Best friend Murdered for being Gay

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A University of Pennsylvania student was allegedly murdered by (ironically) his best friend. According to the accused Samuel Lincoln Woodward 20 the victim Blaze Bernstein "tried to kiss him"
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-l ... 90a2c3987b

Prosecutors will allege Woodward picked up Mr Bernstein at his parents’ home on January 2 and took him to a local park where he stabbed him to death. His body was found in a shallow grave there a week later.

The story illustrates why it is difficult for gay men to reveal their sexual orientation to their classmates. It's no secret homophobia is rampant in schools or college and makes life dangerous for these young men.

Why did the straight guy go to the park with the gay guy on a cold winter’s day?

There’s more to this story.

Openly gay people are in danger, though not as much as in previous times.

College campuses are places where LGTBQ, etc. people thrive—much more so than in the general populace.

Yes you would think so...

The accused actually has been friends since highschool (they were former classmates at Orange County School of the Arts.)

I am concerned why somebody the victim (Blaze Bernstein) trusted could do this?

SOCIAL SKILL OF THE DAY

If someone of the same sex makes romantic/sexual advances towards you, rather than stabbing them twenty times, it's perfectly socially acceptable to smile and say "No thank you."

Could have been forceful and may have not accepted no as an answer... I am sure they both known each other's sexual orientation. But I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to the story then what the article puts out. We will probably never know until the end of the trial, by then we will have long forgotten about this incident.

As someone who came out in middle school and it was well known by high school. None of my fellow classmates had an issue with it for the most part. I received far more issues from school officials...

I think this needs to be a thread all of it's own and we can post handy social skills tips like the one above With a good illustrator, there's a book waiting to happen.

I knew that I'd read a variant of this story before...

"U.S. Marine reservist Jasen Bruce, 28, has been accused of attacking priest-monk Alexios Marakis, assistant priest at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Tarpon Springs, Florida, apparently with a tire iron, after mistakenly identifying him as a terrorist because of his long beard, hair and Greek Orthodox clerical garb.

The incident took place on Monday, November 9 at around 6:30 p.m., while Fr. Alexios was returning from a pastoral visit to the Old Age House and got lost on the road due to his faulty GPS system. According to reports by the AP, Tampa Police said that Rev. Marakis followed Lance Cpl. Jasen Bruce into the garage of his Tampa apartment building and asked for help. The latter struck him twice with a tire iron and chased the priest for several blocks. When police officers arrived Bruce called Marakis a terrorist and said the priest had shouted “Allahu akbar”, Arabic for “God is great”.

Fr. Alexios was taken by an ambulance to a hospital where he was treated and released. Bruce was arrested and ended up in jail accused of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He was released on $7,500 bail.

Bruce’s lawyer, Jeff Brown, claimed self-defense, maintaining
that the 28 year-old Bruce had been followed into the parking garage of his Tampa apartment building about 6:30 p.m. Monday by the Rev. Alexios Marakis, who then made sexual comments and grabbed the reservist’s genitals.

Tampa Police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said Bruce’s charge of a sexual advance was one of several explanations he offered when officers arrived."

Because they were friends? Or at least the gay one thought so. I've certainly met up with friends in the middle of the night, gay or straight, for a walk/talk/smoke etc. It's not abnormal.

Clearly the gay one was attracted to the other. Who knows what their snapchat communications were - ie were they sexual/flirtatious in nature or just simple chatter? Who knows.

It's possible that the gay one was forceful - but that doesn't justify murder.

It's possible that the murderer always carries a pocket knife & it became a weapon of opportunity.

Buuuut, I'm more inclined to believe that it was premeditated. He brought the knife with him because he knew he intended to use it to stab the guy. No, I can't prove that from the info, but that's what it sounds like to me. Maybe he wouldn't have if the other guy didn't attempt to kiss him (if that's what really happened) who knows? Still, the whole thing sounds fishy to me.. I do wonder what the snapchat conversations were about. I wonder if they were flirtatious and the murderer's intent was to lure his "friend" out to kill him because he's gay and the homophobic killer couldn't handle the fact that his friend was attracted to him - something like that. I would not be surprised to read that's what was discovered during a trial. Sad. Two wasted lives, really, plus the impact on their friends and families. Obviously the one that's dead got the worst of it, but it's not as if this isn't going to change the rest of that murders life, either.

I was never attacked, but a homophobe did try to get me fired from a job ~5 years ago and I spent a year of my free time as my own lawyer before the whole thing finally got withdrawn. That guy's own twisted homophobic thoughts really seemed to do a number on him, his health & well being. He was wound up tight, frazzled, physically out of shape etc at the meeting proceedings. It seems that I could move on from it, but he didn't appear able to. He may suffer from his own self inflicted thoughts & homophobic ideologies forever. Ah well, F that guy. Just pointing out that in a weird way, homophobes suffer, too. It's sort of a form of mental illness, IMO.

Obviously, the stabber should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

I just sense that there was some attraction on the straight man’s part, and that he was troubled by it. People who have unconscious gay feelings tend to be more violently homophobic than others.

I’m not blaming the gay guy.

You had the good fortune to go to school after the era of AIDS. When I was in university back in the mid 1980s my best (and only) friend was a gay dude.

He kept his sexual preference private all during highschool but in university he was observed by classmates hanging around with other gays in what he thought was a "safe space"

As a result he was ostracised and (except for me) nobody in our entire cohort of 18yr olds spoke or interacted with him. What was bizarre was that I was also the subject of homophobia for 3 whole years!! the ignoramuses I studied with threw me in the same pot. The male students were aggressive and rude (I'll never forget) while female students behaved as if I was an AIDS carrier and I recall "ewww" when I sat too close during lectures. A few stupid bit**es thought they had good intentions about warning me about AIDS and using condoms and dangers of sharing eating utensils with people.

I kind of knew what was going on but I was so intimidated (at the time) that I didn't know who to share this with. One of the particular memories I had was that straight women were probably more homophobic against me and my friend than straight males which kind of bucks the myth that straight women like hanging around gay guys. In any case it goes without saying that I couldn't get one date!!

In any case the reason for rambling post is that homophobia was quite widespread and it always concerns me when young men are subjected to victimization like the attached story

The victim, Blaze, was cute, too. If he was my boyfriend I'd put him on a pedestal.

This reminds me of the murder in the early Beat literary movement, when Lucien Carr had stabbed his obsessive admirer, David Kammerer, multiple times, then tied him up and weighed him down, prior to dumping him into the nearby river. Back then (late forties), Carr was able to get away literally with murder - less than two years - because Kammerer was a gay man. A dramatization of these events can be seen in the movies, Kill Your Darlings, and Beat.

I'm sorry about your loss.

Sweet Pea hugs

I was once really into the Beats.

I love anything William Burroughs.

Burroughs is a rich man's Charles Bukowski.