The Republic of T.

Today is a big day for the hate crimes act, according to Congressional Quarterly.

The conference report on the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill (HR 1585) is expected to be released as early as Tuesday, and members of the Armed Services panels hope to clear the measure before heading home for the Thanksgiving Day recess.

That means the hate crimes act will be heading for the president’s desk soon. So, it seemed like a good time to post a list of all the cases I’ve researched and written up thus far for the LGBT Hate Crimes Project.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m researching and writing up cases of anti-trans or anti-trans-related hate crimes between now and the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I’ll have two new cases up in the next couple of days. But for now, here’s a full list of the cases compiled thus far, by last name of victims where known and/or appropriate.

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With the bruising battle over ENDA still stinging some of us, and the Transgender Day of Rememberance approaching on November 20th, it seems appropriate to continue the LGBT Hate Crimes Project by adding as many new transgender-related cases as I can research and write up between now and November 20th.

It seems appropriate because, as I pointed out before, a combination of anti-trans bigotry and employment discrimination often puts some transgender women in position of doing what some trans activists have called “survival sex work”; something that puts many of them in danger of being targets for anti-trans hate crime, often stemming from “trans panic”, a close cousin of “gay panic”.

Alfred Dibble, who worked as a registered nurse, may not have done sex work out of economic necessity, but — like Bella Evangelista, and Emonie Spaulding — that’s likely what led to him being a victim of “trans panic,” found beaten unconscious only to die several days later without ever regaining consciousness.

blogs, courts, crime, current events, gay rights, gender, hate crimes, homophobia

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Update: Per the comments below, I have edited this post and updated the entry on that LGBT Hate Crimes Project to correct the error concerning Owen’s race.

Have you ever heard of Sean Ethan Owen? You’ve heard of Matthew Shepard. You’ve heard of Brandon Teena. You’ve probably even heard of Sakiah Gunn, Scotty Joe Weaver, and Sean William Kennedy. But you probably haven’t heard of Sean Ethan Owen, even though he died just one state north of Sean William Kennedy, and about three years earlier. I won’t speculate as to why, though I find it interesting that I can find all kinds of images of Sean William Kennedy, but not a single one of Sean Ethan Owen (though images of Owen’s killers are available online). It’s almost as if he not only died, but disappeared.

One of the reasons I started the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, was to tell the stories of people like Sean Ethan Owen, who were targets and/or victims of violence because they were LGBT, but whose names never made headlines. And it’s the reason I moved this project from Wikipedia to its own domain, because it’s likely that Sean Ethan Owen’s death would not be notable enough for Wikipedia. It wasn’t covered much outside of North Carolina, except for some gay publications. Sean Ethan Owen’s murder did not make national headlines. It didn’t inspire widespread protests. It didn’t inspire new legislation, let alone legislation that bears his name, not did it result in landmark court rulings. Probably the only people who even wept for him were his family and those who knew him personally. In my research, I didn’t read about candlelight vigils or public outpourings of emotion from perfect strangers, as happened in response to previous cases.

But Sean Ethan Owen was black gay man who was targeted for robbery by a man he met on a chat line; a man who wasn’t gay himself, thought that gay men on the chat line were easy targets for crime (maybe because he thought they’d be less likely to resist, less likely to report the crime, or that police would be less likely to pursue it). He was lured into meeting, and when he arrived found two other men there with the man he came to meet. He gave all three of them a ride, and then returned with them to a park where the men intended to smoke marijuana. Owen was shot in the head, but did not fall.

anti-gay violence, courts, crime, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics, wikipedia

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When I started The LGBT Hate Crimes Project the Murder of Satendar Singh was one cases I wanted most to write about, because at the time I started the project it had just happened. But I decided to wait until more information about the case became available, as I wanted to avoid writing about the case as a hate crime only to have different information come out later.

But earlier this month, one of Singh’s attackers went to court, and that was the catalyst for starting to research the story.

