There’s been a lot of terrible attacks against GLBT people and those who support us recently, but in many ways, this one makes me the saddest.
A teen who was a member of the Family Swans (a subset of the Bloods gang) was killed by fellow gang members after they discovered he was gay, according to police in Baltimore….
Angered by the messages and a photograph they found, they worried that their Bloods group would appear weak to others if word got out that they had a gay member, according to court records. ‘As a result, they decided that Steven Parrish ‘had to go,” police wrote in charging documents. ‘There was no date or time discussed for the killing, but it was made very clear to all those present that Parrish was going to be killed.’ Flythe later told his fellow gang members that he and Hollis confronted Parrish, who did not deny that the messages were ‘gay’ in nature, according to court records. Flythe also told his associates that they stabbed and hit the victim before stomping on his neck, according to charging documents. A red bandanna was placed over Parrish’s face and he was left in the woods.”
Parrish was found to have bruises, over 50 superficial knife wounds, and a deep stab wound to the chest. Steven Hollis, 18, of Randallstown and Juan Flythe, 17, of West Baltimore have been charged with first degree murder and are being held without bail.
I’m really just at a loss for words.
because all I can seem to do is shrug.
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p>That’s what you get for joining a gang.
…Steven Parrish, an 18-year-old kid, obviously got what he deserved! Instead of joining a gang, the kid should have studied hard and joined the chess club and and the debate team before leaving behind Baltimore for Harvard.
That’s exactly what he should have done.
because clearly that’s a recipe for success in and of itself, too.
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p>I would never say the kid should have joined the gang, but it’s sad that the people who he thought he could trust like family killed him. It’s sad that they thought being gay was “weak” – explosing a systemic problem. It’s sad that there are violent gangs of kids who would plot to end the lives of other people.
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p>All of these things are sad, compounding just how terrible this tragedy is. This country has a problem – a far greater threat to you or me than ‘jihadist terrorists’ or anything else that gives certain right winger politicians political hardons. It’s destroying our cities, entire generations of kids, economies, communities and lives. A reaction like your’s – that the kid had it coming – is entirely unhelpful in actually dealing with our very real problem.
I never said he had it coming, I said that’s what you get. Now, I have no proof for this, but say he dealt drugs, raped women or was extremely violent, then he would have it coming.
Thanks for clearing that one up. For a minute there, I failed to see the difference. Always one for nuance, eh, Joe?
And the kid was presented with a wealth of choices, had zero economic pressures coercing him into crime, grew up in a culture that privileged education and healthy behavior, came from a fantastic Baltimore school system, and had great role models to teach him right from wrong.
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p>OK.
about all the servicemembers killed in Iraq? After all, that’s what they get for joining
a gangthe military.that’s not a zero comment.
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p>Just because you don’t like what you have to say, doesn’t mean it should be deleted. You could have given it a 3 or a 4 if you thought it was a bad taste, but Laurel’s point did come through. The “they got what was coming” argument seems to be applied judiciously – and unfairly IMO – by the right wing.
just because you don’t like what laurel has to say
Some little shit in a gang gets killed by his fellow gang members. Regardless of the circumstances, you’d be hard pressed to cause me to shed tears over someone like that. He could be a straight white catholic republican and get killed by his fellow gang members for it and I wouldn’t be up in arms, let alone at a loss of words.
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p>Comparing that kid and his buddies to military members who willingly sign away their lives to defend you and I is extremely insulting and disrespectful.
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p>That smacks of eugenics. The little shits don’t know any better – and are shits to begin with – so let’s just ’em weed themselves out. That’s essentially – to me – what you’re saying. Correct me if I’m wrong and explain the differences.
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p>Even ignoring how horrible that policy is in and of itself, it’s not even plausible: those ‘little shits’ are killing completely innocent bystandards. Furthermore, not all of those ‘little shits’ are the same – many will get out of that life and reform their ways, and many more could if we implimented good policy trying to solve inner city and gang problems.
