How to Remember a Gay Hate Crimes Victim: 12 Years After Murder, Billy Jack Gaither’s Memory is Alive
Billy Jack Gaither
Montgomery, Alabama- Billy Jack Gaither’s memory will not die. A determined group of family, friends, and human rights advocates see to that annually, and on Sunday, February 2o, the 13th Annual Vigil for Victims of Hate and Violence will take place on the steps of the Alabama State Capital Building. Billy Jack, 39, died February 19, 1999 on the banks of Peckerwood Creek at the hands of two local men who hate him for being gay. Steven Mullins and Charles “Charlsey” Butler had no other motive for the grisly murder. They killed Billy Jack with a pick ax handle, and then burned his body on a pyre of old tire carcasses as an expression of their disdain for him and for all LGBTQ people as human beings. “Charlsey” and the “Skinhead” wanted this gentle, loving Alabamian from Sylacauga dead, immolated, and forgotten. But Billy’s family, especially sisters Kathy Jo and Vickie, and allies such as Dr. Beverly Hawk of the University of Alabama – Tuscaloosa and David Gary of Birmingham, have doggedly refused to let the killers win. They established the Billy Jack Gaither Humanitarian Award, to be presented annually at the Vigil to persons of outstanding social conscience and action. This year, the Vigil will commence at 3 p.m. with music by The Shouting Stones, and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Choir. Professor Gwen Thomas of Auburn University is the featured speaker. The Fourth Annual Billy Jack Humanitarian Award will be given to the Rev. and Mrs. Robert Graetz. Graetz was the white pastor of the predominantly black Trinity Lutheran Church in Montgomery during the historic Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. A personal friend of Rosa Parks, the Rev. Graetz was ostracized by whites for his support of the non-violent civil rights movement. His auto tires were slashed. The home he shared with his wife Jennie and their family was bombed three times, but thankfully the largest and last of the bombs was a dud, and did not go off. For Billy Jack to be remembered by awarding good works such as the courageous witness of the Rev. Graetz and his wife Jeanie is wonderful in itself. The award this year certainly embraces the LGBTQ and African American communities, and brings them into further dialogue as they struggle for justice together. But the planners and board members who refuse to forget Billy Jack are doing more than staging an event and presenting a named award–they are frustrating the intentions of hate crime killers like Mullins and Butler everywhere. They are bringing good people into an educational circle of hope and justice. They are sending a beam of light into the darkest regions of the human soul, the places where bigotry and hatred are incubated. So, once again, Billy Jack is remembered, celebrated, and beloved. Billy Jack’s memory is evergreen in Sweet Home Alabama. His killers languish forgotten serving life sentences in prison. Well done, Alabamians! [Billy Jack’s story, “Southern Gothic,” is told in the newly published Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims. Follow this link for more information: http://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Lives-Reviving-Memories-Victims/dp/1608998118/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298017444&sr=1-2].
Landmark Transgender Study Reveals Staggering Degree of Discrimination
Collage courtesy of Transgender Day of Remembrance
Washington, DC – You will change the way you perceive transgender people, and rethink how you advocate for our sisters and brothers after you read the findings of the largest national study of transpeople and gender non-conforming people ever done. The National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce released “Injustice at Ever Turn” on February 4, a massive study of 6,450 respondents. Sixty-three percent (63 %) of all respondents reported a serious act of discrimination because of their gender identity or gender presentation and expression. Twenty-three percent (23%) experienced a “catastrophic level of discrimination” according to the report, meaning they had faced significant acts of bias and harm in at least three of these categories:
- Sexual assault due to bias
- Physical assault due to bias
- Job loss due to bias
- Eviction from residence due to bias
- School bullying/harassment severe enough to cause dropout
- Homelessness because of gender identity/expression
- Denial of medical care/service due to bias
- Incarceration due to gender identity/expression
- Loss of relationship with partner or child due to gender identity/expression
Among the findings: forty-one percent (41%) of respondents reported attempting suicide, compared to a mere 1.6% of the general population; one in five experienced homelessness due to their gender expression/identity; transpeople are four times more likely to live in extreme poverty (income of $10,000 annually, or less) than Americans at large; and respondents were twice as likely to be unemployed than the general population. The combination of transgender discrimination and structural racial bias proved especially devastating in the lives of respondents. The study concludes, in part:
“It is part of social and legal convention in the United States to discriminate against, ridicule, and abuse transgender and gender non-conforming people within foundational institutions such as the family, schools, the workplace and health care settings, every day. Instead of recognizing that the moral failure lies in society’s unwillingness to embrace different gender identities and expressions, society blames transgender and gender non-conforming people for bringing the discrimination and violence on themselves.”
