This is a really huge issue for me, because it plays out in lots of other arenas. White women's stories get to sell in ways that do not apply to women of color: in film, in television, on blogs (a white girl's surprise pregnancy gets her name atop a Glamour column, a black girl's surprise pregnancy gets her name in a statistical column), and in print media (when has a woman of color EVER had a memoir make waves on the order of Elizabeth Gilbert, Elizabeth Wurtzel, or, hell, even Emily Gould?). Only white ladies have experiences worth mining in detail and from all sides; the rest of us just have to hitch our wagons to Oprah (which, when you think about it, means making even more room for white women to tell their stories.)
Again, I believe that gay teenagers face discrimination, that men and boys make other men and boys do terrible things in the name of masculinity, and that often people find themselves in terrible situations where they feel they have no other choice but to make bad decisions. I'm just saying that I don't believe the young man's story is an example of those truths.
I think it's possible to acknowledge the bullying gay (or presumed-gay) teens face without allowing this guy to lay claim to that as an excuse for truly horrible behavior. Especially because the end result is to implicitly endorse the idea that it was better for him to commit a heinous crime than be thought of as gay.