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p>Finally,
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p>You’re placing your own values and judgements to her statement. While I can’t speak for Laurel, I can say that I interpreted it as a non-judgemental comparison. She wasn’t trying to say that those soldiers were wasting their lives so much as she was suggesting that it doesn’t make sense to say that those who partake in risky behaivors are necessarily ‘asking for it.’ (of course, that’s how I interpreted it). I thought she had a point, even if it was an uncomfortable one.
He joined a violent street gang. He is a little shit. I don’t know whether he’s white, black, irish or asian, so I don’t know how you can even infer eugenics from it.
i’m not huge on condemning 18 year olds to death for their stupid mistakes. Their brains aren’t even fully developed at that age.
calling me a progenitor of eugenics is a serious accusation to level, so you need to explain how anything ive said is claimant that his heritage is responsible for him being a “little shit”, or you need to look up what eugenics is.
That these 18 year olds who put themselves in those situations ‘deserve what they get.’ That’s in effect arguing for some sort of societal darwinism, where the poor and those with less means and ‘no good (18yr) shits’ breed themselves right out of existence. I’m taking your argument to its logical conclusion, but it’s not very many leaps.
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p>Do I think you’re intentionally arguing for a modern day eugenics? Hell no, but the fact is that that’s what it essentially amounts to. We can’t ignore gang violence or think as though these ‘stupid shits’ deserve what they get, because we can’t give up on 18 year olds and there are far, far too many innocent bystanders. I don’t mean to be offensive, if that’s how you’re taking it, but I hope you’ll rethink your opinions on this matter.
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p>BTW – an exceptionally good, interesting, quick read on this subject, that you could probably get on Amazon for literally a dollar in hardcover, is State Boys Rebellion. People don’t really have a firm understanding of the Eugenics movement in America and the fact that it was so pervasive across our society – State Boys Rebellion is a very good introduction to the subject, very readable and not completely depressing. I honestly think if you read it, you may get where I’m coming from.
but Planned Parenthood is a eugenics based institution. so I’ll be sure to run the eugenics questions through them.
living up to your usual high caliber of commentary i see. looks like you lost your dictionary though. too bad. let us know how your interview goes at pp. (nice cover story for a reason to go, btw! / wink wink /)
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p>But perhaps he plays one on TV?
Do you think I shed a tear over every soldier killed in Iraq? I don’t. They signed and I signed a military contract, knowing full well what I was (we were) getting into. Do I wish these kids made better choices? Yup. Both sets of kids–the kids who join gangs and, unfortunately at this point in time, the kids who enlist in the military. The difference here is that one of these choices is acceptable, even admirable, and the other isn’t. The upshot for both is the same though: you “join” with the understanding that you may die a violent death.
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p>Sign on the dotted line, please.
… disaster, your typical recruit wouldn’t ever have suspected that he’d face so many re-ups. I don’t think a kid signing up for the reserves would reasonably expect it to become anything but reserves. There’s no such thing as reserves anymore. It’s as if pissing away your corporate rainy-day fund becomes the lynch-pin of your business plan.
Bush’s thugs use and abuse the reserve components in disgraceful fashion.
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p>Kids enlist in the military for many of the same emotional reasons they join gangs, unfortunately. The deteriorating quality of our reserve and regular troops is a real concern. The obvious question is who in their right minds would enlist today? Well, the answer is equally as obvious.
your quote:
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p>is pretty narrow-minded and nauseating in its arrogance. Just because you don’t agree with joining the military doesn’t mean that those who do aren’t in their right minds. I don’t get offended at much of anything, but unless I’ve misunderstood your intention, I find that quote incredibly…well stupid.
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p>………………………..
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p>But on the subject of gangs, I love it that those who have never walked in the shoes of those people who live with and around gangs their entire lives feel entitled to pass judgments on whether or not they deserve what’s coming to them .
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p>I’ve never been in that environment, and it would be incredibly unseemly for me to judge the choices these kids make at an inhumanely young age.
I was mistaken.
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p>I apologize. I was hasty (unusually hasty) in replying. I hope you understand.