It is astounding that seventy-eight percent (78%) of those responding reported to the study that they feel more confident and comfortable at work, and more satisfied with their job performance after transitioning than they felt before–despite the levels of discrimination they constantly face in the workplace. As a survey respondent testified: “My mother disowned me. I was fired from my job after 18 years of loyal employment. I was forced onto public assistance to survive. But still I have pressed forward, started a new career, and rebuilt my immediate family. You are defined not by falling, but how well you rise after falling. I’m a licensed practical nurse now and am studying to become an RN. I have walked these streets and been harassed nearly every day, but I will not change. I am back out there the next day with my head up.”
“Injustice at Every Turn” is a wake up call to the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community, who have an uneasy history with transgender people since the days of the Stonewall Rebellion in New York City in 1969. Transpeople were integral to the liberation movement that propelled queer folk toward freedom, yet gender non-conforming people, especially transpeople of color, remain among the most misunderstood and neglected segments of the LGBTQ community in the United States. The incidence of hate crimes perpetrated against the transgender population, witnessed to each year by the national Transgender Day of Remembrance, is finally being documented thanks to the passage of the Matthew Shepard Act law–and the statistics are daunting.
No one should suffer discrimination based on gender identity or expression in the United States. The passion for justice must respond to the findings of this groundbreaking study. For an executive summary of the “Injustice at Every Turn,” click here.
Coretta Scott King on Gay and Lesbian Rights: Happy MLK Day from Unfinished Lives
”Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Georgia, and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.” ~ Coretta Scott King, 25th anniversary luncheon for Lambda Defense and Education Fund, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1998
Murderer Gets Life in Prison for Anti-Gay Hate Crime Killing
New Port Richey, Florida – After days of deliberation, a Pasco County jury has found John Allen Ditullo, 24, guilty of the March 2006 murder of teenager Kristofer King, whom he thought to be gay. Ditullo, a Neo-Nazi who called himself “Syn,” invaded the home of Patricia Wells whom he slashed with a knife as she slept on a futon. King, a friend of Wells’s openly gay son, Brandon Wininger, ran out of the room where he had been browsing on the internet while Brandon was away. Ditullo attacked 17-year-old King with the knife, stabbing him repeatedly. King died of his wounds in a nearby hospital. Wells recovered. The outrage of the murder was made greater since King died as a case of mistaken identity. Ditullo, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, had an intense hatred of gays, according to testimony given by members of the Neo-Nazi cell group to which he belonged. Rumor had it that Tricia Wells had a relationship going on with a black male, and Ditullo decided to punish the gay youth and his mother for the double transgression of a gay son and an African American boyfriend. The King family acknowledged that Kris and Brandon Wininger were good friends from school, and that Kris King would occasionally stay the night at the Wells’s home with his parents’ permission. Ditullo, 20 at the time of the attack, assumed that the youth trying to flee the home he had invaded was the gay youth he intended to kill, and stabbed Kris King to death. Upon returning to the Neo-Nazi compound where he lived, Ditullo bragged to his fellow skinheads that he had murdered both Wells and her boy. According to testimony by a fellow skinhead and prison-mate, Corey Patnote, Ditullo claimed he was proud of what he had done. Patnote said Ditullio told him, “I killed ’em both, stabbed them in the head.” Prosecutors reminded jurors that Guy King, the murder victim’s father, received a Christmas card from Ditulio, decorated with a tombstone drawn on the front that read, “Rest In Peace. Here Lies Dead Faggot.” The message inside: “I hope your Christmas is full of memories of your dead gay son. Merry f—— Christmas.” After a nearly hung jury re-examined the DNA evidence from the attacks on Wells and King, they brought back a unanimous verdict of guilty against Ditullo on Thursday, December 16. He received 15 years for the attempt on the life of Tricia Wells, which he will serve concurrently with the life sentence for King’s murder. Bay News 9 reports that Charlene Bricken, King’s mother, expressed no sympathy for Ditullo after the trial. “I hope somebody gets him and he dies as brutal a death as my son did,” she said. Bricken, who says the past four years have been terribly difficult for her and the family, wants most of all for her son to be remembered as the generous, open, loving person he was in life.