One of the men accused in the beating death of Satender Singh was in court yesterday.

The the hearing, Aleksandr Shevchenko was told appear back in court next month.

Shevchenko is accused of being part of a group that allegedly used racial and homophobic slurs toward Satender Singh in July at Lake Natoma. A brawl ensued and Singh was severely beaten. He later died from head injuries.

Investigators say Shevchenko didn’t throw the punch that killed Singh but contributed to the crime.

What I found out made it even more convincing as a hate crime.
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I have a confession to make. When we go out as a family, there’s a part of me that’s always at least a little on guard when I’m out with my family. Maybe it’s because I know that, depending on where we are and who’s around, as an openly gay couple we may be targets for harassment or even attack. That’s something that, while I refused to get used to it, as a gay man I’m accustomed to it. I’m accustomed to scanning my surroundings for people who might be a source of trouble, and avoiding them. It requires me to make snap judgments about people that might actually be wrong, but I’d rather err on the side of misjudging them than risking my safety.

That’s part of what hate crimes do to people. When you hear news of someone like yourself being killed or beaten just for being who they are, you absorb the message that the same thing can happen to you if you’re not careful. And not because of anything you might do, or because you might be “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” but because any place might be the wrong place and any time might be the wrong time simply because you are who or what you are. It’s a lesson learned by many different groups at different times; African Americans in the segregated South, for example, or women who’ve absorbed the reality that being women makes the vulnerable to violence at them specifically because they’re women.

You are not safe. And if you are not careful, if you don’t watch yourself — and not just that but watch what you say and do, and around whom — you might get hurt. That means there may also be times when you don’t stand up for yourself, even if you’re being verbally or physically harassed because of who you are, you either ignore it, just take it, or try to get away as quickly as possible. Standing up for yourself might make things worse, and unless someone like Matthew Ashcraft happens to be around, you might not have anyone to defend you.

That’s kind of what happened to Lisa Craig. But the stakes were a bit higher. Because she had her partner and her kids with her.

Technorati Tags: children, courts, crime, current events, family, gay bashing, hate crimes, homophobia, parenting, politics

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As I write this, a hate crimes bill sits on the desk of George W. Bush; one that includes sexual orientation and gender identity in its definition of hate crimes. The bill awaits his signature or veto, with various groups urging him to apply one or the other. It is not the first time George W. Bush has dealt the issue of hate crimes. Just over 10 years ago, a hate crime against a gay male couple resulted in the murder of Fred Mangione. National gay organizations wrote to then Governor Bush, urging him to support effective hate crimes legislation that included attacks based on sexual orientation.

I don’t know how Gov. Bush responded then, but Mangione’s murder spurred Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee to urge hearings on hate crimes legislation, and to mention Mangione’s murder in her statement during a 1998 House Judiciary Committee hearing.

In the my hometown city of Houston in 1995, Fred Mangione, a homosexual, was stabbed to death, and his companion was assaulted. The two men, who were charged with Mangione’s murder, claimed to be members of the ”German Peace Corps”, which has been characterized in media reports as a neo-Nazi organization based in California. This crime did not meet the State of Texas’ threshold for trial as a capital offense, because the murder did not occur during the commission of a rape or robbery. Ironic, that someone can stab Mr. Mangione thirty times, steal his life away, rob the community of one of its members and rape our collective consciousness of its sense of security, and the penalty is not considered a capitol offense. In recent years, attacks upon gays and lesbians are increasing in number and in severity. During 1995, 2,212 attacks on lesbians and gay men were documented—an 8% increase of the previous year. We need the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and we need to ”become a more perfect union.”

