The Republic of T.

In the five days following the murder of Bella Evangelista, just over a year after the murders of Ukea Davis and Stephanie Thomas, August of 2003 hadn’t gotten in any safer for transgender women in Washington, D.C. On August 16, 2003, Emonie Spaulding became the second transgender woman to be murdered in D.C. in six days, and the second of three transgender women to be shot, as Dee Andre was shot and wounded the same night that Spaulding was murdered.

The amazing thing about Emonie Spaulding’s murder was that the police and the prosecution seemed not to think that Spaulding’s murder was bias motivated. In fact, they were at a loss to imagine a motive for the crime until the moment the defense attorney stood up in court and gave them one.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, courts, crime, current events, gay bashing, gender, politics

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I very nearly subtitled this post “blood money.” I started researching it and writing it on the day I read two seemingly unrelated news articles. The first was about religious organizations that promote homophobia in a significant portion of their fundraising efforts have raked in over $400 million in the past year. The second was about the death of Richard Jewell last week.

Richard Jewell, accused by the media in 1996 of being the prime suspect the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing during that year’s Olympic Games was found dead in his home in west Georgia. The true perpetrator, Eric Robert Rudolph, would later bomb a gay and lesbian nightclub, the Otherside Lounge also in Atlanta. Rudolph also bombed two abortion clinics.

…It was later discovered that he had no involvement with the crime whatsoever and eventually homophobic, anti-government extremist, Eric Robert Randolph, pleaded guilty to the crime and is serving a life sentence.

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

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Thirteen minutes. That’s the amount of time that passed between the moment police arrived to take a report from a bar employee in Roanoke, VA, who called 911 — after a man asked for directions to a gay bar, flashed his gun, and said he was “wasting faggots” that night — and the the moment when the shooting at the Backstreet Cafe was called in to police. When Ronald Gay stopped to ask an employee at the Corned Bee & Co. Bar for directions to a gay bar, flashed his gun, and declared his intentions, it was between 11:00 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. Police arrived at Corned Bee & Co by 11:39 p.m., and by 11:46 p.m.

The shooting at the Backstreet Cafe, a gay bar in downtown Roanoke, was called in to police at 11:51 p.m. By then Danny Overstreet was dead, and six others wounded. Police stopped Ronald Gay around midnight, two blocks away from the bar. He quietly surrendered, and later told police that he’d thrown his gun into a garbage can (and gave them the location) because he didn’t want to harm any police officers when he was inevitably picked up. They, after all, were no this targets that evening.

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

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How does a night out with friends and a late night dinner at Denny’s end up putting you in the hospital? Well, it can happen, if you happen to be gay.

I blogged about the gay-bashing of James Maestas in March of 2005, shortly after it happened, and followed up in a fit of pique when the two main bashers got 90 day sentences. It seemed outrageous to me at the time. (Particularly after another brutal gay bashing in New Mexico, which is now also on my list of hate crimes to research and document.) After all, Maestas wasn’t doing anything more than standing outside enjoying a cigarette with friends, when he happened upon the men who would change his life in ways he’ll no doubt live with for much longer than 90 days.

And all he did was answer a question. And touch one of them in a way the attacker decided was “flirtatious.” As with the cases of Dwan Prince, Roberto Duncanson, or even the “gay panic” related cases of Jason Gage and Richie Phillips. And what kind of touch was it?

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

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One of the reasons I started The LGBT Hate Crimes Project was to document hate crimes that didn’t make national headlines, or get much notice beyond the local areas where they happened; the ones that tend to disappear into newpaper archives that no one can see without paying for the privilege. In fact, I’ve tried to make those cases a priority. That’s why I’ve yet to write up entries on Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena, or Gwen Araujo. Not because what happened to them is less important than others, but because you don’t have to go very far to find information about them and the crimes against them. Entire movies have been made about them — The Laramie Project, A Girl Like Me, and of course Boys Don’t Cry.

But who’s going to make a movie about Daniel Fetty? Like some others, the story of what happened to Daniel Fetty — how he ended up beaten, stripped naked, and tossed in dumpster (like so much garbage) — was one I hadn’t heard until it was brought to my attention by Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin. When I read Jim’s account of Fetty’s murder, and why it was missing from FBI hate crime statistics

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, crime, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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