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p>I still don’t agree at all with your assessment of people joining the military not being in their right minds, but if I was mistaken with that too, and you were being tongue-in-cheek, my bad.
what makes you think kids don’t join gangs to protect themselves and their families? not all, but many do. you need to learn something about gangs before assuming they’re all just “little shits”. you also need to rethink the stupidity of assigning a judgment to an entire population of disparate people. you calling them all little shits gives me room to call you bigot, so be careful what you sling.
go ahead, call me a bigot against gang members. make my day.
you’d enjoy it too much.
doesn’t mean I have to use it.
This reminds me of a few other posters here that always look for a hate crime in something.
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p>Look, a “Gang Hate Crime” is an oxymoron
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p>Reminds me of the Gay kid Larry King who was murdered in his classroom and was used as the poster boy for gay hate crimes.
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p>Well, come to find out, Larry was actually the bully and was disciplined many times for bullying other kids in his school. The parents are now suing the school for letting Larry harass kids under the guise of “diversity”
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p>you certainly have a choice at 18 years of age and should know all about gangs and their activities by then.
Larry was the bully! That’s why he was shot and killed! His murderer was staring at him, unharmed and in a classroom full of kids typing away at computers. He just had to pull that trigger!
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p>I’m so sorry I’m “stirring the pot.” Next time someone is killed for the sole reason that they’re gay, I’ll just realize that their homosexuality forced the murderer to pull the trigger. Why didn’t I ever think of that? I better be careful of who I spread my homosexuality to, because boy do I have it coming!
Did you read the Newsweek expose?
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p>Or did you just grab the sensational headline?
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p>www.newsweek.com/id/147790
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p>Bullying takes many forms……..
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p>I know its hard for you to understand, but, the school is responsible for all its students.
And I thought it was homophobic crap.
Which is why you have no credibility and neither does Laurel when it comes to this issue. You just cannot stand to face the truth and the facts. You must be persecuted or else your agenda won’t stick.
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p>Thank you for exposing yourself as a bigot.
clearly, because I think everyone deserves equal rights, that makes me a bigot. Sheesh, I wish I was as smart and logical as you.
clearly, because I think everyone deserves equal rights, that makes me a bigot. Sheesh, I wish I was as smart and logical as you.
it is a siren call to you, and that you cannot resist joining us in these diaries. like the moth to the flame you are with anything GAY. thanks for answering the call! see you next time, i have no doubt, lol!
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p>p.s. don’t tell me you’re yet another version of Pater Familias/nomad943? cuz yall sound identEEcul.
and set the record straight. Of course, you hide and cower when presented with the facts. What say you about the Family suing the school?
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p>Let me guess – they are bigots
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they’re a saddened family that’s angry, looking for someone to lash out against.
Read the article – Larry King was mentally unstable, in a group home and suffering from 2 or 3 different disorders. Almost as mentally unstable as the killer.
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p>What you had here was a perfect storm that was exacerbated by political correctness.
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p>”The staff at E. O. Green was clearly struggling with the Larry situation-how to balance his right to self-expression while preventing it from disrupting others. Legally, they couldn’t stop him from wearing girls’ clothes, according to the California Attorney General’s Office, because of a state hate-crime law that prevents gender discrimination. Larry, being Larry, pushed his rights as far as he could. During lunch, he’d sidle up to the popular boys’ table and say in a high-pitched voice, “Mind if I sit here?” In the locker room, where he was often ridiculed, he got even by telling the boys, “You look hot,” while they were changing, according to the mother of a student.
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p>Larry was eventually moved out of the P.E. class, though the school didn’t seem to know the extent to which he was clashing with other boys. One teacher describes the gym transfer as more of a “preventative measure,” since Larry complained that one student wouldn’t stop looking at him. In other classes, teachers were baffled that Larry was allowed to draw so much attention to himself. “All the teachers were complaining, because it was disruptive,” says one of them. “Dress code is a huge issue at our school. We fight [over] it every day.” Some teachers thought Larry was clearly in violation of the code, which prevents students from wearing articles of clothing considered distracting. When Larry wore lipstick and eyeliner to school for the first time, a teacher told him to wash it off, and he did. But the next day, he was back wearing even more. Larry told the teacher he could wear makeup if he wanted to. He said that Ms. Epstein told him that was his right.