Mangione’s murder took place just two years before James Byrd was dragged to death by white supremacists in Jasper, TX. It happened just give years after Paul Broussard was murdered in a gay bashing in Houston, and now one of his bashers — the one who struck the death blow — is up for parole again.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, bush, courts, crime, current events, gay bashing, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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Like the case of Nick Moraida in Corpus Christi, TX, when I came across the case of John Lloyd Griffin and Tommy Lee Trimble, I didn’t get their names right away. Instead, I found stories about the guy who shot and killed them — Richard Lee Bednarski — and the Judge — Jack Hampton — who gave their killer 30 years instead of a life sentence, because he killed a couple of “queers.” But, like other victims, their names were nearly buried under an avalanche of news stories about their killer and events in the aftermath of their deaths. Maybe that’s why I named the entry about their deaths after them, even though I found more information about the killer and the judge.

I still remembered the case and even the name of the killer, just under 20 years after it happened, because of how the case impacted me when I first heard about it all those years ago. It came a couple of years after the Bowers v. Hardwick decision from the Supreme Court, and the reason I pair the two stories in my mind is because the first one seemed to divorce people like me from the U.S. constitution, and the second one exemplified the mindset behind the Bowers decision, based on Judge Jack Hampton’s words.

A judge here has said he gave an 18-year-old murderer a more lenient sentence than prosecutors had sought because the two victims were homosexual and, the judge said, they would not have been killed “if they hadn’t been cruising the streets picking up teen-age boys.”

“I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level,” he said, “and I’d be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute.” He said he stood by his decision to impose a 30-year sentence rather than life in prison on the defendant, Richard Lee Bednarski. “I did what I thought was right,” he said.

…This afternoon Judge Hampton said in an interview that he had received death threats and the police had advised him to leave Dallas for his safety.

In explaining the Nov. 19 sentence to The Times Herald, Judge Hampton said: “I don’t care much for queers cruising the streets. I’ve got a teen-age boy.”

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, courts, crime, current events, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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I don’t remember where I heard it, but when I was growing up I remember hearing and “old wives’ tale” about reading the bible, and it was basically that if you read the bible from beginning to end, you’ll go insane. Now, I don’t remember why you’d go insane. Maybe if you read it all the way through in one sitting, you’re so sleep deprived by the time you get to Revelations that you’re already hallucinating and the imagery drives you over the edge. Or maybe it’s the effort of dealing with all the contradictions, and convincing yourself that there are no contradictions, that maintaining that cognitive dissonance is enough to drive you crazy. And in some cases, crazy enough to kill.

But how crazy is that? How many people get that crazy? And do they get crazy enough to kill? Yes, at least a few of them do. The men who killed Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder were that crazy. But they also believed that they were “obeying God’s law” and that the bible told them it was right.

But Williams insists that because the Bible holds that homosexuality is a sin that must be punished by death, the responsibility for the slayings rests with the victims.

“You obey a government of man until there is a conflict,” Williams said. “Then you obey a higher law.”

“It’s part of the faith,” he added. “So many people claim to be Christians and complain about all these things their religion says are a sin, but they’re not willing to do anything about it. They don’t have the guts.”

Matthew Williams had “the guts” when he killed Matson and Mowder. And Terry Mangum had “the guts” when he killed Kenneth Cummings Jr., because God told him to, because Kenneth Cummings was gay.
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Well, the second conviction in the case of the hate crime that killed Michael Sandy has come in. Anthony Fortunato was convicted of second degree manslaughter and petty larceny.

Anthony Fortunato was found guilty today of manslaughter in the second degree as a hate crime and attempted petty larceny for his part in luring a gay man to a meeting place last October, beating him and chasing him into traffic.

There’s a kind of irony in this conviction coming on National Coming Out Day, since Fortunato came out in an (apparently failed) attempt to dodge the hate crime charges.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, courts, crime, current events, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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Sometimes, in the process of researching one hate crime, I end up coming across another one — usually in a brief reference in an article about another crime — and make a note to look it up later. Sometimes I find more information about the assailants than the victim. Sometimes, they’re cases that remind me of others. The story of Nick Moraida is all of the above.