Austin Becoming Unsafe for Gays: Bashing on 4th Street
Bobby Beltran, bashed for giving his friend a hug.
Austin, Texas – In an apparent gay bashing, a leading gay activist and his male friend were attacked on December 26 outside Austin’s popular nightclub, Rain. Bobby Beltran reported to the Dallas Voice that he and Christopher Ortega had just shared a parting hug outside the club at approximately 1:30 a.m., when a white sedan filled with five angry men stopped in the street shouting homophobic slurs at the couple. Beltran, who helped organize this year’s Queer Bomb in Austin, says that one of the men in the automobile shouted, “Fucking faggots! Cut out that queer shit!” According to On Top Magazine, Beltran yelled back, “That stuff’s not welcome here in Austin. We don’t accept that.” The quintet rushed out of the car, surrounded Beltran and Ortega, and assaulted them with punches, yells, and kicks. The gay men tried to fight off their attackers, and the violence lasted for three of four minutes until one of the assailants warned that police were coming. The attackers were described as two black men, two Latinos, and one white man. Beltran suffered cuts, bruises, and a wounded eye. Ortega suffered a major blow to the jaw that may have broken it. According to the gay men, somewhere between 20 and 30 onlookers witnessed that attack, but none of them lifted a finger to help. In the melee, Beltran shouted out the number of the license plate belonging to the white sedan, but no one bothered to write it down, and he cannot remember it after the fact. The non-responsiveness of the crowd (some of them gay), and the lukewarm response of the Austin Police to the brazen assault, has the LGBTQ community in Austin worried about the safety of a city that was until recently considered gay-friendly. Ortega told local NBC reporters from KXAN, “The response [of the police] was like ‘Sorry guys. We’ll give you a report number. We’ll never catch these guys.’” Beltran said to The Horn, a University of Texas Independent news outlet, “I’ve never in my life been in any kind of violent situation, especially a hate crime, so it’s been pretty traumatic.” Beltran continued. “Austin is supposed to be a gay haven, especially on 4th Street. What scares me even more is that nobody even helped. I’m so afraid to go back down there.” FBI statistics show Austin leads the state of Texas in reported anti-gay attacks for medium-sized cities. Beltran says the hate crime attack on Ortega and himself is the third such violent incident in the capital city this year. In February 2010, for example, two male team members from the Shady Ladies Softball Club were assaulted near the Austin City Hall. The attack on the gay athletes sparked a downtown March Against Hate last March. Beltran posted a photo of his injuries on the web (see above), and commented, “I’m just trying to get the word out there that this is going on in Austin, and it’s not safe right now. To find out that [gay bashing] is here in Austin on 4th Street, and knowing that fellow gay men were not doing anything about it, is just shocking.”
