Anti-Gay NC Church Members Indicted for Kidnapping and Assaulting a Gay Man
Matthew Fenner, Gay Christian, kidnapped, beaten, and strangled to free him from “demon possession.”
Spindale, North Carolina – Five members of a controversial church in rural Western North Carolina have been indicted for felony anti-gay kidnapping and assault on a 21-year-old gay man. A grand jury indicted Justin Brock Covington, Brooke McFadden Covington, Robert Louis Walker Jr. and Adam Christopher Bartley on second degree kidnapping and assault charges. A fifth person, Sarah Covington Anderson, was indicted on Monday, December 8 on second degree kidnapping as well as simple assault and assault by strangulation, according to QNotes. Matthew Fenner, currently an anthropology student a the University of North Carolina, told the Associated Press that he was surrounded by members of the Word of Faith Fellowship and attacked on January 27, 2013. Fenner brought the charges against his assailants, he said, because he was one of several others who had been victimized by the church in recent years, and his attackers made him fear for his life. As Fenner said to WRAL News, “The line between religion and abuse, they are crossing it quite severely. That’s why I’m doing this. They have to know you cannot hurt people.” An attorney for the five indicted church members claims that Fenner’s charges are unfounded and “a complete fabrication.”
In a period of self-questioning and self-doubt about his sexual orientation, Fenner and his mother joined the 750-member Rutherford County church and started to attend the church’s school, he said. “My mom and I were always really close and I just thought maybe I can keep an open mind and see if it works — see if I can change. Obviously, that was really a stupid decision because you can’t change who you are. But in my mind it seemed like the right thing to do,” he told the AP. Fenner worked as a tutor and attended church services. He said that when church members began to suspect he was gay, incidents of harassment began against him.
The church has become a flash point of controversy in the Spindale community, exercising strong influences upon the social and political life of this small town 63 miles southeast of Asheville. WRAL reports that former church members say the congregation’s leadership tries to control many aspects of its membership’s lives, including personal dressing habits, where to live and work, and when to have sexual relations with their spouses. In 2012, another gay man, Michael Lowry, accused members of the church with assaulting him for being gay, but later recanted his claims, a pattern of abusive control sometimes seen when individuals are intimidated for bringing charges against anti-gay congregations. Lowry, no longer a member of the church, now says he was manipulated into retracting his accusations. National gay and lesbian rights advocacy groups have criticized the Word of Faith Fellowship for abusing several young men for being gay whose parents were members of the church. Control over members thoughts and ideas even caused Fenner’s own mother and brother, who are members of the church, to disbelieve his account of the attack, and to testify against him in court proceedings. But Fenner would not be dissuaded from pressing for justice in his case, even though it took nearly two years for authorities to take him seriously and bring the indictments against his alleged assailants.
Suspects indicted for attacking, kidnapping Matthew Fenner. Left to right: Sarah Covington Anderson, Robert Louis Walker Jr., Justin Covington, Adam Bartley and Brooke Covington.
The church practices “deliverance,” a ritual including “blasting,” high-pitched screaming prayers and thumping suspected gay people to liberate them from their “demons of homosexuality.” Fenner testified that three members of the church asked him to join them at the back of the sanctuary at the evening service on January 27, 2013, but were soon joined by 15 to 20 other church members who commenced the attack upon him. They held him against his will for over two hours, forcing him into a chair and threatening him with confinement in the sanctuary if he did not “confess his sins.” Justin Brock Covington, Brooke McFadden Covington, Robert Louis Walker Jr. and Adam Christopher Bartley allegedly beat him physically and forced him down into the chair while other members surrounded and screamed at him to stop resisting. In a police affidavit, Fenner testified, “By this point, Sarah [Covington Anderson] began to tell me how much she couldn’t stand to be around me and that I was disgusting because of my sexual orientation. I told her that I was sorry that I didn’t know what she wanted me to tell her and to which she then slapped me with a great amount of force across my left cheek. At this point I was really starting to get scared.” He identified Covington Anderson as the assailant who strangled him about the neck. As Fenner told WSPA Channel 7 News, “My head was like being flung back, my vision was going brown and black. I couldn’t breathe and I’m sitting here thinking if I don’t get out of this, I’m probably going to die.”
