Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Your Rights and Ours This Hallowe’en Season: A Special Comment

Dallas, Texas- In this unprecedented year of tragedy and hope, in the aftermath of the worst nature can do to many of our readers and supporters, the Unfinished Lives Project Team wishes your family and loved ones a Happy and Safe Hallowe’en.  So much is at stake in this election season.  Too many have lost too much to turn back now.  The stance of this blog and this human rights project has been and will remain to be full of hope:

  • For a better world than the LGBTQ community has ever known until now
  • For the long arc of justice to bend toward all marginalized people, especially those whose lives have been touched with violence
  • For the laws and protections afforded to us to be enforced swiftly, fully, and justly
  • For all LGBTQ people to follow to admonition of Harvey Milk, burst down our closet doors, and begin to fight for the values we believe in

We have found allies and leaders who have our best interests at heart.  We still believe in hope.  That is what we are sticking with this holiday season.

  • President Barack Obama has signed the Matthew Shepard-James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law
  • President Obama has fought by our side for the full Repeal and Implementation of the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
  • President Obama has directed our Justice Department to defend DOMA no longer
  • President Obama has nominated two outstanding women to the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Kegan and Justice Sotomayor
  • President Obama vigorously supports the DREAM Act, allowing many LGBTQ Latinas/Latinos to live, work, and prosper in the United States–the only nation home they have ever known
  • Vice President Joe Biden has blazed the trail for Transgender Rights, declaring this “The Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time”
  • Both President Obama and Vice President Biden have declared their public support for Marriage Equality
  • The President, therefore, deserves and has earned a second term

While we at Unfinished Lives respect choices to the contrary, to us the choice this election year could not be clearer.

Enjoy the day, then exercise your rights, and vote.  Again, friends, Happy Hallowe’en.   ~  The Unfinished Lives Project Team

October 31, 2012 Posted by | Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), Dream Act, GLBTQ, hate crimes prevention, LGBTQ, Matthew Shepard Act, President Barack Obama, Repeal of DADT, Special Comments, U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Supreme Court | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Your Rights and Ours This Hallowe’en Season: A Special Comment

Savage Gay Bashing in Western North Carolina Called “Flat-Out Terrible”

Gruesome result of anti-gay hate crime in Asheville, NC [WBTV-News image].

Asheville, North Carolina – A gay couple was harassed, cursed, and then brutally attacked because of their sexual orientation on September 23, but the repercussions are still being felt in this nominally gay-friendly city.  The Citizen-Times reports that Charlotte gay men  Mark Little and Dustin Martin had anti-gay slurs shouted at them by two women driving a slow-moving car in the early morning hours of a quiet Sunday morning as they walked along Otis street. Martin “had enough” of the epithets, and shouted back at the women to stop.  Little said that at that moment, a black male rushed out of the vehicle and attacked Martin, punching him several times in the chest.  When Little intervened, the assailant turned on him, beating him to the ground and gashing his face.  “I screamed for him to stop, and he hit me in the face on the left side, and blood went everywhere. I was lying on the concrete,” Little told the Citizen-Times. Though three weeks have passed since the homophobic assault, both men say they remain “shaken” and fearful when any car pulls up beside them.

The Asheville Police say very little about the case, since it is still under investigation. Even though there is abundant testimony that the attack was bias-motivated and therefore a hate crime, since North Carolina does not have a gay hate crime provision in the state code, the incident can only be classified as a simple assault. The police do not have suspects in the case, only descriptions of the assailant and the four-door sedan in which he sped from the scene.

According to WBTV-News in Charlotte, Little and his partner Martin are frustrated that the Asheville Police are not taking the attack seriously enough.  “I feel like that when the cop first came on the scene he just felt like it was just an ordinary crime,” Little said. “But what had happened is we were hit just because we were gay.” As On Top Magazine observes, this bashing incident occurred only a few months after the notorious anti-gay Amendment One was passed overwhelmingly by the voters of the Old North State.

In an interview with The Citizen-Times, Monroe Gilmour, coordinator of Western North Carolina Citizens Ending Institutional Bigotry, called the homophobic assault “flat-out terrible.”  Gilmour went on to say, “Our experience over 20 years of working with victims of hate activity is that we need to make sure the targets of this hate do not feel alone. That is why it is so important that we publicly speak out and take constructive action to show that Asheville is about something very different from the hate of that incident.”

The irony of this hate crime is all the more severe since Martin and Little love Asheville, one of North Carolina’s most gay-accepting cities, and have made weekend getaways there regularly from their home in Charlotte.  Now, apparently, no city or town in the state is free of the new tide of right wing, anti-gay hate expressed in Amendment One.

