Ohio Hate Murder Revisited After Six Years: Justice for Gregory Beauchamp
Jerry Jones, 28, indicted for 2002 New Year's Eve Murder of Gregory Beauchamp
On New Year’s Eve 2002, a dark blue Cadillac pulled up to the corner of West Liberty and Vine Streets in Cincinnati beside two cross-dressed friends as they walked to a party. Taunts erupted from the car at the two homosexual men, “Fuckin’ faggot-assed bitches!” Then somebody in the Caddy pulled a trigger, and Gregory Beauchamp, 21, fell fatally wounded in the chest. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Hate Murder Victim Gregory Beauchamp, 21, wanted to be a fashion designer.
Now, thanks to the work of the Cincinnati Cold Case Unit, Jerry Jones, 28, has been indicted for Beauchamp’s murder. Jones was already in custody at a Dayton, Ohio detention facility on unrelated charges. In 2003, though he had been arrested for killing Beauchamp, the grand jury failed to indict him. The years have not dimmed the pain Beauchamp’s friends still feel for his loss. His friend Dontae refuses to forgive Jones: “This is so sad what they did to Gregory. I miss him so much! The guy who took his life don’t think how much he meant to us. He took my best friend [away from me] that night.”
Curtis Johnson holds photo of his friend, Gregory Beauchamp. (Steven Heppich photo)
Gregory Beauchamp was the 65th homicide of the year in Cincinnati, and the last one for 2002. Curtis Johnson remembers the night as if it were yesterday. He told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he was on his way to meet Beauchamp at the party. “He just died in the street–it’s just terrible. I just want people to know he’s more than just the 65th victim. He loved clothes, music, he could sew. He was just a good person. Being black and gay in Cincinnati is tough.”
Beauchamp’s brutal murder sparked a movement in Cincinnati that culminated in the passage of a municipal hate crime statute. Now his friends may get to see justice done for the gentle man who loved to wear women’s clothing and dreamed of studying fashion design in California.
What the Matthew Shepard Act Does: Rachel Maddow Comments
Attacks against LGBT people in the U.S. are increasing alarmingly
Violent crimes against LGBT people have increased in the U.S. population in the last two years at an alarming rate, especially among Latino and Black racial/ethnic groups. The California Department of Justice, for example, noted 263 hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2007. Commenting on these statistics, Jason Bartlett, a California-based spokesman for the National Black Justice Coalition, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocacy group, said, “We have a disproportionate amount of African-Americans being targeted that are LGBT, and we have a huge disparity where transgender people are attacked due to gender expression. Within the Black or Latino community there is more stigma attached to being gay or lesbian or transgender. It’s not talked about as much and within our religious institutions. We have ministers that speak homophobia from the pulpit. Those kind of messages filter down.” The same is true throughout the country, as the brutal murders of Angie Zapata, Latina transgender woman from Greeley, CO, and Lateishia Green, African American transgender woman from Syracuse, NY, show.
Latiesha Green, transwoman murdered in Syracuse, NY
The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, would expand current hate-crimes laws and authorize the Attorney General “to provide technical, forensic, prosecutorial, or other assistance in the criminal investigation or prosecution” of any crime “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.”
Misleading anti-Shepard Act flyer, aimed at U.S. Congress
Against critics, supporters of the Act note that this is not a “hate speech act,” or a “hate thought act,” as detractors have charged. This Act specifically preserves all First Amendment rights of speech and assembly. Instead, this Act targets crimes perpetrated against LGBT people because of bias motivation against their sexual orientation or gender expression and identity.
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC News Commentator
Nobody seems to have gotten the rationale for the Matthew Shepard Act more clearly than MSMBC’s commentator, Rachel Maddow. In her discussion of the controversy surrounding the Act since its passage in the U.S. House of Representatives, she put it this way on The Rachel Maddow Show of 4/30/09:
MADDOW: “The concept behind this kind of legislation is often misconstrued but here’s the deal as I understand it. The idea is that the federal Justice Department can get involved in a case to help local authorities or even to take the lead on a case if need be, in prosecuting individual serious violet crimes and murders in which the victim was selected on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, disability – the idea that crimes like that are intended not only to hurt or murder an individual, but to terrorize an entire community, and so there is a national interest in ensuring that those crimes are solved and prosecuted, particularly if local law enforcement doesn’t want to because they are blinkered by the same prejudice that led to the crime in the first place.”
