Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Hate Murder Victim Charlie Howard’s Memorial Desecrated, Rededicated

Charlie Howard Memorial desecration, prior to refurbishment

Bangor, Maine – Two weeks ago, unknown vandals spray-painted “Die Fag” on a memorial to hate crime murder victim Charles O. “Charlie” Howard. On Saturday, 75 people gathered to rededicate the newly cleaned and restored memorial beside the State Street Bridge in downtown Bangor, the site where 23-year-old Charlie was thrown to his death into the Kenduskeag Stream below.  Howard’s death by drowning at the hands of three youths from respected Bangor families shocked the town in July 1984. For twenty years controversy raged over whether and how to memorialize the young gay man’s death.  Finally, in 2009, a tasteful, unassuming granite memorial was erected at the State Street Bridge site. The Howard Memorial is the focal point of a small ornamental garden featuring tulips, hollyhocks, magnolia bushes, lilacs, cosmos and crabapple trees. Local and state social justice advocates made the murder of Charlie Howard a celebrated cause, bringing about the forerunner organization to today’s Equality Maine, and giving impetus to the drive for marriage equality for same-sex couples in recent years. His death pricked the conscience of Mainers in a way that has proved more productive for practical human rights advances in New England than the more well-known story of Matthew Shepard’s murder has ever effected in Wyoming and the Mountain West.  The Bangor Daily News reports that local residents were repulsed by the recent act of hate and vandalism.  Margaret “Miki” Macdonald, who lives in the neighborhood of the memorial, had gone to care for the flowers and weed the plot around the Howard Memorial as she had often done in the last two years, when she saw the angry words painted across the dedicatory plaque.  As Macdonald told the Daily News, “At first I couldn’t even read what it said.  I wasn’t sure if it was writing or just some random lines. Then when I saw what it said, I said, ‘God, that’s pathetic. How ridiculous for someone to do this.’ Just seeing that was disgusting.”  The act of desecration spurred local and state church and advocacy groups to action.  If the perpetrators, who are still at large, intended to scare the local populace and the LGBTQ community, they failed miserably. Now, in light of the community energy to remember and honor Charlie Howard, Macdonald says she can see something good coming out of the ugliness. “Actually, having something so offensive like that happen to the memorial made all these people regroup, and I think it’s rekindled our intention to encourage tolerance in our community,” she explained to Daily News staff reporter, Andrew Neff. “So in a way, it’s a good thing.” Diversity Day, observed annually in Bangor on Charlie Howard’s birthday, July 7, was established to promote acceptance of a whole range of human differences. This year, the words carved into the stone of his memorial will take on refreshed meaning: “May we, the citizens of Bangor, continue to change the world around us until hatred becomes peacemaking and ignorance becomes understanding.”

May 22, 2011 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, drowning, gay bashing, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Legislation, Maine, Marriage Equality, Matthew Shepard, Monuments and markers, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Remembrances, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Unsolved LGBT Crimes, vandalism, Wyoming | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Texans of Faith Storm U.S. Capitol for Human Rights

Washington, D.C. – The largest delegation of fair-minded Texas faith leaders since the conception of LGBT rights are on their way to the Nation’s Capitol to participate in the third Human Rights Campaign’s Clergy Call for Justice and Equality, May 22 – 24.  Twenty-two clergy, theologians, and seminarians from across the Lone Star State are registered for this year’s lobbying effort on Capitol Hill.  The Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Program mobilizes people of faith to advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people every other year, and among the important items on the agenda will be the full implementation of the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), anti-bullying efforts across the nation (such as the one just passed by the Texas House, strengthening the penalties for harassment and bullying in public schools), and the status of the Dream Act. Texans have a particularly tall order as grassroots citizen lobbyists, since both U.S. Senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, have consistently voted against human rights initiatives during their legislative careers in Washington. At the core of the Texas delegation are fifteen students, faculty, and alumni of Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, the largest from any seminary or divinity school in the state.  Brite, founded in 1914 by an endowment from Marfa rancher Luke Brite, is located on the campus of Texas Christian University.  In former years, Brite was conservative on the issue of LGBTQ-inclusion, but now is the only accredited institution of theological higher education in Texas to extend welcome status to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender persons by action of its board of trustees.  Among the faculty are two openly gay and lesbian professors, and the number of LGBTQ students in the Fort Worth school is growing. “Students are learning how to take a stand for justice by becoming clergy for whom all people matter, and are eager to work for equality in public forums like Clergy Call. Our students are taking their roles as public theologians seriously,” said Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Associate Professor of Practical Theology at the Divinity School, and Theologian in Residence at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. “Each of the students who have traveled to Washington chose voluntarily to participate in Clergy Call because they believe faith calls them to be here.”  Billed as the largest interfaith gathering of LGBTQ and Allied Clergy and Faith Leaders in the United States, Clergy Call will bring representatives of faith communities from all fifty states to the capitol for training in faith messaging, skill-building for advocacy with legislators, interfaith worship, and person-to-person lobbying of senators and congresspeople.  This year’s headline speakers include Rabbi Denise Egger, Rev. Harry Knox, Bishop Gene Robinson, Bishop Yvette Flunder, Rabbi David Saperstein, Rev. Nancy Wilson, and Bishop Carlton Pearson.  Dr. Sharon Groves is the Director of the HRC Religion and Faith Program, based in Washington, D.C.