October 14, 2012 Posted by | Amendment One, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, gay bashing, gay men, GLAAD, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, LGBTQ, North Carolina, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Gays, Lesbians, Transgender People in the Crosshairs This Election Season: Brite Divinity Bible Event Speaks Out for Justice

Speakers at The Bible, Politics, and Sexuality event at Brite Divinity School (l-to-r): Dr. Shelly Matthews, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Dean Joretta L. Marshall.

Fort Worth, Texas – A gay and a straight professor speak out for sexuality justice in an upcoming forum on the role of the Bible in the political discussion this election year.  Brite Divinity School faculty members, Dr. Shelly Matthews, Associate Professor of New Testament, a straight scholar, and Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Professor of Practical Theology, a gay scholar, will speak at the Bass Conference Center at 7 pm on the divinity school campus, Monday, October 22.  The event will be introduced and moderated by Dean Joretta L. Marshall. The public is invited.

Dean Marshall, in announcing the event, said, “In the highly charged political arena, the Bible is often used in conversations about gender identity and sexual orientation. The Carpenter Initiative in Gender, Sexuality, and Justice is pleased to host Brite scholars, Dr. Shelly Matthews and Dr. Steve Sprinkle, who will offer perspectives on how the Bible is used in positive and negative ways, as well as strategies for moving conversations of sexual justice forward.”

Dr. Matthews, educated at Harvard, is a New Testament expert on many topics.  She was the founder and served for six years as co-chair of the Violence and Representations of Violence Among Jews and Christian section of the Society of Biblical Literature and currently serves on steering committees for the SBL Sections on Early Jewish Christian Relations and the Book of Acts. She is also on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature and a member of the Westar Institute. Her research interests include feminist biblical interpretation, feminist historiography, early Jewish Christian relations, and Paul in the second century. Dr. Matthews has authored several books and monographs, including Perfect Martyr: The Stoning of Stephen and the Construction of Christian Identity (Oxford, 2012).

Dr. Sprinkle, the first openly gay scholar in Brite history, also serves as Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry. He is an ordained Baptist minister, and received his Ph.D. at Duke University in systematic theology. He holds membership in the Association of Theological Field Education and the Academy of Religious Leadership. Widely recognized as an expert in anti-LGBTQ violence, Dr. Sprinkle is the author of many articles and three books, the most recent of which is the award-winning Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims (Resource Publications, 2011). Dr. Sprinkle is also the founder and director of the Unfinished Lives Project, and serves as Theologian-in-Residence at Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, Texas, the world’s largest liberal Christian church with a predominant outreach to LGBTQ people

The Bible, Sexuality, and Politics event has a Facebook page where essential information may be found, including directions to Brite Divinity School, and a way to register attendance.  The evening is free and open to everyone.

October 12, 2012 Posted by | Brite Divinity School, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Homosexuality and the Bible, LGBTQ, religious intolerance, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, transgender persons, transphobia | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Matthew Shepard’s Fatal Beating, 14 Years Ago

Matthew Wayne Shepard, (1976 – 1998).

Laramie, Wyoming – October 7 marks the 14th anniversary of the fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old gay man who became the icon of the movement to stop anti-gay hate crimes in the United States and around the world. Shepard was bludgeoned senseless with a .357 Magnum pistol and tied to the foot of a buck fence on a cold Wyoming night. Two local men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, picked Shepard up from the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, abducted him to a high ridge outside of the university town, and brutally attacked him.  They stole his shoes.  Blood spatter at the scene covered a fifty foot radius.  Drag marks investigators found indicate that Shepard had to be bodily forced out of the pickup truck cab by his victimizers.  After he was discovered nearly dead the next morning, Shepard was rushed first to Laramie’s emergency facility, and then to Fort Collins, Colorado where he lingered a full five days before dying on October 12, 1998.  He never recovered consciousness.

Rather than leave Matthew as a two-dimensional icon, no matter how compelling, this anniversary, the Unfinished Lives Project offers a video of him taken two years before his death while he was attending Catawba College, a small United Church of Christ affiliated school in Salisbury, North Carolina.  Ironically from our present time, Matthew was interviewed briefly along with his then-boyfriend, Lewis Krider, about the anti-gay policies of North Carolina U.S. Senator, Jesse Helms. For a brief moment, we see and hear the young man whose death raised the world’s consciousness to the horror of hate crimes. Today, the Matthew Shepard Foundation continues the work Matthew surely would have longed to see done for the sake of peace, justice, and human freedom to love and be loved.  An award winning book authored by the founder and director of the Unfinished Lives Project, Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims, opens with a chapter on the struggle to maintain Matthew’s legacy and witness against the forces of right wing revisionism.  Matthew lives on in the hate crimes prevention act that bears his name and the name of James Byrd Jr.  His memory is strong in the LGBTQ community, and he is a continuing inspiration to everyone who loves peace and justice in a violent world.  Rest in peace, Little Brother.  Rest in peace.

