Background: On February 12, openly gay junior high student Larry King (no relation to the CNN host) was murdered in a classroom, shot twice in the head by a fellow student as other students watched.
The cover of issue 1005 of The Advocate features a dithered black-and-white photo of Larry King with the headline "Who's to blame?" The cover story begins on page 28 of that issue with the lead quote, "15-year-old Lawrence King was encouraged to be himself. Did that lesson help send him to his grave?"
In a brazenly sensationalist attempt to sell magazines, The Advocate sends a chilling and offensive message one might hear from Fred Phelps: Stay closeted or die! There's one person to blame for Larry King's murder: Brandon McInerney, the classmate who shot him. To even whisper the idea that encouraging someone to come out is a factor in murder is absurd; it's like blaming 9/11 on travel agents who "encouraged" people to fly that day, or Hurricane Katrina on the architects who designed lovely homes in New Orleans that "encouraged" people to move there.
Anne Stockwell, editor-in-chief of The Advocate, owes the magazine's readership an apology and a resignation for having not only green-lighted the story, but featuring it on this issue's cover.
