And here at Unfinished Lives, we are cognizant of the fact that part of this “better” is not just social love and acceptance, but spiritual love and acceptance.  To help meet this need, a group of Brite Divinity School students and faculty have recorded their own messages of hope for the It Gets Better Project:

Dr. Steve Sprinkle: Director of Field Education at Brite Divinity School

Sam Castleberry: Student at Brite Divinity School

Egon Cohen: Student at Brite Divinity School

DeSorrow: Student at Brite Divinity School

The Brite Student It Gets Better channel hopes to have more videos shortly. We would also like to encourage any and all LGBTQ faculty, staff, and students in graduate theological education to record videos and to let GLBTQ youth know that it does get better and faith can help not hinder the process. Also anyone else who wishes to record a video should do so as well. For more information on LGBTQ suicide prevention see The Trevor Project

In the meantime, please spread the word, and vote for your favorite video by sending an email with the video link as the subject line (just the link) to: IGBP@savagelove.net.

Local business, civic, and activist leaders are calling for an independent investigation of the actions of the FWPD and the TABC during the Raid.  Fearing loss of face for Cowtown, as well as loss of business, leaders are demanding more than an internal investigation that may be self-serving at best.  Meanwhile, Gibson struggles to heal.  No costs of his hospitalization or damages will be forthcoming from the officers who slammed his head into a bathroom step at the Rainbow Lounge, for they are indemnified against facing responsibility for what they did by the state and the city.  Too bad.  As long as harsh treatment can be whitewashed clean by internal investigations and bureaucratic red tape, LGBT people cannot feel safe anywhere in the Metroplex.  The Rainbow Lounge Raid proves that much, at least.  The public has yet to hear a full-throated demand for justice from the Fort Worth LGBT community.  While some are courageously speaking out, the so-called “Fort Worth way” is in full display, with queer folk in Cowtown still keeping their heads low for the most part.  As the days drag on from the time of the Raid, and as Gibson fights to get better from bleeding on the brain in ICU, the Fort Worth LGBT community may yet find its voice.  One of the most telling witness statements from a patron of the Rainbow Lounge on the night of the raid was that the assault by police “was just like Stonewall without fighting back.”  The spirit of Stonewall is resistance, plain an simple.  Non-resistance is not and never has been the Stonewall way, and Fort Worth LGBT people and their allies have to find more spine if they are to have freedom and equality in deep, dark red Tarrant County, stronghold of right wing Republicanism in North Texas.

This story has all the makings of a regional earthquake in human rights: Excessive police force, severely injured LGBT people, gay panic defense, police cover-up attempts, heterosexist attitudes, terror in the queer community, and finally, the will to resist on the part of gay men and lesbians who have had enough jawboning and harm from their elected leaders and law enforcement agencies.  Passively allowing the law enforcement agencies and city officials responsible for this outrage to mollify the public with “internal investigations” is like sending the Devil to Hell for a trial.  No jury in perdition would ever find him guilty.  Without consistent pressure coupled with open communications, things will pretty much go back to homophobic normal in Cowtown.  Instead of an earthquake, all Fort Worth may experience from this unwarranted use of brute force will be a shrug.  The coming days will see if the North Texas children of Stonewall will rise up and seize the moment, or not.

~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project

Montgomery, AL – In a letter to supporters dated June 17,  J. Richard Cohen, CEO and President of the Southern Poverty Law Center urges the entire SPLC network to “remain vigilant” in the wake of the murder of Holocaust Memorial Museum Security Guard Stephen Johns.  The SPLC carries out the most extensive program of tracking hate groups and extremist organizations of any non-governmental organization in the nation, most recently on the anti-LGBT hate monger, Scott Lively and his band of co-extremists, Watchmen on the Walls.  Two Slavic Christian fundamentalists from Sacramento, CA with ties to Lively’s group carried out a fatal attack on gay East Indian immigrant Satendar Singh during the July 4 holiday season of 2008.  Cohen’s important letter reads in part:

“In addition to the Holocaust Museum shooting, we’ve seen the murders of five police officers by extremists in recent months and the assassination of a prominent Kansas physician by an extremist tied to the anti-government militia movement.  These killers may have acted alone, but they were all influenced by the hate movement in America. What’s alarming is that this movement is now being aided and abetted by far-right pundits on cable TV and talk radio, who are fanning the flames of hate with their increasingly hysterical rhetoric targeting President Obama, the government, Latino immigrants and others who are not like them. These are the same commentators who ridiculed the recent Department of Homeland Security that predicted the very kind of violent attacks we’re now seeing.”  Cohen concludes by urging all fair-minded Americans to stand firm against hatred:  ”We all need to speak out against hate — whether it’s in the national media or in our communities….  We hope the lessons from this latest tragedy won’t soon fade from our national consciousness.”

An article in the Anderson Independent-Mail (South Carolina) reports that a father assaulted his own son for having attended a gay pride parade last Sunday.

The article says “the teen’s 49-year-old father yelled, cursed, swung a baseball bat, prayed and tried to ‘cast the demon of homosexuality out of him,’ according to the teen’s version of events.”  A second incident occurred when the son returned home to collect some clothing.

Both occurrences are under investigation by deputies in Anderson County.