Covered in bruises on his collarbone, neck, chest, and shoulders, Fenner finally got free of the assault, and ran to his grandmother’s home. His own mother refused to believe his account of what had happened to him. But Brent Childers of the North Carolina-based advocacy group, Faith In America, has no doubt that what unfolded on that night was nothing less than religious-based bigotry. “It’s pretty clear to me,” Childers told WRAL, “that these individuals wanted to inflict pain on Matthew because of his sexual orientation.”
Josh Farmer, the church’s attorney, says he looks forward to a jury trial to demonstrate that no one carried out any physical harm to Fenner. But that is not preventing this determined young man from pressing forward with the case because he knows it is the right thing to do. “This is the only way that I can get my voice out there to say look, this kind of stuff is happening. It happened to me and it just kind of sheds some light onto the things that are going on in there and that people do know, but can’t really have the facts to go with it,” Fenner said to reporters from WSPA Channel 7.
French Homophobia Skyrockets 78%; Forces Reassessment of LGBTQ “Progress”
Paris victim Wilfred de Bruijn, “the face of homophobia in France,” and French anti-gay marriage protestors.
Paris, France – The number of documented homophobic attacks is ballooning out of control, says a report published by the French anti-homophobia watchdog, SOS Homophobie. Since the passage of France’s pro-LGBTQ marriage law, advocates have been shocked by a rise of 78 percent in violent crimes against gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual residents in France during 2013. The ominous meaning of this spike in violence in a supposedly “enlightened” European culture is forcing advocates, activists, and government officials to rethink narratives of progress on the issue of human equality.
SOS Homophobie, the only organization with reliable statistics on attacks against LGBTQ people in France, says that a violent physical attack against queer people is occurring no less than once every two days, and increase of 54 percent since 2012, but this statistic does not reflect the whole story. The SOS Helpline received an astounding 3,500 calls in 2013, as opposed to 1,977 in all of 2012, registering an overall increase in anti-gay hate crime of the reported 78 percent. “In the last twenty years the number of reports of incidents [of homophobia] received by our association have not stopped growing, but in 2013 they exploded,” notes the most recent SOS Homphobie report. The report also found that the number of anti-gay insults online rose from 656 in 2012 to 1,723 cases in 2013, and the number of incidents that occurred in a school increased by 25 percent.
Justice and Interior ministries have been caught napping by these startling numbers, according to EDGEBOSTON. An ideology of “inevitable progress” on matters of human rights has caused Gallic cultural leaders to be blindsided by the shift towards anti-gay rhetoric and physical violence since the legal embrace of same-sex marriage. “There’s no doubt the rise in homophobic acts was linked to the context of the opposition against gay marriage,” Gregory Premon, spokesperson for SOS Homophobie, said to The Local. “Homophobic words and statements became trivialized during this period and helped legitimize insults and homophobic violence.”
A Dutch resident of northern Paris, who was punched and kicked senseless on a street near his home last month, has become the “face” of this new wave of anti-gay violence in France. Wilfred de Bruijn’s skull was fractured in five places and he lost a tooth in the attack, according to The Independent. He and his boyfriend Olivier were walking arm-in-arm at the time of the savage assault. “I woke up in an ambulance covered in blood, missing tooth and broken bones around the eye,” Mr. de Bruijn told The Local. “I’m home now. Very sad. Olivier takes care of me. Forbidden to work for at least 10 days.”
Mr. de Bruijn places the blame for the attack upon the shoulders of anti-same sex marriage protestors, and a group has taken credit for the brutal act. Le Printemps Français (“The French Spring”), whose membership is believed to be largely comprised of hardline Catholics and royalists, now boasts that it sanctioned and carried out the assault against Mr. de Bruijn and his lover. The shift from anti-LGBTQ marriage to a more general disgust against all queer and gender variant people is becoming more and more obvious. As Mr. de Bruijn said to The Independent, “The [anti-gay-marriage campaigners] know very well what can happen if you repeat, repeat, repeat that these people are lower human beings. Of course, it will have a result.”