Drag Queen Murdered in NC
Jimmy McCollough, also known as Imaje Devera
Fayetteville, NC – “Ms. Jimmy,” also known on stage as Imaje Devera was found stabbed to death outside Club Emages, a local gay and lesbian night spot around midnight on April 14, 2009. Jimmy McCollough, 34, was a talented female impersonator who struggled to make ends meet in the recession economy. Police are investigating the murder as a hate crime, but since North Carolina does not have hate crime legislation addressing LGBT hate crime violence, and neither does the federal government, resources to investigate and prosecute such a crime are slim in the Old North State.
Transgender community leader Janice Covington, wrote in response to Ms. Jimmy’s murder: “This morning, April 14, 2009, the murdered body of Image Devereux (Ms. Jimmy) was found on Joseph Street behind the old Club Spektrum in Fayetteville, N.C. She was a local Drag Queen who many of us knew as a friend. She will be missed but not forgotten. My prayers go out to her family.”
An underreported aspect of this story is the high degree of anti-LGBT prejudice in hiring practices in Fayetteville and around the nation. The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, now transgender inclusive, is necessary to confront and begin to rectify the desperate situation so many trans and gender-non-conforming men find themselves in today. Southerners On New Ground (SONG), founded by Black and White lesbians in order to advance Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer multi-racial, multi-issued education, commented on Ms. Jimmy’s death: “Mr. McCollough was presumably simply working the streets on the night he was murdered, trying to pay his bills. Like too many in our communities, he was a gender non-conforming person of color in the South, known to be a sex worker, and a presence in the community. SONG continues to be committed to working for a day when folks like Mr. McCollough are not victims of violence, and when lives and livelihoods such as his as seen as just as important and precious as any other life.”
Hate Crime Enhancement Ruled Out in Duncanson Verdict
Roberto “Pancho” Duncanson
1987 – May 12, 2007
Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York
Terence at www.republicoft.com expresses outrage that Roberto Duncanson’s murder was not classified or prosecuted as an anti-gay hate crime. I share the outrage, T. If his stabbing death was not about hate, then what was it about?
Roberto Duncanson, nicknamed “Pancho,” worked at a local CVS Drug Store in Chelsea, NY. He had planned to vacation in Miami for his 21st birthday, and afterwards to start school to become an x-ray tech. He was a gay African American.
On the night of May 12, 2007, he had a run-in with Omar Willock, 17, who became enraged with Duncanson, claiming that he had flirted with him. All Willock could point to was the way he said Duncanson “looked” at him. Willock followed Duncanson down St. Mark’s Avenue, Crown Heights, shouting anti-gay slurs at him.
Duncanson walked away. He intended to visit a cousin on Brooklyn Avenue. Willock wouldn’t let it go. He kept verbally attacking Duncanson, and then started a fistfight with him. Duncanson defended himself. According to eye-witness testimony from his cousin, Jeimar Brown, after he and two girls pulled the two men apart, Willock had used a knife on his victim, having stabbed him four times. Willock ran from the scene. Duncanson collapsed on the sidewalk, striking his head on a street sign, bleeding profusely. He died an hour later at Kings County Hospital.
Willock was arrested after being picked out of a police lineup. His trial for the murder of Roberto Duncanson began March 11, 2009. On March 12, the judge in the trial tossed out the hate crime charge, which would have increased the minimum sentence in the case of conviction. He told the court that the DA had not sufficiently substantiated the hate crime nature of the murder. Willock was found guilty and sentenced from 15 years to life. Customarily, less than 25 years of such a sentence is served.
Willock dogged Duncanson again and again, verbally assaulting him with ugly, anti-gay epithets, provoked a fight, and then wielded his knife to stab and kill the person whose life he loathed. Hate crime? Hell, yes! What else would any reasonable person call it?
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project
Has the “War” Against LGBTs Ceased in Fort Lauderdale?
A kinder, gentler Ft. Lauderdale may be in the cards, as John P. “Jack” Seller takes over as Mayor after 18 years of an anti-gay administration. Ex-mayor Jim Naugle scapegoated the LGBT community for a non-existent sex and crime problem in public toilets along the city’s fabled gay-friendly beaches. Enraged at Naugle’s homophobic rhetoric and his enlistment of right wing church groups in a “war” against “immorality,” LGBT opponents of Naugle launched a “Flush Naugle” campaign, parodying the mayor’s effort to get $250k robo-toilets installed on the beaches.