Repeal and Remembrance: Gay Military Martyrs and the End of DADT
Fallen Military Servicemembers
Washington, DC – On a red letter day when lawmakers voted to end the most notorious anti-gay policy in the federal canon, LGBT servicemembers and veterans who have been murdered because of their sexual and gender non-conformity must not be forgotten during the celebrations over passage of repeal of DADT. In a historic vote in the history of the human rights movement, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to end the ban on LGBT patriots from serving openly in the armed services of the United States. Saturday afternoon, 65 Senators voted for repeal with 31 in opposition. A simple majority of 51 was all that was required for passage of the Senate bill, which is identical to the one passed earlier in the week by the House of Representatives. Eight GOP Senators joined their Democratic colleagues to pass the repeal of the 17-year-old discriminatory policy that ended the military careers of 13,500 women and men because of their sexual orientation. Joe Manchin, the freshman Senator for West Virginia, was the only Democrat not voting for passage. According to the New York Times, his office informed the public that he had a “family commitment” he could not break.The bill now goes to President Obama for his signature to set the repeal in motion. GOP opponents of the repeal criticized the Democratic leadership of the Senate for the vote in the lame duck session just before the Holiday recess. Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Service Committee, disputed the Republican claims that Democrats were ramming legislation through just to please the so-called “gay lobby.” In remarks to the New York Times, Senator Levin (D-Michigan) said: “I’m not here for partisan reasons. I’m here because men and women wearing the uniform of the United States who are gay and lesbian have died for this country, because gay and lesbian men and women wearing the uniform of this country have their lives on the line right now.” Yet it is not only for the living that this vote is significant. Our military dead are honored by this historic vote to end anti-LGBT discrimination, among whom are far too many gay servicemembers who were killed because of their sexual orientation. Our gay military martyrs, murdered because of homophobia, heterosexism, and transphobia in the armed services loom large in the memory of the LGBTQ community today because they are both a sign of hope and caution. They are a sign of hope that no more women and men need lose their lives in the military because of their sexual orientation and gender presentation. They are a sign of caution, because the passage of DADT repeal in no way guarantees the end of anti-gay violence in the military. We must name our LGBT military dead until violence against queer servicemembers ceases forever: Seaman Allen Schindler was beaten to death by shipmates in a public toilet in Sasebo, Japan. PFC Barry Winchell was murdered with a baseball bat in the Army barracks at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Seaman August Provost was shot to death on base in San Diego, and then his body was set afire in a guard shack in the vain attempt to destroy evidence of the murder. Army veteran Michael Scott Goucher was lured into a fatal ambush by local youths near his home in Pennsylvania. These four are representative of the many more slaughtered by ignorance and hate by fellow servicemembers and civilians. Pundits say that after President Obama signs the Repeal Act into law, it will still take at least sixty days for the military ban to be lifted for LGBT military personnel. Until that time, the current discriminatory law stays in effect. But the culture of violence that harasses and kills LGBT women and men who wear the uniform remains virulently poised to take more lives until the root of fear is eliminated in the armed services. To that end, the historic passage of the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is simply the beginning of a new campaign, in the name of our gay military martyrs, to replace the fear and loathing of the sexual minority with education and respect.
Gays Most Often Targeted by Hate Crimes in America; SPLC Report Confirms Alarming News
Montgomery, Alabama – In a blockbuster announcement released today, the highly respected Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual Intelligence Report confirms that LGBTQ people are the most often targeted group for physical violence in American life. As human rights groups scored advances for LGBTQ people in 2009, hard-core anti-gay groups have stepped up hate speech and are digging in to reverse the justice done to queer folk throughout the United States. In its analysis of better than 14 years of data on hate crimes, the SPLC found that LGBTQ people were twice as likely to be the victims of violent attacks than Jews or African Americans, more than four times more likely than Muslims, and 14 times more likely than Latinos and Latinas. As gay and lesbian people increase in acceptability among the populace at large, anti-gay groups are becoming far more extreme in opposition, and are employing alarming new tactics to undermine the queer community. PR Newswire and US Newswire quote Mark Potok, editor of the Winter 2010 issue of the SPLC Intelligence Report: “As Americans become more accepting of homosexuals, the most extreme elements of the anti-gay movement are digging in their heels and continuing to defame gays and lesbians with falsehoods that grow more incendiary by the day. The leaders of this movement may deny it, but it seems clear that their demonization of homosexuals plays a role in fomenting the violence, hatred and bullying we’re seeing.” Spurred on by a belief that homosexuality threatens “historic Christian faith,” hard-line religious groups and their secular right wing political allies are blaming the very people and organizations dedicated to protecting the LGBTQ community, especially LGBTQ teenagers who