Though the French government has reacted with outrage to the news of the attacks on Messieurs de Bruijn and Olivier, and another recent gay victim, Mr. Raphael le Clerca in Nice, confidence in governmental authority to cause social change in such a charged environment has been seriously shaken in what was once a bastion of culture and forward thinking. In the U.S. context, as well, the rise in Western European homophobia and heterosexism is not to be taken lightly.
Geography of homophobic Tweets in the USA in 2013 (source: The Atlantic Magazine).
While the Marriage Equality movement is advancing on the judicial front, most recently in the southern and western states of Arkansas and Idaho, it cannot be ignored any longer that incidents of anti-LGBTQ violence, especially against gay men and transgender people, has risen each year since the passage of the Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in October 2009. The heat of anti-gay rhetoric from the Religious Right Wing has intensified, and homophobic Christianist preachers like Scott Lively have pressed their hate agenda abroad wherever they have gotten the chance, in Russia and the Slavic countries of the former Soviet Union, and in Central Africa, for example. While the attention of U.S. advocacy groups is upon Marriage Equality and a looming struggle in the U.S. Supreme Court, anti-LGBTQ attitudes have largely gone unaddressed, thanks to a blind belief in “inevitable social progress,” the irrelevance of domestic religious bigotry, and trust that the younger generations of Americans will finally tip the balance towards tolerance throughout the U.S. population.
We know, however, who is killing LGBTQ people in such alarming numbers in the U.S.A.: the very young who are supposedly their saviors. The persons who murder and maim queer folk in the United States are predominantly young men from 17 to 35 years of age. We also know that the under appreciated cultural power of religion to spawn false narratives of government oppression of “religious freedom” lies just below the surface of American society. And American public and private schools are hotbeds of un addressed bullying and violence against gender variant youth, with outrageous consequences for vulnerable children every week in these United States.
The Marriage Equality movement is not essentially about changing foundational attitudes towards people of difference. It is about stretching societal and cultural boundaries just enough to let same sex couples inside, where they can enjoy a similacrum of “normal life.” Marriage is a conservative issue in American life, and always has been. The serious and radical work of changing hearts and minds to accept challenging differences in society remains to be done, and cannot be ignored if Americans do not want to face the crisis their French allies are currently facing “just across the Pond.”
It is past time Americans take to heart the trenchant remarks of a French government spokesman outraged by the recent rise of homophobia in France: “The hatred and homophobic remarks have no place in our country and are punishable by law. The government strongly condemns these acts. These outbursts are unacceptable. When the most basic civil rights of our citizens are attacked, the authority of the state is at stake.”
Anti-Gay Activist Pastor Scott Lively Ordered to Stand Trial for Crimes Against Humanity
Scott Lively, American anti-gay extremist, now to be defendant in international crimes against humanity lawsuit case.
Springfield, Massachusetts – In a historic judicial ruling, a federal judge denied a motion filed on behalf of U.S. hate pastor Scott Lively asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Lively of international crimes against humanity. This unprecedented decision by Judge Michael A. Ponsor, Senior Judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, effectively orders Lively to face charges that establish anti-gay persecution as a crime against humanity, according to Out.com. In his ruling issued on Wednesday, August 14, U.S. District Judge Ponsor stated, “Widespread, systematic persecution of LGBTI people constitutes a crime against humanity that unquestionably violates international norms.” Judge Ponsor, a Rhodes scholar and widely respected federal justice, went on to say, “The history and current existence of discrimination against LGBTI people is precisely what qualifies them as a distinct targeted group eligible for protection under international law. The fact that a group continues to be vulnerable to widespread, systematic persecution in some parts of the world simply cannot shield one who commits a crime against humanity from liability.”
![Ugandan protestors outside London embassy [Voice of America photo].](https://unfinishedlives.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/uganda-voa.jpg)
Ugandan protestors outside London embassy [Voice of America photo].
