Readers Debate NEWSWEEK Story on a Gay Murder | Newsweek Culture

IRAQ WAR
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Do Kill
Lennox Samuels 8/26/2008 12:00:00 AM
When militiamen from the Mahdi Army came by the compact, two-story stone home in the Doura neighborhood of Baghdad, they weren't looking for Sunnis to harass. They were hunting gays. "Bring us your son's cell phone," one ordered the middle-aged man who came to the gate. They wanted to check if his son, Nadir, had been calling foreigners--and in fact he had only hours earlier called this reporter to set up a meeting, and he had repeatedly called a gay nongovernmental organization (NGO) in London. Fortunately, Nadir was ready for them and produced a "clean" phone he keeps for just such a threat. This time they left, but vowed to come back if they found any evidence he was gay--or was talking to undesirable foreigners. Now that Iraq's sectarian war has cooled off, it's open season on homosexuals and others who infuriate religious hardliners.
LETTERS
Tragic Tale of Two Troubled Teens
8/2/2008 12:00:00 AM
'Murder in the 8th Grade': Readers in turn were angered and deeply perturbed by the systemic failure to prevent such a tragedy. One asked, "Did Larry King get a pass on his repeated sexual harassment of Brandon McInerney because he was gay, and why were the boys who were bullying and intimidating King still in school?" Another reprimanded "every significant adult in this story," adding, "Two kids were left to deal with fear, using the only techniques they knew. This should be a wake-up call to all parents, teachers and anyone with a role in a child's life."
COVER STORY: SOCIETY
Young, Gay and Murdered
Ramin Setoodeh 7/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
At 15, Lawrence King was small—5 feet 1 inch—but very hard to miss. In January, he started to show up for class at Oxnard, Calif.'s E. O. Green Junior High School decked out in women's accessories. On some days, he would slick up his curly hair in a Prince-like bouffant. Sometimes he'd paint his fingernails hot pink and dab glitter or white foundation on his cheeks. "He wore makeup better than I did," says Marissa Moreno, 13, one of his classmates. He bought a pair of stilettos at Target, and he couldn't have been prouder if he had on a varsity football jersey. He thought nothing of chasing the boys around the school in them, teetering as he ran.
TELEVISION
Tuning Out Dr. Laura

There is no progress without resistance." That's one of those "Lauraisms" that Laura Schlessinger, the radio scold better known as "Dr. Laura," must suddenly deplore. Even she could not have been prepared for the resistance by gays and feminists that preceded this week's debut of her new eponymous weekday TV show. Her incendiary views have galvanized antihate groups into perhaps the most successful "education campaign aimed at advertisers"--don't call it a boycott--in talk-show history. Before the television show was ever on the air, potential advertisers were backing out. Even her six-year-old radio show started taking on water, and 16 percent of her regular advertisers have jumped ship. "We have never faced anything like this before," says Premiere Radio Network president Kraig Kitchin, her syndicator.
We're Off To See The Wizard
Anna Quindlen
The dilemma of the modern American voter is dramatized in the 1939 film in which a lion, a scarecrow, a tin man and Judy Garland follow a yellow brick road. They seek a wizard, great and powerful, who can provide courage, heart, mind and home to the wanderers. Only he can't, because he is just an ordinary man, with ordinary abilities and flaws, hiding behind larger-than-life pyrotechnics until the moment when a little dog reveals the trick and the wizard thunders, "Pay no attention to the man behind that curtain!"
The Power Of Talk
Howard Fineman