May 22, 2011 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Asian Americans, Bisexual persons, Brite Divinity School, Bullying in schools, Cathedral of Hope, Clergy Call, DOMA, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), Dream Act, gay men, gender identity/expression, GLBTQ, hate crimes prevention, Homosexuality and the Bible, Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Campaign Religion and Faith Program, Latino and Latina Americans, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBT teen suicide prevention, LGBTQ, Marriage Equality, Media Issues, military, Military Chaplaincy, Politics, Public Theology, Queer, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, transgender persons, Washington, D.C. | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Texans of Faith Storm U.S. Capitol for Human Rights

Courageous Carolina Faith Leaders Oppose Anti-Gay Bigotry

North Carolina Faith Leaders Speak Out

Raleigh, North Carolina – Outside the State Legislature on May 17th, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ right wing activists pushed their discriminatory agenda–but inside courageous faith leaders and legislators announced their opposition to a constitutional amendment that could prevent any legal recognition of same-sex couples in North Carolina.  According to Equality North Carolina, Marcus Brandon (D-Guilford) organized an impressive gathering of clergy who spoke passionately of their desire for North Carolina to remain open and tolerant, and who also announced how faith-based communities throughout the Tarheel State were mobilizing to defeat the anti-gay amendment to the state constitution.  At present, North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast not to enact anti-LGBTQ discrimination into its bylaws and constitution. Five faith leaders held an hour-long press conference in the Legislature Building to speak on the harms Senate Bill 106/House Bill 777 would impose on the citizens of the state. Rev. Anthony Spearman of Clinton Tabernacle AME Zion Church in Hickory said,  “This extreme legislation will only cause needless pain and suffering. It sends a message to major employers that North Carolina does not welcome a diverse workplace,” Spearman said. “It tells young people who are gay they’re second class citizens, unworthy of basic dignity and equal treatment…It is not fair and it is certainly not just.”  Bishop Toniya Rawls of Unity Fellowship Church in Charlotte said it is time for North Carolinians to show the nation “what type of a state we really are.”  Assistant Rabbi Ari Margolis of Raleigh’s Temple Beth Or, speaking for all who revere sacred scripture, said, “We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equality to gay and lesbian couples.”  Rev. Dr. Amy Laura Hall, an ordained elder of the United Methodist Church from Durham, warned, “Don’t let those selling fear on the cheap, buy your hearts.”  Rev. Dr. Stephen Shoemaker, Senior Minister of Charlotte’s Myers Park Baptist Church, drew on the heritage of justice handed down to Tarheels from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Referring to Dr. King’s dictum, that the long arc of history bends toward justice, Dr. Shoemaker announced that this same arc “also bends toward inclusiveness.”  The Clergy announced that over 300 faith leaders from across the state had already signed a declaration opposing the amendment, and invited every person of conscience to add their names to the growing list of fair-minded believers.  The document may be accessed here for signatures to be added, and reads as follows:

Declaration of Religious Leaders and People of Faith Against Anti-LGBT Legislation

The most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings. We become most fully human when we love another person. We can grow in our capacity to be human – to be loving – in a family unit. This right to love and form a family is so fundamental that our United States Constitution takes it for granted in its dedication to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” The North Carolina Constitution likewise affirms the “inalienable rights” of human beings to “life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.”

As people of faith, clergy and leaders in our faith traditions, we are mandated by God to demonstrate and protect love in all its forms and to stand for justice for all of creation. In faithful response to this calling, we commit ourselves, along with thousands of other Christians, Jews, Muslims and other people of faith around North Carolina, to these basic principles:

  • While we respect the fact that debate and discussion continue in many of our religious communities as to the scriptural, theological and liturgical issues involved, we draw on our many faith traditions to arrive at a common conviction. We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to gay and lesbian couples.
  • We insist that no one person or institution, especially the state, is allowed to define the God-given covenant of marriage or bar two consenting adults, whether of the same or differing genders, from forming the family unit that lets them be more fully loving, thus more fully human.
  • We oppose any amendment to the North Carolina Constitution that would prohibit gay and lesbian couples from receiving the protections like health benefits and hospital visitation afforded by legal recognition of their relationships. Likewise, we are further resolved that the State should not interfere with gay and lesbian couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitments of civil marriage.
  • We affirm freedom of conscience in this matter. We recognize that the state may not require religious groups to officiate at, or bless, gay and lesbian marriages. Likewise, a denial of state civil recognition dishonors the religious convictions of those communities and clergy who officiate at, and bless, gay and lesbian marriages. The state may not favor the convictions of one religious group over another by denying individuals their fundamental right to marry and to have those marriages recognized by civil law.

    Representative Brandon, who serves the 60th House District in Guilford County, concluded the Press Conference by declaring his faith as a Christian, and saying, “The Bible has been used in this nation to support slavery, segregation, laws against interracial marriage, and to deny women’s rights. Jesus was a compassionate person. And Jesus would not be having a rally outside right now.”

May 22, 2011 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, bi-phobia, Bisexual persons, Equality North Carolina, gay men, GLBTQ, Heterosexism and homophobia, Homosexuality and the Bible, Latino and Latina Americans, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBTQ, Marriage Equality, North Carolina, Politics, Protests and Demonstrations, Queer, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, transphobia | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Courageous Carolina Faith Leaders Oppose Anti-Gay Bigotry

   

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