A Tale Of Two Gays...Well, One Gay and One Thought To Be Gay

Yes, I know we live in a country that does not recognize us. We cannot marry everywhere; we don't have the same rights and privileges and benefits as our hetero-counter-parts. I remember the hate crimes committed against us, but I can't help but think we have it better than in other spots.

I may need to rethink this.

The story out of Puerto Rico that a gay, 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was burned, decapitated and dismembered makes me wonder.

Apparently, he was killed because he was gay. Quite simply.

But what really riles me up is the idea that those who are investigating his murder have spoken out and said that "people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen".

Another way of saying that gay folks deserve what they get.

We get killed because we're gay.

But, you know, that's Puerto Rico, you know? Why, it's practically a foreign country. We don't get slaughtered like that here, not in the good old US of A.

Unless, perhaps, you live in Georgia.

Randolph Forde, a 10th-grade teacher at Mill High School, was arrested on suspicion of putting a hit on one of his students.

Yup, he wanted the boy killed, and why, you ask? Forde thought the boy was gay, so he tried to persuade another student to kill the 16-year-old boy.

Allegedly, the incident began when Forde called the student out of the classroom one day and asked the boy if he was gay. The student became angry, and the next day the two got into a verbal altercation. A few weeks later, Forde pulled another student off a bus and told that student he had a 'hit' out on somebody and needed him to take care of it.

That boy went to the police because he knew that teachers should teach you, not kill you.

Forde says he was joking.

Not funny.

Yeah, being gay can get you mutilated in Puerto Rico, or it can make someone want you dead in Georgia.

Lovely.