Posts tagged elephant

Funny, isn’t it, how a deafening roar of gay activist outrage attended Matthew Shepard’s murder but nary a whisper was heard from gay circles less than a year later, when rumours of homosexuality swirled around the perpetrators of the Columbine school massacre. 

Whether Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 students, one teacher, and themselves, and wounded 23 others in a shooting rampage at their Colorado school on April 20, 1999, were actually homosexual is beside the point. Gayness lurks and snakes through their whole bloody story. 

The pair had been taunted for years as “gay”, and “queer”. The “Trench Coat Mafia”, with which they were associated, were a schoolyard gang of Goth-geeks who were seen as sexually suspect – one of them allegedly taunted jocks with fey behaviour, fake kisses and professions of his love for them. Secretive friends, Harris and Klebold kept clandestine counsel and were rumoured to have shared kisses and held hands with each other. After the massacre, local police warned Denver gay leaders to “lay low” about reports that Harris had confessed to a counsellor and three students that he thought he may be gay.