have been reported as committing “bullycide” from anti-gay harassment in recent weeks. As Evelyn Schlatter writes in her Intelligence Report article on religiously-motivated anti-gay bias groups: “Even as some well-known anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family moderate their views, a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities. These groups’ influence reaches far beyond what their size would suggest, because the “facts” they disseminate about homosexuality are often amplified by certain politicians, other groups and even news organizations.” A particular target for the ire of the religious right has been GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which has been most outspoken against the bullying of LGBTQ youth in American schools through its “Safe Schools” campaign. Eighteen anti-LGBTQ hate groups are profiled in the report, and ten popular myths about LGBTQ people are debunked, as well, including the irrational claim that homosexuals were somehow responsible for the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews during the Second World War. The Report does contend that some religious leaders are speaking out against anti-gay violence, such as the Rev. Fritz Ritsch, Senior Minister of Fort Worth’s St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church: “The recent epidemic of bullying-related teen suicides is a wake-up call to us moderate Christians,” Rev. Ritsch, wrote in October in the Fort Worth, Texas, Star-Telegram. “To most unchurched Americans — meaning most Americans — the fruit of the church is bitter indeed. … [T]he bullying crisis has put a fine point on the need for moderates to challenge the theological bullies from our own bully pulpits. We cannot equivocate. Children are dying. We need to speak up. If not now, when?” The summation of the SPLC report is grimly realistic. For the near term, religiously-spawned anti-LGBTQ violence will continue, and perhaps increase. The report concludes, in part: “Although leaders of the hard core of the religious right deny it, it seems clear that their demonizing propaganda plays a role in fomenting that violence.” It is up to all people of good conscience–especially people who identify with organized religion–to find the courage and spiritual resources to combat religiously and politically motivated violence against LGBTQ folk everywhere.
“Bullycide” Takes Life of Hoosier Teen
Fishers, Indiana – Hundreds of mourners gathered on Monday to remember a 14-year-old Hamilton Southeastern High School freshman whom his parents and friends say took his life in response to incessant bullying. WISH TV News 8 reports that Corey and Natalie Bell, the parents of Jamarcus “Bucko” Bell, who took his own life last Wednesday, want to send a strong message that bullying kills. The Bells scheduled an emergency conference with the dean of students at Hamilton Southeastern before the suicide of their son because they were alarmed at the extent of the bullying Jamarcus admitted he was enduring at school. The conference, put off for days, never happened, according to Jamarcus’s parents, who are calling for a full investigation into the bullying situation at HSE. WTHR News 13 broadcast that the Superintendent of Schools is now speaking out to parents and the press, trying to impress upon the public that the school district “takes bullying very seriously.” Many students, friends, and alumni of Hamilton Southeastern High, however, aren’t buying what the Superintendent says, since it is too little, too late. Present and former students of HSE contend that they were bullied in the halls, gym, classrooms, and grounds of the school, and that while school officials and teachers knew about the problems with bullying, they did nothing to prevent it or to protect the targets of the harassment. In Jamaracus’s case, his parents say that he was bullied from the time the family moved into the school district three years ago. Corey Bell says that his son was singled out for torment first at Fishers Junior High School, and then this year at HSE. The most graphic story the Bells are telling is how Jamarcus was bullied in welding class one day last week, when student antagonists threw fragments of steel at the back of Jamarcus’s head. Student witnesses have corroborated the welding class account, according to Indystar.com. Jamarcus is remembered as a good student and good friend by his peers. He was 5′ 8″ tall, and an aspiring baseball player. His father told the Indianapolis Star that he seldom talked about his troubles: “He shared bits and pieces, but he was more or less trying to hold it in,” Corey Moore said. “He wasn’t confrontational. He wasn’t aggressive. He was good at holding stuff in. We couldn’t tell how bad it was, but he didn’t seclude himself.” Bell is the second high-profile “bullycide” case in Indiana since September. Last month, the suicide of gay teen Billy Lucas of Greensburg, Indiana, touched off national attention to the issue of anti-LGBTQ bullying in schools. At the packed memorial service in the Eastern Star Church of Fishers, Jamaracus was remembered with tears and laughter. He was also remembered by mourners who came from near and far as yet another victim of “bullycide.” While news stories have not mentioned sexual innuendo or anti-gay slurs as part of the repertoire of Jamarcus’s harassers, such attacks on the masculinity of young teen men is the rule, rather than the exception in cases of school suicide. Often a complex series of oppressions play a part in the desperate decision of a youth to take his own life–not just anti-gay epithets, but also racial, ethnic, and class factors are commonly found to torment young people as they face daily harassment in a school culture that tolerates bullies but not youth of difference. At the end of the Monday memorial for Jamarcus, hundreds of multicolored balloons were released in the night air, carrying their memories of the gentle athlete who saw no other way out of his desperate situation in school.