U.S. District Judge Michael A. Ponsor issued the historic ruling against Scott Lively on August 14, 2013.
While the court battle is hardly over, Wednesday’s ruling in U.S. District Court is a clear defeat of Lively’s heretofore unaccountable hate speech and advocacy against sexual and gender variant minorities, and a shot across the bow of any other individuals or organizations that seek to deny the rights of LGBTQI people throughout the world. It is also a blow to the anti-gay Liberty Counsel, a rightwing legal consortium created by the arch heterosexist/homphobic evangelical ideologue, Rev. Jerry Falwell, which set out to defend Lively from the CCR/SMUG lawsuit. The lead attorney for CCR, Pam Spees, responded to press requests for comment, saying, “We are gratified that the court recognized the persecution and the gravity of the danger faced by our clients as a result of Scott Lively’s actions. Lively’s single-minded campaign has worked to criminalize their very existence, strip away their fundamental rights and threaten their physical safety.” Frank Mugisha, Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, said to Gay Star News after the ruling was made public Wednesday, “Today’s ruling is a significant victory for human rights everywhere but most especially for LGBTI Ugandans who are seeking accountability from those orchestrating our persecution.”
Anti-Gay “Conversion Camp” Allegedly Tortures Effeminate Teenage Boy to Death
Raymond Buys, 15, near death from the ravages of an anti-gay conversion camp.
Johannesburg, South Africa – “Man Up or Die.” That is the way an international human rights advocate characterizes the philosophy of an ex-gay conversion camp radically committed to “beating the gay” out of boys with “feminine traits.” South African born activist, Melanie Nathan reports in her blog that 15-year-old Raymond Buys died as a consequence of torture and starvation allegedly imposed on him at a three-month “training course” at Echo Wild Game Rangers Camp, located an hour south of Johannesburg. Esteemed British newspaper, The Telegraph, confirms that Buys is one of three young men whose deaths are being blamed on Alex de Koker, 49, Echo Wild’s director, and his accomplice, Michael Erasmus, 20. Both of the accused are in custody awaiting trial under charges of “murder, child abuse and neglect, along with two cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in relation to Mr Buys’ death.” Scott De Buitléir, a blogger for Elie, reports that de Koker has claimed to be innocent of the charges.
Young Mr. Buys, who suffered from a learning disability, was sent to Echo Wild to help him become more masculine by his mother, Wilna Buys, in January 2011. His mother says she spoke to her son three times during the training camp, allowed to speak with him only on speakerphone so their conversation could be monitored. De Koker claimed young Buys was “self-harming.” When his mother asked him to explain what prompted his self-injuries, the youth denied that he was doing these things to himself, as she later told the court. It remains unclear why Mrs. Buys did not act at that time to withdraw her child from the training course, an expensive proposition at $2,000 per month. Two months into the three-month-long course, which turned out to be a full blown ex-gay, reparative therapy boot camp, Mr. Buys lay dying in hospital. He allegedly had been beaten until his arm was broken multiple times, electrocuted with a taser-like device, chained to his bed and not released to use a bathroom, starved until he was severely dehydrated and emaciated, forced to eat his own feces and laundry detergent, and hit until his skull was cracked and his brain was damaged. Hospital officials told that he had a “zero chance” of survival. Within two weeks, The Telegraph reports, the teenager died. “My child was a skeleton,” Mrs. Buys told the Vereeniging District Court. ”He had head injuries and torn ears, there were bruises on his face and arms and cigarette burns on his body.”
Two other young men, 25-year-old Erich Calitz and Nicolas Van Der Walt, 19, also died of brain injuries allegedly inflicted at the camp, according to the Huffington Post. Alex de Koker, also the chief suspect in the deaths of Mr. Calitz and Mr. Van Der Walt, had reassured Mrs. Buys that he could help her boy become a man and find a good job in the wildlife service. De Koker’s ties to a rightwing white supremacist homophobic group called the AWB/Iron Guards movement are being investigated.
