I am not pretending to understand what shapes transexuals. I can't even say I feel it was a good idea to arrange a gender switch for someone who hasn't reached the age of majority.

But I'm not claiming to understand most of what shapes hetrosexuals, particularly what made these three young men decide cool, calculated murder was the way to assuage their egos. This murder is seriously one of the more evil acts I've ever heard of.

By Daniel Sorid
HAYWARD, Calif, (Reuters) - Three friends became partners in a calculated murder after discovering that a teenager two of them had been having sex with was biologically male, a California prosecutor told jurors on Tuesday.

In closing arguments, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Chris Lamiero portrayed each defendant as equally guilty of the strangulation death of the 17-year-old, who was born Eddie Araujo but lived as a woman known as Gwen or Lida.

Araujo, whose October 2002 murder galvanized support from transsexual and transgender people across the country, was beaten with a can and a skillet, bound and strangled with rope, and buried by the men, Lamiero said. The body was found in a remote area near Lake Tahoe.

The killing is being prosecuted as a hate crime and the three defendants face 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

"It might as well have been all of them that squeezed that rope," Lamiero told the jury. "It was a team effort."

Prosecutors have said that Araujo was beaten and then killed after a party at the home of one of the defendants during which the three men learned that the teenager was biologically male.

Lamiero said the friends acted purposefully to carry out the murder and hide the body, with one of the men, Jason Cazares, calling for a pause in Araujo's beating while he went to get shovels for a burial.