Pranks and cruelty

Fair warning -- this isn't going to be a happy post.

A student's home has been vandalized three times in the past two months. Not that vandalism isn't bad enough, but these particular miscreants have spray-painted homophobic epithets in several places on the house (including the garage door), causing thousands of dollars worth of damage to the house and untold emotional damage to this young man and his mother.

Right now, there's no reason to believe that it is another student who is committing these crimes. But there's also no reason to believe that it isn't, and that's what has me feeling heartsick.

I looked at the pictures of the words "GAY (Student's Name)" spray-painted in eight-foot high red letters on the garage door that our principal showed the senior class this morning in an assembly discussing the problem and wanted to vomit. I still can't wrap my head around why somebody would do something like this. I don't know if the kid is gay or not, and frankly, I don't really care. It's none of my business. He's a successful kid with an amazing athletic talent -- he could conceivably go to the Olympics someday -- who makes good grades, isn't a troublemaker or a clown, and is just generally a nice, serious, decent young man. Not that it would somehow be okay if he were a total jerk, but his being a good guy just adds insult to injury.

What is so wrong with someone that he or she feels the need to tear another human being down? To be so incredibly cowardly and hateful? To rob someone of the right to feel safe in his own home? Why should this young man's memory of his senior year of high school include this?

I don't know what to say or what to think. How can people be so hateful?