The sexual orientation of the three young victims of these heinous anti-gay crimes has never been definitively established. But, as Melanie Nathan points out, any young man who exhibits “feminine characteristics” in Afrikaans culture is considered to be a “moffie,” an epithet akin to “faggot.” Ms. Nathan explains, “The idea of the [Echo Wild] camp is to apparently make men of teens and to ‘cure’ ‘feminine traits’ in male youths…another way of saying gay reparative therapy, instead in this instance that therapy involved ‘beating the gay out of the kid’– torture, and if torture didn’t effect the desired change, then certainly murder would; after all a dead teen is not a gay teen.”
Mrs. Buys told The Telegraph, “I trusted Alex de Koker with the life of my child.” Whether wittingly or unwittingly, she turned her son over to a virulently, homophobic group for a “cure.” And it cost the boy his life.
The Golden Rule and Anti-Gay Discrimination
Dallas Voice photo
College Station, Texas – The Texas A&M University Student Senate voted on April 3 to discriminate openly against their fellow LGBT students under the guise of “religious freedom.” By a vote of 35 to 28, the notorious “Religious Funding Exemption Bill,” S.B 65-70, was approved, endorsing the request of any student “who has a religious objection” to opt out of the use of their student activities fees to support the Texas A&M GLBT Center. The only religiously appropriate response this ordained Baptist minister and theologian is able to muster at this sad news is “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
Cynical efforts to cloak anti-LGBT discrimination in religious authority have been tried and found wanting many times before, even on the Texas A&M campus. In 2011, such a bias-driven initiative was defeated, along with a parallel effort in the Texas legislature to defund other university LGBT service centers throughout the state. This year, such a parallel legislative effort using the disguise of religious liberty has already begun in the legislature. One is left to wonder whether there is a conspiracy between a conservative faction of the Texas state government and bias-driven student activists, given these strangely similar resolutions. It should be lost on no one that arch-conservative and openly anti-gay Governor Rick Perry is an alumnus and former cheerleader from Texas A&M.
Religious people of goodwill everywhere should sound the alarm when the language of the Bible and religious teachings are hijacked to support an extremist agenda. Such abuses not only harm the marginalized communities they target, in this case the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. They also harm the perception of religion in public life, making religion seem bigoted, narrow minded, and hostile to the very idea of diversity that makes both church and state stronger and more humane.
The vast majority of scholars of religion and philosophy, Christian and Jewish, have rejected the sort of religion-based bigotry being used to justify efforts to roll back the calendar to a less diverse, less just day and time. No credible argument can be made for the Bible’s opposition to committed, loving, same-sex relationships. No ancient faith leader, from Moses to Jesus to the Apostle Paul, ever had a concept of sexual orientation in their worldview at the time of the establishment of Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Credible biblical scholarship debunks the “religious argument” from Scripture that the so-called traditional values folks have been hanging onto for decades now. While zombies may be popular on cable television, such attempts to marshal biblical texts through efforts like S.B. 65-70 that discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students, faculty and staff in the name of “religious freedom” are no more than the walking dead.
The administration of Texas A&M long ago saw fit to leave the prejudices of racism, misogyny, ableism, anti-Semitism, and anti-gay bias back in the bad old days of the past, when people were less educated and less attuned to the demands of a pluralistic, diverse, multi-ethnic, and multi-orientational country. Multitudes of LGBT Texans, their families, friends, and their progressive allies are proud of the A&M community for establishing one of the premier GLBT resource centers in the state of Texas and in the United States. Such narrow minded proposals as the one passed by Student Senate in College Station deny the fact that millions of dollars come from tax paying LGBT Texans who are glad to support a great university like A&M, whether they attended there or not, and do not need to vet every use of funds on a university campus. A state school is answerable to millions of people beyond its campus, and the progressive community in the Lone Star State surely does not want a public university to endorse discrimination against anyone.
Jesus practiced and taught the Golden Rule.
