Larry King: Right Issue, Wrong Tack | Issue Letters | Advocate.com | Advocate.com

||  Letter  ||
Larry King: Right Issue, Wrong Tack

To the editors: You raised a legitimate point with your article questioning the advice given to Larry King about expressing his sexuality at school. Too bad you made your point with an accusatory tone that stoked an emotional backlash that drowns it out. You are right to suggest that gay kids (and adults, for that matter) have to be attuned to their environment's potential dangers. Any kid, gay or straight, needs to know how to keep themselves safe from physical harm. It isn't clear that Larry King's counselors did that, but neither did they douse him in steak sauce and throw him in a bear pit, as your article suggests. Now all the kids' advocates speaking out on the issue are in a defensive posture and can't deal with the substance of Larry's tragedy -- or at least not publicly. If you were just trying to be provocative, you instead came across as inflammatory, judgmental, and a little bit bitchy. I like The Advocate and read it regularly, but if we can't count on you during a tragedy like this, where can we go?

Mike McGrail
Hampton, N.H.
Write a letter to Advocate.com or The Advocate >