Robo-Toilet Mayor Naugle Proposed to Address Non-Existent Gay Crime Wave on the Beaches
Naugle’s “war” claimed victims, most notably Simmie L. Williams, Jr., a 17-year-old trans person, known on the Sistrunk Avenue strip where he died as “Chris,” or “Beyoncé.” Two assailants shot him to death on the night of February 22, 2008, and as yet are not apprehended. Homophobia has a crooked arm. No straight line of cause and effect need link Naugle’s diatribes against the LGBT community to Simmie Williams’ murder, but the mayor’s irresponsible rhetoric set the stage for violence against queer folk in Broward County to escalate.
Simmie Williams died in the street wearing a dress, a casualty in a “war” he didn’t even know he was enlisted to fight. Mayor Seller, who has just taken office, has his work cut out for him. Shall it be, “Come Bask in the Sun,” in Fort Lauderdale, or “Come Bash in the Sun”? At the Unfinished Lives Project, we know which one we vote for.
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director, The Unfinished Lives Project
Memphis Nocturne
Like Dallas, Memphis, Tennessee, cannot shake the reputation for violence. The assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in April 1968 will always haunt the city that bills itself “The Home of the Blues/The Birthplace of Rock n’ Roll.”
Four savage attacks against transgender women of color in Memphis reinforce the reputation Memphians would rather forget, and focus the attention of the nation on the terrible price transgender Americans pay for being true to themselves. Tiffany Berry, 21-years-old, was shot three times in the chest by a man who “did not like the way she had touched him.” Berry’s February 16, 2006, murder was a grim prelude to the murders of 20-year-old Ebony Whitaker on July 1, 2008, and 43-year-old Duanna Johnson on November 9, 2008. Johnson made national headlines when her beating by two Memphis Police Officers was captured on a jailhouse video camera earlier in the year. At the time of her murder, Johnson was pursuing a $1.3 million lawsuit against the Memphis Police Department. All three hate crime murder victims were African American transwomen. On Christmas Eve 2008, yet another African American transwoman, Leeneshia Edwards, was shot in the jaw, side and back in a near-fatal attack.
Anti-transgender violence is on the rise throughout the United States. Attacks like these could happen in any city in the country. Ironically, Memphis is served by a liberal Jewish congressman with a 100% rating by the Human Rights Campaign, and the police department is submitting to sensitivity training by LGBT experts. Yet Memphis bears a special responsibility for extending and protecting civil rights.
In March 1968, Memphis garbage workers began carrying placards bearing “I AM A MAN” to underscore their humanity in the struggle for dignity and living wages. After Dr. King’s assassination, that slogan became famous throughout the world, signifying the determination of black people to win their freedom. Four decades later, with the election of America’s first black president, a newer version of that slogan needs to be invented to highlight the struggle of transgender people of color who face violence and indignities of every kind: “I AM A HUMAN BEING.”
Dr. King wrote in his famous Letter From A Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Gay, Bi, Lesbian, Trans or Straight, the freedom and security of all of us depends on the freedom and security of any of us. That makes all of us, on the eve of a new presidency offering hope, inextricably involved with what is happening to our trans sisters in the streets of Memphis.
Project Activity — Fall of 2008
In the fall of 2008, the Unfinished Lives Project agreed to participate in community events in Texas and North Carolina remembering victims of anti-LGBT hate crimes. In September, our project director traveled to Wilmington, North Carolina, where he served as a panelist at the Park View Project’s documentary film premier dedicated to the life of Talana Quay Kreeger. While there, Dr. Sprinkle also gave an Unfinished Lives presentation to St. Jude’s Metropolitan Community Church. October marked the 10th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder in Laramie, Wyoming. Our project joined a Matthew Shepard remembrance held at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and then participated in the “Hope, Not Hate” remembrance at the University of Texas in Austin. These and other project activities are included below.
September 2008 – Wilmington, North Carolina – From September 26-29, Dr. Sprinkle was the guest of Family Tree Productions, independent filmmakers creating a documentary about the life and death of Talana Quay Kreeger, 32, savagely disemboweled by long haul trucker Ronald Thomas in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1990.
Dr. Sprinkle keynoted the premier of the trailer of “Park View,” the film documenting Talana’s death in this North Carolina port city. Tab Ballis is the Producer/Director of “Park View,” and Linda Warden is Associate Producer/Editor.