As a Baptist minister, ordained to the Gospel ministry for 36 years now, I can testify that support for the A&M GLBT Resource Center and others like it are a good thing—a very good thing, and one I am proud of, both as a Baptist and a Golden Rule Christian. I have had the great privilege of visiting the campus, of meeting the leadership of the GLBT Center, and of hearing of its history of service to the larger university community since its establishment in 1994. I wonder why some of my fellow-believers who profess to adhere to the teachings of the Bible and Jesus Christ so easily dismiss the very Golden Rule Jesus commended to his disciples—that we treat others as we would have them treat us (see Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 22:36-40)? Nothing else trumps that great teaching in either Christianity or Judaism, as the law, the prophets, and the Christ testify. Why would self-professed followers of the Word now seek to turn the oracle of true freedom into a form of discrimination, to pervert it from its gracious purposes? I do not know.
The heart of religion in a free state is to hold people above ideologies, and protect us from the very sort of discrimination this noxious Student Senate bill has enacted in the name of religion. We hope the A&M community will reconsider what it has done, will not make the same, tired mistakes of centuries of religiously-based bigotry, redress this misbegotten action, and come to a richer, fuller understanding of responsible religious freedom—to care for those who have no one else to care for them in the name of God—rather than to discriminate as if there were some sort of totalizing state religion in Texas.
I and many others like me stand with the brave LGBT students and their allies who spoke out against the harm and discrimination their elected representatives have enacted. I hope many of these LGBT Aggies will choose to run for Student Government office, and defeat some of their classmates so they may be sent back to the classroom of real religion, Golden Rule Religion, where good faith overcomes bad religion, and people of goodwill learn how to devise new ways to treat one another as they themselves wish to be treated.
~ Rev. Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Founder and Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas
Lesbians Thrown Out of Texas Bar, Then Beaten in Possible Hate Crime
Julie Ward says she and her friends were held and beaten for being lesbians (KVUE News image)
Weir, Texas – A group of lesbians say that they were thrown out of a local bar and then held and beaten because of their sexual orientation. Weir, Texas is a town of 500+ souls in Northeast Williamson County, east of Georgetown and north of Austin. Julie Ward, her sister, sister-in-law, and another friend stopped in the Bunkhouse Bar, the only place to get an adult drink in the town, late on Sunday, according to the Dallas Voice. Ward, one of the victims in the crime, said to KVUE News that she and her party got beers and started playing pool. A female employee of the Bunkhouse approached them to tell them the bar “didn’t serve [their] type,” that they were not welcome there, and to see them out the door. When the group of women moved outside, patrons of the bar followed them into the parking lot, seized them, and commenced to beat them while hurling anti-lesbian slurs at them.
Ward says that women held them while the men from the bar beat them. She told KVUE: “As we came outside into the parking lot, we were followed by the patrons of the bar and our arms were held back by women and we were beaten by men. A man told me if I was going to look like a man, I better be able to take a hit like a man, and I was punched in the face at that moment and hit the ground.” Ward continued: “We’re just people too. We’re normal people that wanted to be in a bar. We wanted to spend our money there. We wanted to play pool there and because of our sexuality we weren’t welcome.” Ward, her friend, and her sister suffered multiple scrapes, bruises, and cuts on their arms and legs from the beating.
A bar spokeswoman says that “sexual preference” didn’t cause the attack. In her version of the incident, the lesbians were “rough housing,” and were asked to leave. No explanation was given of why patrons of the bar followed the victims outside, held and beat them. Weir residents are making the customary defense of their hometown, saying that things like a lesbian beat-down don’t occur in their close knit community.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Department says that the investigation is ongoing, and if a hate crime was perpetrated, then the case will be treated as a bias crime at that time. No arrests in the beating have yet been announced.
Soulforce Founders Leaving Virginia; Say It’s No Longer Safe for Gays — A Special Comment
Lynchburg, Virginia – In a wakeup call to gays and their allies, Mel White and Gary Nixon, co-founders of LGBTQ advocacy group Soulforce, are leaving their home in Virginia for California–because they believe the Old Dominion is not safe for LGBTQ people any longer. Rev. Dr. White writes today in the News and Advance: “With a great deal of sadness and a real sense of failure, Gary and I are leaving this beautiful city and the wonderful new friends we’ve made here. We thought that in 10 years our witness would have helped in some small way to change Virginia for the better.” In fact, Dr. White goes on to say, it has gotten dangerously worse. “During our 10 years in Virginia,” he writes, “we’ve watched this great state turn against its gay and lesbian residents. Not only are we denied the rights and protections of marriage, our relationships are no longer safe here even when “protected” by wills or powers of attorney.”