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p>Joy Epstein was one of the school’s three assistant principals, and as Larry became less inhibited, Epstein became more a source of some teachers’ confusion and anger. Epstein, a calm, brown-haired woman with bifocals, was openly gay to her colleagues, and although she was generally not out to her students, she kept a picture of her partner on her desk that some students saw. While her job was to oversee the seventh graders, she formed a special bond with Larry, who was in the eighth grade. He dropped by her office regularly, either for counseling or just to talk-she won’t say exactly. “There was no reason why I specifically started working with Larry,” Epstein says. “He came to me.” Some teachers believe that she was encouraging Larry’s flamboyance, to help further an “agenda,” as some put it. One teacher complains that by being openly gay and discussing her girlfriend (presumably, no one would have complained if she had talked about a husband), Epstein brought the subject of sex into school. Epstein won’t elaborate on what exactly she said to Larry because she expects to be called to testify at Brandon’s trial, but it’s certain to become one of the key issues. William Quest, Brandon’s public defender, hasn’t disclosed his defense strategy, but he has accused the school of failing to intercede as the tension rose between Larry and Brandon. Quest calls Epstein “a lesbian vice principal with a political agenda.” Larry’s father also blames Epstein. He’s hired an attorney and says he is seriously contemplating a wrongful-death lawsuit. “She started to confuse her role as a junior-high principal,” Greg King says. “I think that she was asserting her beliefs for gay rights.” In a tragedy such as this, the natural impulse is to try to understand why it happened and to look for someone to blame. Epstein won’t discuss the case in detail and, until she testifies in court, it’s impossible to know what role-if any-she played in the events leading to Larry’s death.
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p>When did Larry pull a trigger? Seriously, think more before you type. He wasn’t “mentally unstable,” he was a non-gender conforming glbt youth who had been bullied for a long time and then coped by rolling with it. He was clearly a bit of a drama queen, but that’s neither being “mentally unstable” nor really anything out of the ordinary, especially for an 8th grade boy.
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p>I believe I linked to you a 500 word + blog that analyzed said article, which I wrote. I read that article backwards and forwards, thank you very much.
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p>The fact of the matter is none of us knew Larry King. We just knew he was murdered – by a clearly disturbed boy. We do know that, according to numerous people, Larry was happier than he had been in a long time and adjusting fairly well in what was a difficult time period for him. We also know, from that very article, that Brandon was not: he went from an honor roll student to flunking in a period of months. His father reportedly pulled a gun on his mother and there’s even a question of whether or not he shot at her. For that incident, he went to prison for several days.
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p>Clearly, there was violence going on in his family. Brandon likely learned that violence was the way to ‘deal’ with problems, even though it never is. The school should have been asking more questions about why Brandon’s grades were changing and what was going on in his family, so if there was any fault by the school, it was there. Yet, a school may typically have 1 or 2 councilors for all their hundreds and hundreds of students. It’s easy for things to slip through the system. Reading the Newsweek article, it’s easy to tell that the school made Larry a high priority student – and Larry was doing fairly well, all things considering – but Brandon slipped through the cracks. What happened to Brandon, to me, is just as tragic: but it changes nothing from the fact that it was completely his decision to pull the trigger and he ended a life – one that was no threat to his – with that decision.
Right, Joe? I was thinking the same thing Laurel was.
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p> It’s no secret that people in the US Military are dying violently in Iraq. You can easily avoid being slaughtered in Iraq by not going to Iraq. These people know beforehand. If both the dead gang member and dead US Soldier went to college and skipped joining, they’d both be alive. Pretty simple.