St. Jude’s Metropolitan Community Church, pastored by Rev. Amanda McCullough, hosted the event. St. Jude’s was founded soon after Talana’s murder because LGBT people had been turned away by all but one church in Wilmington as a site for her memorial service. Gay people vowed never to be in that situation again.
Talana was a carpenter, and a regular at the Lesbian bar, the Park View Grill, on Carolina Beach Road. She was remodeling the bar, drinking beer, and playing pool on the night of February 22, 1990 when Alabamian Ronald Thomas offered her a ride after closing hour to Hardee’s just a mile up the road to get some late night breakfast. Thomas was to drop off a load of oranges at Hoggard High next morning. Instead, he pulled his rig off the road to a remote dead end, and assaulted and raped Talana, smashing her dentures, and manually disemboweling her.
October 2008 – Austin, Texas – On Sunday, October 12, a coalition of Austin’s LGBTs and African Americans sponsored “Hope, Not Hate,” a public remembrance and vigil marking the 10th Anniversary of the hate killings of James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard. Our director, Dr. Sprinkle, keynoted the event at University Baptist Church exactly ten years after Byrd’s and Shepard’s hate crime murders in Jasper, Texas, and Laramie, Wyoming, respectively.
Among the committee organizers for the “Hope, Not Hate” event were Rev. Karen Thompson, of Metropolitan Community Church in Austin; Colonel Paul Dodd, U.S. Army (ret.), of the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network; and Paul Scott, Executive Director of Equality Texas.
Todd Harvey, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, has been deeply involved in the Unfinished Lives Project, and was also present for the event.
Better than 150 people participated in the vigil and candlelight ceremony. Together with Dr. Sprinkle, Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo also made remarks at the event.
October 2008 – Fort Worth, Texas – Rev. Harry Knox, Director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion and Faith Program, spoke at Brite Divinity School and TCU for the “Erase the Hate Campaign,” remembering the 10th Anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death.
Harry made a wonderful, powerful contribution to the equality movement on TCU’s campuses. Dr. Sprinkle served as Harry’s host and participated throughout the events of the week.
November 2008 – Austin, Texas – Dr. Sprinkle was a presenter at the Open Circle GLBT Retreat held at University Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, on November 15, 2008. His presentation was “Journey of Reconciliation: Soul-Weariness.”
November 2008 – Fort Worth, Texas – Unfinished Lives project director Stephen Sprinkle spoke at the Transgender Day of Remembrance held at Agapé Metropolitan Community Church in Fort Worth, Texas, on November 20, and gave a presentation entitled “Innocent Blood: Guarding the Memories of Our Slain Transgender Sisters and Brothers.” The title and subject of the presentation was inspired by an Icon written by Fr. William Hart McNichols, entitled Jesus Christ: the Seraphic Guardian of the Blood, and dedicated to Petty Officer Allen Schindler and the Thousands of Victims of anti-LGBT Hate Crimes.
Advocacy group calls for investigation of transgender woman’s murder
Lateisha Green
The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) is urging the Syracuse (New York) Police Department and Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office to investigate the likely hate crime motivation in the murder of Lateisha Green, a 22-year-old African American transgender woman.
On the evening of November 14, Green and her brother, Mark Cannon, were sitting in a car preparing to leave a party when they were shot with a .22 caliber rifle. A single bullet grazed Cannon’s arm and then penetrated Green’s chest, severing her aorta.
According to Chief of Police Gary Miguel, the murder suspect, 20-year-old Dwight DeLee, retrieved the .22 caliber rifle when he heard other people at the party “making profane and vulgar comments in regards to the sexual preference” of Green and her brother. “Our suspect took a rifle and shot and killed this person, also wounding his brother, for the sole reason he didn’t care for the sexual preference of our victim,” says Miguel.
“Transgender people face discrimination and violence in communities across the country,” says TLDEF executive director Michael Silverman. “Lateisha’s senseless death demonstrates the increased risk of violence transgender people face.”
Gary Miguel adds, “Isn’t that sad? Isn’t that a sad situation that that’s the sole reason why?”
Sources:
“Syracuse Trans Murder Called Hate Crime.”
