Looks like the parents of Lawrence King have bought into the defense strategy of their son’s killer.  News reports I’m seeing this morning are that King’s parents have filed a claim against the school where he was shot to death, asserting that it was their failure to enforce the dress code on their son that led to his death (so far all I see is the AP report, which I’m not linking to because of the blogger AP boycott).  In other words, because Lawrence felt himself more feminine then the other boys, and the school allowed him to dress more femininely, the school made him a target.

This is so unbearably sad.  The poor kid’s parents seem deathly ashamed of their own son, even in death. He had to know how they felt about him before he died.  And maybe that was why some of the teachers at his school took him under their wing as they did.  Lawrence’s parents aren’t arguing here that the school failed to protect their son, but that they failed to keep him in the closet.  They are granting the premise of their son’s killer and his lawyer, that hate has more right to walk in the hallways of the public schools then gay kids do. 

It’s one thing to argue that the school let the bullying that Lawrence endured escalate dangerously.  It is another thing entirely to argue that letting Lawrence be openly gay led to his murder.  Waving the dress code around is a calculated and disgustingly cynical ploy.  It sidesteps the question of whether the code itself embodies discriminatory gender norms.  Gay and transgendered children should feel welcome and safe and secure in school too, or they cannot assert their right to an education.  Shoving them into the closet, for the sake of the delicate sensibilities of bigots, punishes them simply for existing, forces them to try and learn, somehow, in an environment where they are made to feel deviant, outcast and ashamed.

I read elsewhere that Lawrence’ father has complained bitterly that the gays have turned his son’s death into a cause.  As though the safety and welfare of all the other gay and transgendered kids in the public schools isn’t something worth fighting for.  It’s one thing to forgive his son’s killer.  The boy is only 14 after all.  But it’s another thing to excuse him.  Many gay and transgendered children know with horrible sickening clarity, some living on the streets because they were thrown out of their homes, that their parents would excuse their killer too.  Some would excuse them with great sadness.  Some would applaud.