Sarah Whitman points out that the Lawrence King killing raises the question: where are our leaders?

Recent months have brought several disturbing events in our community. Lawrence King was shot in his classroom after being teased and harassed for being gay. Simmie Williams was killed while wearing a dress in Fort Lauderdale. Just yesterday, Duchy Trachtenberg, a Montgomery County Council member who authored a bill outlawing discrimination against transgendered people, announced that she is receiving death threats.

And Joe Solmonese is running around telling our legislators to vote for a non-inclusive ENDA bill?

When King was shot, The LA Times covered the event as a local story. While the LGBT blogsphere immediately spread the news, the mainstream media took much longer to cover the story.

Last year, six African-American teenagers were charged with attempted second-degree murder charges in Jena, Louisiana. There were rallies, online petitions, a legal defense fund was created, The New York Times, New York Post and LA Times all covered the events. John Mellencamp even wrote a song in support of the Jena 6, as they came to be known as.

Why? Because the leaders showed up. They went to the rallies. Among those in attendance? Civil rights activists Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. Rappers Mos Def and Salt-n-Pepa showed their support, as did New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Rapper-actor Ice Cube took it a step further, funding buses to bring protesters from California.

Who was at Lawrence King’s funeral? Where were our leaders?

In this star struck culture, the way to draw attention to an issue is to put a recognizable face out front to draw the press out. Where were Joe Solmonese of HRC, Matt Foreman of NGLTF, Kevin Cathcart of Lambda, Kate Kendall of NCLR, Neil Giuliano of GLAAD? Ellen DeGeneres did her part, but what about the newly out Cheyenne Jackson? Cynthia Nixon? Melissa Etheridge? Where’s the song from Elton John? It takes leadership to bring make the kind of public statement that surrounded the Jena 6.

But we don’t have that….