“Transgender Advocacy Group Calls Upon Authorities to Fully Investigate Transgender Woman’s Death”
“Local transsexual’s death draws state Human Rights officials to Syracuse”
NCAVP warns of national increase in anti-transgender violence
One day before the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a new NCAVP press release warns about a nationwide increase in severe violence perpetrated against transgender persons.
New York – As the Transgender Day of Remembrance approaches, a day when victims of anti-transgender bias are mourned around the globe, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) has documented increases in severe violence directed at transgender communities across the country, especially against transgender women of color.
- Latiesha Green, 22, was shot on November 14 in Syracuse, New York.
- Duanna Johnson, 43, was shot in Memphis, Tennessee, on November 8.
- Aimee Wilcoxson, 34, was found dead in her apartment on November 3 in Aurora, Colorado, just outside of Denver.
Some of these brutal acts of violence occurred in the same communities that continue to mourn the murders of two transgender people of color earlier this year: Ebony Whitaker, 20, murdered in June also in Tennessee and Angie Zapata, 18, murdered in July also in Colorado.
Organizations such as International Transgender Day of Remembrance and Remembering Our Dead that have helped to initiate Transgender Day of Remembrance (held this year on November 20) also track anti-trans murders. They documented 29 anti-trans murders in 2008, a 65% increase over 2007.
NCAVP wishes to express our sadness and outrage about this ongoing, horrific violence. We stand in solidarity with transgender communities in Tennessee, Syracuse, and Colorado, the victims and survivors, and their loved ones.
Mixed Criminal / Legal System Responses
Memphis
Ms. Johnson’s murder comes on the heels of Memphis Police Department’s brutal beating of Ms. Johnson in February 2008. The following Police security camera footage of the beating has been widely circulated since June (warning: clip contains disturbing material):
[YouTube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N1Bvlbh_ws”%5D
The Memphis Police Department had been attempting to settle a law suit that Ms. Johnson had filed for the beating she endured while in custody. Former officers Bridges McRae and James Swain were fired only after the video was released, but it is not yet clear whether or not any criminal charges will be filed.
Local community members have speculated that anti-trans bias is likely a factor, not only in the beating itself but in the lack of criminal charges being filed. “This is not the first time the Shelby County District Attorney’s office has shown indifference to brutality against transgender people,” observed Dr. Marisa Richmond, the President of Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition. “When Tiffany Berry was murdered in 2006, her alleged perpetrator, D’Andre Blake, was released on only $20,000 bond.” Dr. Richmond noted that people charged with murder in Tennessee typically get a $100,000 bond.
The FBI is now assisting in the investigation of Ms. Johnson’s murder. NCAVP calls upon the FBI to bring its full resources to in the investigation of not only Ms. Johnson’s murder but also Ms. Ebony Whitaker’s. NCAVP also demands that District Attorney Gibbons bring appropriate charges against former officers McRae and Swain.
Aurora
In Colorado, the Aurora Sentinel reported that local police have speculated that Ms. Wilcoxson’s death was a suicide. But friends of hers insist that explanation is very unlikely given her life circumstances and also given the condition the body was in when it was discovered. NCAVP is hopeful that local police will conduct a thorough investigation that takes into account these statements from people who knew her.
Syracuse
In Syracuse, Sage Upstate and other local community members report that Syracuse City Police Department Chief Gary Miguel has responded to this crime with sensitivity. The family of Latiesha ‘Tiesh’ Green and LGBT advocates in the Syracuse community are hopeful that the Onondaga County District Attorney’s office will be able to include hate crime charges in the prosecution of this case.
NCAVP commends district attorneys and police who identify and appropriately categorize hate-motivated violence. We are hopeful that district attorneys and law enforcement in other jurisdictions will follow suit and NCAVP will continue to monitor the violence against transgender communities, as well as the police response.
Transgender and gender non-conforming people experience violence and harassment everyday and most of it never makes headlines. NCAVP encourages LGBT people experiencing any form of hate violence, harassment, vandalism, or bullying to contact NCAVP or one of our member programs by calling 212.714.1184 or emailing us at info@ncavp.org.
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
Contact Us
Communicate with the Unfinished Lives project team:
info@unfinishedlivesblog.com
Schedule a Presentation
Dr. Sprinkle will gladly present his acclaimed presentation to your organization. To arrange an Unfinished Lives presentation for your organization or group, please contact us.
Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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Publisher: Steve Sprinkle (Project Director)
Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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Unfinished Lives 
Bullfrog in the Kettle: On Not Being Lulled into a False Sense of Security About Anti-LGBT Violence
How do you boil a bullfrog? Don’t try to plop it in a steaming kettle on the stove. Ease it into a nice warm bath in the pot, and let it swim around until it drops its guard. Nudge up the heat nice and slow. Caught unawares, the frog won’t wake up to its danger until it is too late and the water is about to boil.
Larry King Cover in The Advocate magazine
Last year saw a rash of murders of young, feminine-presenting men about this time. In January, Adophus Simmons of North Charleston, South Carolina was shot to death while carrying his trash out to the dumpster. In February, just after Valentine’s Day, Larry King was shot in the back of the head in his middle school computer class by his classmate in Oxnard, California. Then, near the end of February, Simmie Williams, Jr. was shot down in the street in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by two still-unapprehended murders. Simmons was 18, King was 15, and Williams was 17.
Simmie Williams' Mother Mourns his death
It took some weeks for the LGBT press to connect the dots and cry out that young, gender non-conforming men, especially young men of color, were in the crosshairs of deadly prejudice in the United States. King’s murder drew a cover story in The Advocate, and then the mainstream press picked up the theme with its flawed cover in Newsweek. The nation shrugged off the murders of the other two boys. Now, things have gone strangely silent about the morphing of murder against LGBT people, with minimal interest in the new outbreak of violence against African American transwomen in Memphis, Tennessee. Queer folk are still being killed, but in the glow of President Obama’s first 100 Days, with all eyes turned to the beautiful First Couple and the stumbling U.S. economy, even the LGBT press is falling to sleep again, lulling the LGBT population who are still at risk everywhere into a false sense of security. The bullfrog is doing the backstroke in the kettle, and the heat is rising oh-so-slowly.
Joan Crawford, LGBT Icon, in Johnny Guitar
Just like queer folk used to sit through whole tiresome movies like Johnny Guitar just to see Joan Crawford descend the stairs wearing a butch shirt waving a gun, the LGBT and progressive press are hanging onto every hint of “gay” in President Obama’s speeches and press releases. He said “gay and lesbian” in Chicago on Election Night! He didn’t mention us in the Inaugural Address at all, but has our issues on the White House web site! His team invited Rick Warren (who opposes us 100%) to pray, but Joseph Lowery (who kinda likes us), too! The Inaugural Committee chose Bishop Gene Robinson to pray at the Lincoln Memorial (but then botched its broadcast, and somebody cut off his mic), and at the last minute invited him to the platform for the Inauguration! Please!
Here is what we know for sure:
1) Queer folk are still being killed and attacked in heightened numbers throughout the United States, especially in the Heartland of the Upper Midwest, the Left Coast, and the South, as NCAVP and FBI statistics demonstrate.
2) Even the presumption that someone is gay is deadly, as was the case of José O. Sucuzhañay, a straight man attacked while walking arm-in-arm with his brother in Brooklyn just before Christmas.
3) Transgender women and men, especially if they are of color, are dying in our streets in alarming numbers, as the Memphis attacks testify.
4) A gay man’s life is worth less than an animal’s in some states, as the imminent early release of Sean William Kennedy’s convicted murderer shows in Greenville, South Carolina.
5) Silence-of-the-Lambs style murders apparently cannot shake urban governments awake to the peril of their LGBT citizens, as the gruesome dismemberment of Richard Hernandez and the subsequent veil of silence surrounding it in Dallas, TX points out.
6) Most LGBT people would rather not read about this right now, with Spring Break coming up, and Easter, and the next Circuit Party, and all.
Who wouldn’t rather ignore the reality of violence and neglect that makes LGBT jobs, loves and our very lives so fragile in March 2009, the Obama Administration notwithstanding? Please don’t “let Barack do it” and abdicate responsibility for acting for and end to anti-LGBT violence in this country. Barack Obama needs all of us who feel the heat to make him keep his promises to enact the Matthew Shepard Act, ENDA, and to repeal DADT.
Don’t be fooled. Don’t be lulled. The kettle is on to boil.
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director
The Unfinished Lives Project
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March 11, 2009 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, Anglo Americans, gay men, gun violence, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Legislation, Mistaken as LGBT, Politics, Racism, School and church shootings, Special Comments | Comments Off on Bullfrog in the Kettle: On Not Being Lulled into a False Sense of Security About Anti-LGBT Violence