Article about LGBT+ related bullying and Columbine

I found an article that discusses homophobia relating to various school shootings and recounts an incident during which a teacher allegedly joined in bullying Dylan about his perceived sexual orientation:

Violent Reaction: What do teen killers have in common?

One of their co-workers said that they always described anyone they didn't like as a "faggot."

Someone who went to Columbine at that time told me that even the outcast kids tended to be fairly anti-gay.

Some of the Trenchcoat boys, like Joe Stair, used to kiss and grope each other in the hallways, to piss off the fundies and jocks. Evan Todd spoke about this:

"Columbine is a good, clean place, except for those rejects," he said, referring to Harris and Klebold*. "Most kids didn't want them there. They were into witchcraft. They were into voodoo dolls. Sure, we teased them. But what do you expect when kids come to school with weird hairdos and horns on their hats? The whole school's disgusted with them. They're a bunch of homos, grabbing each other's private parts. If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease 'em. So the whole school would call them homos, and when they did something sick, we'd tell them, "You're sick and you're wrong."

*More likely, he is referring to the Trenchcoat Mafia kids, most of whom graduated in '98.

Lporter, that's interesting! Did the person who went there ever meet Eric or Dylan?

Also, remember: this was the 1990s. The stuff about how "gay"/"faggot" shouldn't be used as general all-purpose insults didn't really become an issue in most people's minds until 2010 following the suicide of Tyler Clementi and the Anoka-Hennepin suicide cluster.

WendlaBergman wrote:

Lporter, that's interesting! Did the person who went there ever meet Eric or Dylan?

Not directly ... she knew who Dylan was, but never spoke to him.

Quote :

Also, remember: this was the 1990s. The stuff about how "gay"/"faggot" shouldn't be used as an insult didn't really become an issue in most people's minds until 2010 following the suicide of Tyler Clementi and the Anoka-Hennepin suicide cluster.

Yeah.

'Gradually, however, in the days and weeks following the shootings, some details about what had motivated Harris and Klebold began to emerge. Depending upon who you were, it seems, Columbine High School could be an oppressive place. It was not until August 1999, fully four months after the Columbine attack, that Dave Cullen of Salon reported: "Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had endured repeated harassment due to rumors they were gay. Jocks especially taunted the pair with epithets like 'faggot' and 'homo.'

Thats not entirely true. Its not that they didnt pay attention. They Just paid attention to the wrong factors. Such as 'goth outcasts', 'revenge against the jocks', and so on.

But, yes, its tragic how anti-gay bullying is so prevelant