BY MICHAEL KEARNS

Bullying=Death

While many Americans embrace the revolutionary notion that a black man or a woman could be the next President of the United States, a 15-year old boy is murdered in Oxnard, California, because he proclaimed himself to be gay.

A few days later, I am in Claremont at a gas station, paying inside, where I sense that the guy behind the counter and one of his cohorts are observing me with unkind eyes. I don't feel safe.

“Thank you,” I say, summoning a voice that sounds like a bad Sylvester Stallone impersonation. On the walk to my car, I gauge my movements, trying to walk like those dudes in that No Country For Old Men movie. I honestly think to myself, I could get shot in the back, right here on this fucking gas station lot, if I don't butch it up.

Remembering the photo that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, I evoke the face of Lawrence King: winsome, yet wise, head held high, owning the purity of his soulfulness and his softness.

“He was obviously getting comfortable with himself at a very young age,” says community therapist Steven Uribe, referencing the boy who lost his life because he chose to accentuate his feelings of gayness by wearing makeup and jewelry to school.

Did King's 14-year old assailant learn the art of bullying from his father who had previously been arrested for domestic violence? Is bullying—whether in the high school classroom or on a conservative radio talk show or in the confines of a gay bar—learned behavior?

Do gay men, many of whom have been the victims of bullying, become—in ways both subtle and blatant—bullies? “Resultant from the hurt and shame experienced, some gay men act a certain way in order to conform,” Uribe, over 50, says. “There has always been the element, especially in my generation, dictating that gay men should act butch.”

What began as self-protective response to potential homophobic attacks has decidedly become a way to preserve the notion that possessing über masculinity (however inauthentic) is preferable to revealing a hint of femininity. How often do we employ the very script that was inflicted upon us as ammunition against someone else?

Have you ever used the word “nellie” to disparage a gay man? Have you ever described yourself as “straight acting?” Have you ever responded with heart aflutter to someone who described himself as “straight appearing?”

In our own community, we ostracize and virtually “kill off” those who might not meet our skewed standards of maleness. Aren't we, to some degree, responsible for the death of Lawrence King?

Obama and Clinton represent black America and female America, two groups that have fought assiduously to achieve a sense of identity that refuses to be targeted for abuse. Shame is no longer on their political or personal agenda.

Are, we, as gay men, keeping up?

Uribe perceives a slow-but-sure “generational shift,” pointing to the relatively short time (“only 54 years ago”) that the Supreme Court overturned segregation in public schools (Brown v. Board of Education).

Wearing high-heeled boots to school, which King did, is certainly a purple flag of personal liberation that likely would not have been dreamt of in 1954; yet King's flagrance was a factor that likely contributed to his heartbreaking murder.

Why? Why do we insist on defining our humanity by degrees of masculinity or femininity?

In a related incident, a 14-year old boy in Colorado—described as a “theatre prodigy—was called “gay” and eventually roughed up by a bully while classmates watched passively. He wound up with a broken collar bone and a badly bruised face.

Senator Sheila Kuehl, sponsor of the Dignity for All Students Act (AB 222) says, "Bullying isn't just the problem of the person being bullied. It's the problem of all of us who are robbed of the talents and contributions of the person who learns to run, shut up, drop out, and acquiesce because of the bullying.”

Will the Colorado boy manage to triumph over the hateful actions of his attacker? Perhaps there's a Tony Award-winning play in his future. Or, conversely, a life riddled with fear and shame.

Imagine what Lawrence King might have become, had he not been assassinated. Perhaps the first openly gay President of the United States to wear high-heeled cowboy boots, makeup, and jewelry.