Double standards only lead to suffering

The court case involving a fatal shooting between two students ended in a mistrial on Friday.

The accused is a heterosexual, Brandon McInerney, who allegedly shot and killed Lawrence King, a homosexual, in 2008. Both were in junior high school at the time.

The mistrial wasn’t from the jurors thinking McInerney was innocent. Several wanted to convict McInerney of murder, and others wanted to downgrade to manslaughter.

Don’t presume or jump to conclusions; this is not a run-of-the-mill gay hate crime. First, the school reported that McInerney complained of King taunting him through sexual come-ons and provocative clothing.

Secondly, teachers surmised that King was empowering himself by not backing down from those students, and therefore they did nothing. This resulted in McInerney taking matters into his own hands in the worst possible way.

This is the double standard: if a straight student antagonizes a gay student, it’s harassment, no matter what. If the opposite occurs, it’s empowerment.

The double standard for McInerney and King is such: one student who identifies himself differently and is in a minority group, seen as the underdog, gets a free pass for deliberate provocation. He isn’t the bad guy because he possibly and perhaps offended another student and got inside their comfort zone.

The other student then drastically reacts, public opinion goes berserk, and hypocrisy shows its head by members of the victim’s very group baying for the bigot’s blood.

Admittedly, the LGBT community has had to overcome a mountain of oppression over the years. But what is the goal? Is it equality, or is it payback?

McInerney was 14 years old, ruled by hormones, and confronted by the ultimate taboo of a straight teenage male. The prosecution accused him of premeditation and tried him as an adult, but do they actually presume he was thinking like a logical adult?

There are plenty of double standards that affect everyone everyday, but the underlying problem is when a double standard goes unchecked.

For example, had King been a heterosexual male pestering a heterosexual female, the school would have whipped out its zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment. King would have been suspended or expelled, sent into counseling, and possibly given a warning about being on the sexual offenders list (feminists might still berate the school for not allowing the girl to take care of herself).

The previous example might be an exaggeration, but the truth still stands. The school stood by and did nothing to discourage either student’s behavior.

Take away the details and see how much bias may or may not exist. Without the gender and sex references: one junior high student shot and killed another. With only the sexuality: one student shot and killed another because of sexual harassment. And the double standard picture: a homophobic student snapped and killed a poor innocent victim.

The shooting is unacceptable, but in order to prevent such situations from occurring it is important to identify the lack of respect, lack of adult-intervention, and overall lack of common sense that led to the tragedy. In this situation, no one is innocent — everyone shares the guilt.

If King hadn’t picked on McInerney, the latter wouldn’t have fought fire with fire. King knew that his badgering was taken offensively, yet he did it anyway.

The school stood by while King picked on McInerney. Had the school, or any competent adult, simply done their job and intervened, no one would have been killed.

This is a perfect example of when everyone decides to do the wrong thing, with each decision exponentially worse than the one preceding it.

This is also a cautionary tale: there is a dire need for giving respect, thinking things through, and not letting your bias get the better of you.

David Haydon is a political science senior and may be reached at [email protected].