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p>Oh, and I know the guy was 18, but it’s not like gangs have an enlistment age. Many of these kids get indoctrinated into gangs and street crime in middle school or before. And you said I was right that the kid should have joined the chess club and debate team and stayed off the street – well, guess what? Urban schools aren’t exactly oozing money and fostering successful extra-circular activities as alternatives to kids going out and earning a buck slinging drugs or sticking up people. Hell, they can’t even keep most kids in school:
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p>I’m not saying that bad schools automatically cause kids to join gangs and great schools would fix this overnight; but teenagers and gangs and a 38% graduation rate are symptoms of the same problem. What was the graduation rate at your (Whitman/Hanson?) high school? How many kids went off to college from your graduating class (87-ish per cent)? How was the gang problem in your neighborhood?
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p>Is it that Whitman/Hanson kids are just so smart and aware of the consequences that it keeps them from joining gangs? Or might there be some other factors that make life a wee bit different for teenagers in Baltimore than the kids who grow up eating ice cream at Peaceful Meadows and going to Thanksgiving football games against Abington?
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p>*Italics mine.
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p>In order for me to withhold my seething anger about such ridiculous comments, I just want to make the following known and then stop commenting about the crap analogies people are making regarding being in the military and being in a gang:
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p>My older sister is a graduate of West Point. She, along with many of her friends from West Point (not to mention her then-fiance (now husband)who was in an ROTC program at a college), have served over in Iraq. Aside from the fact she would kill me for even using her in a post, when I hear people talk about the military as if it is a gang or even making the slightest analogies between the military and gangs it disgusts me. That’s it.
is very lucky to have such a staunch advocate, especially knowing she’d kick your butt if she found out.
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p>However, I think your fury is misplaced when you state
You said yourself (see quote below) that you don’t know anything about gang life, yet you get infuriated when someone else compares it to the military. Well, how can you be upset at the comparison if you admittedly don’t understand the gang side of what is being compared?
My young cousin just joined the USMC after being in ROTC through college. I am heartbroken because, knowing that the Iraq war is a sham, he is possibly giving up his life for a glorious mountain of lies. There is no honor in that – just stupidity. Who in their right mind joins George Bush’s little discretionary war? Only an idiot or a mercenary. All I can hope for is that he is deployed wisely, has a good influence on the soldiers he serves with, and comes back alive and sane.
…was a sardonic remark about Joe saying the gang member got what’s coming to him.
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p>I’m saying that if we accept Joe’s judgmental oversimplification of “low life” gang members, why not put other deadly vocations in the same simple terms? I’m saying that Joe’s statement is just as stupid as telling the friends and family of soldiers killed in Iraq that that if they choose something else to do with their lives, they’d still be around and “that’s what they get for choosing the military”.
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p>I’m not here to argue that the military is a gang. I’m here to say that even though I am not of the same supposed “pro-life” party as JoeTS, I find an intrinsic worth in human beings like Steven Parrish, and I don’t pretend that teenage kids in Baltimore have the resources and the guidance to steer them away from poisonous institutions like gangs and have alternative school and economic opportunities that give kids reasons not to go make a quick buck through criminal enterprise. Just like there is more to the story behind evey soldier killed in Iraq, there’s more to the story of someone people like Joe are quick to brand a thug or a criminal. Where pro-lifer Joe shrugs off this human life, I say that the real criminal is not the gang member, but those who created the conditions that force teenage children to think there only chance at survival and security is by joining gangs and banging on the corners. I don’t see a dead low-life like Joe sees. I see an 18-year-old kid whose gang affiliation and murder could have been prevented.
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p>Republicans – the pro-life** party!
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p>————————-
**Some restrictions may apply. Not valid for to teenage gang members, the mentally retarded, when execution can be used to lower incarceration rates and save tax dollars, or for Iraqi civilians. In fact, if you’re not an unborn fetus or Terri Schiavo, it probably doesn’t apply to you at all.
I have not looked but my impression is that you give them out quite freely.
Gang violence is tragic, because gangs are brutal and violent.
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p>I’m not sure if it is any worse that this child was murdered because he was believed to be gay than if he had been murdered because he wore a blue t-shirt rather than a red one.
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p>I guess the simple point is that urban areas are dramatically under policed.