Bigots Target Birthplace of Gay Rights Movement With Hate-Crime Wave
Stonewall Inn, NYC, site of one of many recent anti-gay attacks
Greenwich Village, New York City, New York – The Villager reports a “hate-crime wave” striking Greenwich Village, acknowledged widely as the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ Rights Movement. In the past two weeks, police and anti-violence advocates noted four violent attacks against patrons of gay bars. A 45-year-old Queens man has been charged in the two most recent assaults with third-degree assault as a hate crime, and third-degree robbery for the attacks which both took place on October 11–just ten minutes apart. Frederick Giunta allegedly punched a 31-year-old gay man in the face at Ty’s Bar on Christopher Street after grabbing the victim’s wallet. Guinta then walked to Julius’ Bar on W. 159th and Waverly Place, where he allegedly attacked an African American bartender while shouting anti-gay and anti-black slurs at him. According to The Villager, the suspect struck Greg Davis, 48, in the face while yelling at him, “What are you going to do?” and calling him a racial slur, then yelling at him, “You are a f—— faggot.” Sources in the police department told reporters that Guinta had a record of violence against gay men in the area since 2002, when he pleaded guilty to robbing a gay man he picked up at Rawhide Bar in Chelsea. On October 4, two Staten Island men attacked a man in the restroom of the historic Stonewall Inn on Sheridan Square–but their intended victim fought back. The New York Post reports that Matthew Francis, 21, and Christopher Orlando, 17, both of Staten Island, gay bashed a Washington, D.C. visitor to the Stonewall Inn with intent to harm and rob him. Benjamin Carver, 34, their intended victim, fought back against the thugs, and drove them out of the restroom. Carver and his boyfriend, with the assistance of the Stonewall Inn staff, threw the Staten Island men out of the bar. Carver told the Post, “I was never afraid, throughout the whole experience. To so many of these bullies, they think that gay people are an easy target, and that we’re just going to give in. Those two guys found out that night that’s not the case.” Carver and Orlando have been charged with assault as a hate crime and attempted robbery. Choosing historic gay establishments like Stonewall Inn and Julius’s bar sends LGBT residents of the village an ominous warning: gay liberation is still a long time coming in the Empire State and the nation. The Stonewall Inn was the scene of the outbreak of the Stonewall Uprising of June 1969, when street kids, lesbians, gay men, and drag queens fought back agains the oppression of the NYPD. Julius’ Bar is the oldest continuing gay bar in Manhattan. On October 1, 20-yer-old Andrew Jackson was arrested and charged with hate-crime assault and gang-related assault on three gay men on Ninth Avenue and 25th Street in Chelsea, just blocks away from the West Village bars where the later anti-gay attacks occurred. Two other suspects are being sought by police in connection with the October 1 incident. New York City Council Speaker, openly-lesbian Christine Quinn, credits the swift arrests in all these cases to the professionalism of the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force. Quinn told the Villager, “Tragically, this is just the most recent in a series of hate crimes to strike our city and neighborhoods in recent weeks.” New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Program’s Executive Director Sharon Stapel told the press, “This [October 11] attack underscores our need to stop the hate speech and anti-LGBTQ vitriol that results in this kind of attack.”
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…
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Communicate with the Unfinished Lives project team:
info@unfinishedlivesblog.com
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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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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 
President Signs DADT Repeal: What This Means for America’s LGBTQ Community
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December 22, 2010 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, DADT, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Legislation, Lesbian women, military, Military Chaplaincy, Native Americans, Politics, religious intolerance, Remembrances, Repeal of DADT, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, transgender persons, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy, Washington, D.C. | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual people, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino / Latina Americans, Lesbians, military, Military Chaplaincy, National Guard, religious intolerance, Remembrances, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy | Comments Off on President Signs DADT Repeal: What This Means for America’s LGBTQ Community