I stumbled across the Moraida case while researching another one, and initially it wasn’t the victim’s name that I found, but one of the assailants. And when I began to dig for information, I came across more information about the assailant than I did about the victim. That seems to be the way it usually is, when the victim is killed. Their story effectively ends, and is ended by the killer who — as a result — becomes the focus of the story.

What’s left of the victim is usually the recollections of surviving friends and family, which may or may not make it into news reports, because it concerns the past. The victim, after all, has no future. Nothing further can be done for them to change their circumstances. But the story of what’s happening to the killer is happening now. They are still here to be sympathized with, defended, and perhaps even granted mercy or a reprieve. Appeals ma still be made on their behalf, and attempts made to save their lives, because they still have lives to save. All of that applies to the case of Nick Moraida.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, courts, crime, current events, death penalty, gay bashing, hate crimes, politics

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Matthew Ashcraft was he victim of an anti-gay hate crime. But Matthew Ashcraft is not gay.

How can that be? How can a heterosexual male be the victim of an anti-gay hate crime? Well, as the text of the hate crimes act now awaiting Bush’s signature or veto makes clear, it’s a matter of perception. A hate crime is a crime of violence, that constitutes a felony under state, local, or tribal laws, and …

… is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim, or is a violation of the State, local, or Tribal hate crime laws.

It’s worth noting that, as written, the hate crime act would also protect heterosexuals who are targeted for violent crime because they are heterosexual. But as far as Matthew Ashcraft’s attacker knew, Ashcraft was gay.

Why?

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, crime, current events, gay bashing, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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With everything that happened last week, I missed out on (and didn’t feel much like) blogging about the Senate passage of the hate crimes bill.

The Senate voted today to extend federal hate-crime protection to people victimized because of their sexuality, but it remained doubtful that the measure would ever become law.

By voice vote and without dissent, the senators attached the hate-crime provision to a seemingly unrelated defense authorization bill, which is needed to run the Defense Department. Attaching the provision to the military bill was intended, at least by some of the provision’s supporters, to force President Bush to choose between accepting the provision or vetoing the military bill. .

The White House has said previously that Mr. Bush opposed the extension of hate-crime protection as “unnecessary and constitutionally questionable” and that he would veto it if it came to him as a stand-alone bill.

But that isn’t to say that I wasn’t still researching and writing up hate crime cases for The LGBT Hate Crimes Project. There’s still no shortage of cases to research and record, and either new ones seem to keep happening every other day or new details are reported in existing cases. So with the hate crimes bill passed in both houses of Congress, and awaiting Bush’s signature or veto stamp, it seems like a good time to report on the progress of the LGBT Hate Crimes Project.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, bush, crime, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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Can a gay person be anti-gay? Can a gay person be a gay basher? Can a gay person commit an anti-gay hate crime? That’s similar to the often-asked question “Can a Black person be racist?”; similar, but quite different. That question could be asking can a Black person be racist against whites, or it could be asking if a Black person san be racist against other Blacks. But a gay person whose anti-gay is whole other thing.

The initial answer to the first question is “yes.” We’ve seen far too many examples of people who are probably, at the very least, same-sex oriented in their private lives but either anti-gay or quietly complicit in their public lives and careers. Larry “Toe-tappin’ in the Men’s Room” Craig is a prime example, if you believe where there’s smoke there’s fire, given his fine voting record with organizations like the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America. Mark “Into SMS” Foley, who had so absorbed the anti-gay rhetoric of his party that he could no longer see himself — and, by extension, the rest of us — as deserving equality, is another. And let’s not forget Ted “Praise the Lord and Pass the Meth” Haggard, and whatever it was he needed Mike Jones to massage.

But these guys are nothing new. In fact they’re nothing more than pale shadows of Roy “Sure, I take it up the ass, but I ain’t no faggot” Cohn. Still, the all came rushing back at me when I caught up the news this week (having a newborn can cramp a blogger’s style), and realized I had to update the Michael Sandy entry on the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, when I read that one of Sandy’s attackers now claim to b gay.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, courts, crime, current events, gay bashing, gay marriage, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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