October 8, 2012 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Catawba College, gay bashing, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, LGBTQ, Matthew Shepard, Matthew Shepard Act, Matthew Shepard Foundation, North Carolina, Senator Jesse Helms, Social Justice Advocacy, U.S. Senate, Unfinished Lives Book, Wyoming | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Matthew Shepard’s Fatal Beating, 14 Years Ago

Gays Terrorized by Panhandle of Texas Hate Crime

Anti-gay death threat painted on the porch of a gay couple in Clarendon, Texas on October 1.

Clarendon, Texas – A gay couple have been put on notice that they are in danger by vandals in a small community an hour from Amarillo.  Two weeks after an anti-gay diatribe by a local Church of Christ pastor appeared in the community newspaper, Joshua Harrison and Jeremy Jeffers found their front porch defaced by the scrawled warning, LEAVE OR DIE FAGS. The gay couple, partnered for better than a year, say they have never been so afraid for their lives.

Pronews 7 reports that the Donley County Sheriff, Charles “Butch” Blackburn, is calling the vandalism “a hate crime.”  The Donley County Sheriffs Department is investigating who painted the ominous warning on the gay couple’s property. Harrison and Jeffers are arranging to leave Clarendon because of the threat to their lives.

In late September, Minister Chris Moore, spiritual leader of the Clarendon Church of Christ, published his provocative advertisement in the Clarendon Enterprise, condemning gays and lesbians for an “agenda” that included compromising the “values” of ordinary American citizens, and making their children “prey for pedophiles”  (full ad available for viewing here). Moore based his screed upon a “platform”  published “sometime back” by a group known as the National Coalition of Gay Organizations, a short-lived group convened in Chicago in 1972, but which has not been in existence for over 40 years. Moore apparently dredged up his “factual” claims from this old, extremist chestnut, and sought to incite anti-gay discussion in the Panhandle. Moore is surely aware that charges of pedophilia incite strong negative reactions against gay people, though they are not grounded in any truth.  Moore defends his ad in the paper, but has gone on record denouncing the vandalism and violence threatened against Jeffers and Harrison as “unChristian.”  As of October 8, readers of the Pronews 7 report of this hate crime said by a two-to-one majority that Moore’s anti-gay ad and the subsequent hate crime against the gay couple are directly connected.

Chuck Smith of Equality Texas condemned the atmosphere created in Clarendon by the Church of Christ ad:  “No Texan should ever have to live in fear of violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.“ While Smith affirmed Chris Moore’s freedom of speech, he went on to say, “It is a fact that when people teach or preach homophobia and anti-gay rhetoric, it can inflame people to the point of violence.”

Rev. Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Professor of Practical Theology at Fort Worth’s Brite Divinity School and ordained Baptist minister, says that there must be zero tolerance for hate speech in the Christian community, whether the group is conservative or progressive.  “There is an undeniable link between religious leaders’ intolerant speech and acts of physical violence against LGBTQ people in this country,” he said. “Minister Moore’s hate speech ranks high on the anti-gay incitement scale, right along beside violence permitting statements by extremist ministers who favored Amendment One in North Carolina this year.” Noting that the online blog of Clarendon Church of Christ has carried anti-gay postings for better than two years, Sprinkle went on to say, “While Moore’s speech is protected under law,” Sprinkle went on to say, “Moore would be quick to deny responsibility for the fear, destruction of property, and physical harm such statements incite, but he must bear some indirect responsibility for this crime. This is unbecoming of  a Christian minister.”  Sprinkle called upon people of good conscience in all communities of faith to express their intolerance of all expressions of hate speech coming from pulpits everywhere.

Meanwhile, Harrison and Jeffers are still in fear for their lives because of irrational hatred against them, and their intimidators are still at large in the Texas Panhandle.

October 8, 2012 Posted by | Anti-LGBT hate crime, Brite Divinity School, Clarendon Church of Christ, death threats, Equality Texas, gay men, GLBTQ, Hate Crimes, hate speech, Heterosexism and homophobia, LGBTQ, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, vandalism | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Gays Terrorized by Panhandle of Texas Hate Crime

   

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