VENTURA, Calif. - The family of a gay teenager who was fatally shot in class blames the school district for allowing their son to wear makeup and feminine clothing to school — factors the family claims led to the death.

The parents and brother of 15-year-old Larry King of Oxnard filed a personal injury claim against the Hueneme school district seeking unspecified damages for not enforcing the dress code.

King, an eighth-grader at E.O. Green Junior High School, was shot in February. Classmate Brandon McInerney pleaded not guilty to the shooting last week. He was charged as an adult and also faces a charge of a committing a hate crime.

Gay teen's family blames school for death - Education - MSNBC.com

Would someone please explain to me what the hell wearing feminine clothing has to do with this boy being homosexual? Are the homosexuals now saying that it is no longer about being attracted to others of one's own sex but, instead, about a gender identity disorder?

Also, WHY THE HELL IS IT THE SCHOOL'S RESPONSIBILITY WHAT THIS BOY WEARS? Why isn't it the parents' responsibility?

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

That was my thought when I read this. It the PARENTS' responsibility for what minor children wear and no one else's. Such frivolous lawsuits should be banned.

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Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

This goes along with the right to bizarre dress thread.

Is a school responsible if a student is injured or killed by someone else because of the victim's choice to dress in a bizarre manner (such as a boy dressing effeminately)? While I'm sure John Edwards and various other attorneys of his ilk (the kind that sue Burger King or McDonald's because some broad stupidly put a cup of hot coffee in her lap and drove off, spilling it on herself) would sue and try to get a jury to lay the blame on them. But whatever the hell happened to people being responsible for their own choices? Whatever happened to parents dictating what their children may or may not wear to school?

It's the typical "everyone is responsible for my actions but me" syndrome from which American society suffers.

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

Perhaps the decline of personal responsibility began when welfare programs were first instituted. When people learn through life experience that actions have consequences, they learn to make better choices. Removing consequences from the equation destroys the motivation to learn and make better choices in the future. It also teaches people that someone else will pay for their bad decisions, which effectively removes personal responsibility from the equation.

Yes, and we see this in corporate irresponsibility as well as in individuals.

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Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

The school is damned either way.

If they "allow" the kid to wear makeup and an incident happens (in this case a fatal one), the parents will blame the school for not properly regulating things.

If the school "denies" the kid the "right" to do his thang, and enforces a hard dress code, then I guaran-damn-tee you people would get all over the school's case for being inflexible and "oppressive", etc.

We make schools into a battleground for our insecurities and our lack of common ground and then blame them when it goes awry, suing them into the ground. Schools are so busy catering to this new breed of "helicopter parents" and hyperactive issue-pushers that they can't teach anymore.

I know this makes Chan's head explode, but we need parents OUT of the schools. No more backseat driving, no more mini--agenda-crusades of behalf of Lil Lord Fauntleroy. When schools can regain control of discipline, standards and curriculums, I think we'd see marked improvement.

In this case, I'll bet you the school got lax with it's dress code because of pressure from parents seeking more "freedom" and "expression" for their little sprogs. Looks to me like another case where the school was so busy trying to please everyone, it ends up losing, once again.

I'll wager that dress code gets real strict, real fast, now.

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Walgreens has basic financial calculators for sale for $1.79. Send one to your Congressional representative for Xmas, this year!

They'd go either way. If the school allows him to wear what he wants, then they sue the school for allowing it. If the school doesn't allow it, then they would have sued for violating the boy's rights.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

Exactly. There needs to be some sort of immunity in some of these cases to avoid assigning "blame" where it's possibly not warranted - in this case the school. Enough is enough, I say.

Looking at the larger issue:

All this stuff just didn't happen twenty years ago, when I was 16. I can't put my finger on it, but something fundamental has changed. If you had a whoopin' coming to you, you did it after school....little dustup, little blood, over and done with. We didn't have people KILLING each other over clothes or homosexuality. (Of course, back then, nobody felt entitled to wear it like a badge, either....) We certainly didn't have any Columbines. Wouldn't have occurred to us. High school sucks, that's just the way it is, and we expected that.

You went to school, shut up, respected the teachers, did your work. I wouldn't have even DREAMED of allowing a cell phone go off in class, let alone actually answer it! My father retired about five years ago after thirty plus years as a professor at the University partly because the abysmal attitude/respect/work ethic of his classes.

OE, you're basically "Gen-Y"......what's the deal, here? Your peers as out of control as everyone/media stories say?

__________________
Walgreens has basic financial calculators for sale for $1.79. Send one to your Congressional representative for Xmas, this year!

I don't think this story deserves to be used as some Grand classification of the world. This is an absurd event, that is why it has made the news.

I think everyone is making far to much out of this.

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You're right, we should only make something out of it if the family wins and gets money.

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Set your destination with your heart, get there with your mind.

"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripides

In this case the parents are blaming the school. I think the blame is inappropriate. Besides, what the hell does a boy dressing like a girl have to do with the boy being sexually attracted to other boys?

But students don't have the right to dress however they want. Schools are allowed to set and enforce dress codes and other standards.

It isn't just the parents, it's the teachers' unions, and the various special interest groups.

Teachers would disagree. Lack of parental involvement is seen as a significant problem. Teachers and parents need to work together and present a united front. In this particular case, though, I want to know why this boy's parents even let him out of the house dressed in feminine attire?


Assuming it even had a dress code. Of course, there is the debate in many parts of the country over whether schools should have dress codes but a significant number of parents are actually begging for dress codes if not school uniforms.

As well it should. Boys should dress like boys and girls should dress like girls.

What was that old song from the 1930s?

"Masculine women, feminine men:
Which is the rooster, which is the hen?
It's hard to tell 'em apart today...

Girls were girls and boys were boys
When I was a tot.
Now we don't know who's who
Or even what's what..."

__________________
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."