant and racist", that denigrates all belief systems outside its own and is ultimately deadly.

In Singapore, we would never permit such evangelising, you may say. That, I assure you, is not because those church leaders here are more perspicacious, but rather simply because our government is a lot more alert to such dangers. Where they are not alert, you see our churches doing exactly the same thing, again taking a leaf out of the American churches' book. Look closely and you'll see them trotting out "reformed homosexuals" telling lurid tales of their previous "lifestyles" and how the Christian faith was the one and only thing that "saved" them.

You cannot but see the parallel between this anti-gay campaign and the anti-Muslim one using the three ex-Muslim stooges. And it is equally deadly too. Think of young Lawrence King, who was killed because he was different.

And here's another thing to consider: Just as the American media preferred the Kazmierczak story over the Lawrence King shooting, is the Singapore media likewise uncomfortable about shining a spotlight on those who promote and act out their homophobia?

© Yawning Bread