The arraignment of Brandon McInerney, the fourteen-year old who allegedly shot and killed gay teen Lawrence King, has been delayed. [Towleroad]
Get Queerty Daily
Subscribe to Queerty for a daily dose of #politics #brandonmcinerney #gay stories and more15 Comments
Comments are closed.
fredo777
“Cruel and unusual punishment”, my ass.
There’s nothing child-like +/or “impulsive” about pre-meditated murder. He acquired a gun, pointed the gun, + used the gun. That wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction.
I think he should be tried as an adult.
Andy
Hmm, Fredo, I usually agree with your comments, but I’m not sure in this case. It could be argued that the kid had been brainwashed by his homophobic culture … just as Linda Harvey and her ilk claim that we brainwash kids ‘into homosexuality’.
Andy
And all the punishment in the world is not going to bring that poor kid Lawrence King back.
fredo777
True, Andy, punishment won’t bring Lawrence back, but the punishment should fit the crime. Also, being lenient on him sends a very dangerous message to others who would like to follow in his footsteps. Using the “gay panic” excuse for why you “lost it” + shot someone to death should not even be taken seriously, regardless of whether you’re a teen or adult.
Andy
I think what I’m saying is that maybe McInery, still being young and impressionable (I hope), could be taught to see that what he did was wrong. I wouldn’t feel the same way about an adult who’d committed a simialr crime.
fredo777
I suppose we could always hope that he learned from the mistake, but I still don’t feel comfortable letting him off easy on this kind of crime.
Bill Perdue
These murders always increase during elections. (The NCAVP says that the figure for hate murders jumped from 10 in 2006 to 24 in 2007.) Link to www dot ncavp dot org for a full report on violence against us last year.
There was no Federal hate crimes bill when Sean Kennedy (April 8, 1987 – May 16, 2007) was murdered or later when Lawrence King (January 13, 1993 – February 12, 2008) and others were bludgeoned, stabbed and gunned down in a furious pate of murders this February. There won’t be one for some time. That is solely the fault of the Democrats who junked the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill AFTER it’d passed both house of Congress.
They also tossed out ENDA after Barney Frank gutted it just to get more ‘contributions’ from money grubbing bigoted business owners. And they refused to repeal DOMA and DADT. And they called us second class citizens by opposing same sex marriage. The Republicans weren’t in control of Congress when this was going on but they didn’t need to be. The Democrats did all the Republicans could have hoped for and then some.
That explains why, as Robert Reich say, “The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It’s the party of non-voters. “
And it explains why Gore Vidal gets enormous applause then he says “[t]here is only one party in the United States, the Property Party…and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.”
But it doesn’t explain where they get the gall to ask us for our votes.
RPCV
Brandon was traumatized. That doesn’t excuse his killing of Larry, but, we all should remember how humiliated we felt in our early teens when peers called us names, questioned our sexuality, dismissed us as yesterday’s trash, and/or bullied us. Brandon deserves to be punished, no doubt; His Honor should not put him away forever…
MJ
Black teens kill each other every single day in the U.S. Should they all be tried as adults too? Or is the life of a non-black boy, by virtue of being effeminate, more important then their lives?
fredo777
Better question: why even make this a race issue?
MJ
Better question: can’t you answer the question?
RPCV
With the rampant crime in the black community, I feel it’s imperative that ALL blacks indicted for a killing should be tried as adults.
Better yet, why not rope off entire sections of inner cities where black predominate, hand out guns, and let them have at it? While they’re busy thinning the masses, the rest of us can unlock our doors, not have to double and triple check our car doors to make sure they’re locked before we go to bed, fight for a parking space near a street light, put our wallets in our front pockets, constantly look over our shoulder when we exit a store, wonder what criminal element is driving that Dodge Magnum with opaque tinted windows, and so forth and so on. Just a thought…….
fredo777
MJ, I did answer the question.
Race is irrelevant; murder is murder + the perpetrators of such crimes should be punished the same.
MJ
Okay, that’s alright. As long as people are consistent. There are some who pick and choose when a juvenile should be tried as an adult, depending on if they can relate to the victim (blacks want the murderer of a black tried as an adult; whites want the murderer of a white tried as an adult; tranvestites want the murderer of a transvestite-boy tried as an adult). Others are fair and consistent throughout. If some of you want this sweeping change in society where all jueniles are tried as adults…that’s your prerogative. I think no juvenile can magically turn into an adult, no matter what the crime. But maybe you guys are right and I’m wrong.
MJ
RPCV : You and others might argue that rampant crime increases call for measures such as tossing the age-appropriate trials, but it still doesn’t change my mind.