Dr. White and his partner of 30 years, Gary Nixon, embody the heart and soul of advocacy for LGBTQ people in America. After ghostwriting Jerry Falwell’s life story, Dr. White had to acknowledge the extremist homophobia generated by the so-called Moral Majority and the rest of the Religious Right Wing–coming out to the world as a gay man and ordained minister. He and Gary established and led Soulforce to provide a voice countering religion-based bigotry throughout America’s faith communities–one based on the non-violent principles of Gandhi and King. Their advocacy against hate crimes of violence against the LGBTQ community has been legendary, inspiring many gays and lesbians to resist the damnation cynical religious leaders wished on them.
But now this courageous, generous couple have seen things in Virginia cross the line for queer folk. As Dr. White goes on to say in the News and Advance, the long slide toward bigotry took off in 2006 when the citizens of Virginia gave in to hate and wrote anti-gay discrimination into the Virginia state constitution. “Of all the states with constitutional amendments prohibiting marriage equality,” he writes, “Virginia became the most strident and mean-spirited.” Most recently, legislation banning adoption of children by gay and lesbian couples in the Old Dominion passed into law: “When the General Assembly denies lesbians and gays the right to adopt or provide foster care, they are implying that we aren’t capable of being loving and trustworthy parents and even worse that we are a threat to children.”
Hundreds of friends and well-wishers have visited White and Nixon’s home to show their love, appreciation, and support of the work for justice they have done, as WSET-TV Channel 13 reported. Ever gracious, Dr. White said to the gathering, “We’re starting a new chapter of our lives, we don’t know what’s gonna happen next, but we’re gonna be close to the family, we’re gonna be in our favorite church, All Saint’s Episcopal, we’re gonna be by my favorite beach, so we’re gonna let God do the rest.” He and Gary look forward to a new day in Virginia and the nation, when freedom and equality for LGBTQ people can flourish in safety.
Many LGBTQ people leave advocacy to people like Mel White and Gary Nixon. Many live in a bubble of false security. They persist to believe that if some must die or suffer violence and discrimination, it will always befall “the other guy,” and not them. Straight allies of the queer community commit the same error, living in a fantasy that President Obama will surely be re-elected, and radical extremists who are besieging women, racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants will leave the LGBTQ population alone. Nothing could be further from the truth, as White and Nixon’s decision to move back to California fairly shouts out to anyone who will listen.
We at the Unfinished Lives Project wish Mel and Gary well as they go on to the next chapter in their lives. No couple deserves more appreciation for standing tall against anti-gay violence. We can only hope they will find a safer, better place in the Golden State. But to the hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ people who continue to live in Virginia, and to any queer person in a so-called “Red” state (like us in Texas), or in any “Purple” swing state, we say that the job of advocating for non-violence, justice and equality is now yours to do. No more fantasies of safety. No more passing the buck. As White and Nixon warn us, we could lose everything in this political and spiritual climate if we do not step up and join the struggle for ourselves. ~ Rev. Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, founder of the Unfinished Lives Project
Anti-Gay Hate Groups Protest Southern Poverty Law Center—For Intolerance!
Anti-gay hate groups and a few Black pastors protest outside SPLC offices last week.
Montgomery, Alabama – A dozen African American ministers and representatives of anti-gay hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) picketed and protested in front of the justice organization’s headquarters in Montgomery, according to a post by the SPLC. Stung by being listed publicly as anti-gay hate groups because of many documented instances of spreading falsehoods and demonizing gay LGBTQ people, these groups are hitting back at the respected civil rights watchdog organization, calling its Intelligence Report campaign to expose anti-gay bigotry “lies” and part of a “liberal plot” to undermine the American family. Black Entertainment National News (BET) reported that the participation of African American pastors protesting the civil rights organization was “ironic.”
Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber, a well-financed cadre of right-wing attorneys affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University and Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, said: “The SPLC has moved from monitoring actual hate groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis to slandering mainstream Christian organizations with that very same hate group label.” Barber went on to charge that “billions” of Jewish and Christian people were being “smeared” by the SPLC as hateful because they teach traditional Judeo-Christian values. Members of widely-known anti-gay hate organizations such as AFTAH, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, and Abiding Truth Ministries also spoke. The themes they and their African American clergy supporters sounded at a press conference related to the protests included charges of unfairness, hating God, and spreading lies about these groups, all as instruments of “pro-gay politicking.”
SPLC’s Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, swiftly refuted the accusations of attacking these hate groups for their Christian or Jewish faith. Potok said, “Our listing of anti-gay hate groups is completely unrelated to religion, Christianity or the Bible. These groups are listed because they repeatedly lie in an effort to defame LGBT people, an exercise they’ve been extraordinarily successful at. The idea that we are criticizing these groups because they represent Judeo-Christian morality is simply ludicrous.” Examples of the efforts to stigmatize and defame LGBTQ people by these groups include trumped up charges that gay men are largely pedophiles who prey on the young, are sex-addicted, and instigated the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe.
Abiding Truth Ministries founder, Scott Lively, who has actively sought to foment anti-gay attitudes in nations of the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa, sent a written appeal to God to eliminate the SPLC. Lively’s statement, read at the protest press conference, said, “My prayer, as one who really does hate irrational prejudice, is that the Lord by His sovereign power will remove this dangerous, hate-spreading organization from our nation and cause its leaders and members to repent for their wickedness. … I want to make clear that I am asking God himself to destroy their organization.” Box Turtle Bulletin, a blog founded to monitor news affecting the LGBTQ community worldwide, maintains a massive dossier on Scott Lively’s hate mongering activities and statements, which can be accessed here.
The SPLC’s Winter 2010 issue of the Intelligence Report lists 18 anti-gay hate groups and their propaganda. The award-winning quarterly magazine gives comprehensive research updates on hate groups to law enforcement agencies, the media, and the general public. According to its Intelligence Files, “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians has been a central theme of Christian Right organizing and fundraising for the past three decades – a period that parallels the fundamentalist movement’s rise to political power.”
In response to the threat of divine retribution for labeling anti-gay hate organizations for what they are, the SPLC said that if the firebombing by the Ku Klux Klan did not destroy the organization, it is doubtful that anti-gay hate groups will have any better luck.
Skinheads Attack California Gay Men in New Year’s Hate Crime
Gay bashing in progress by Santa Barbara Skinheads on New Year's morning (video capture)
Santa Barbara, California – Three skinheads attacked a gay couple as they left a New Year’s Eve event early Sunday in Santa Barbara, according to the Santa Barbara Independent. The savage assault was captured on video, which the police are using in their hunt for the perpetrators. The Daily Sound reports that the three suspects are all in their 20s, are white males, and sport shaved heads. As the two gay men left a party at a nightclub, headed toward their parked car, the three assailants called out derogatory anti-gay slurs, and then attacked. One of the victims suffered a broken jaw, and needed staples to close a deep gash in his scalp. The second victim escaped with minor injuries.
Santa Barbara Police Chief Cam Sanchez pledged to find and arrest the attackers, calling the assault a “hate crime.” Chief Sanchez said, “Hate crimes like these will not be tolerated and those responsible will be held accountable.” This horrific attack is one more indicator that hate crimes against gay people do not take a holiday–ever.
Gay Tennessee Teens Face Potential “License to Bully” Law
TN students protesting anti-gay legislation (Tennessean image)
Nashville, Tennessee – A “License to Bully” gay students bill will be on the Tennessee Legislature docket this winter–and is already facing criticism from progressives. The bill would protect anti-gay students when they frame their homophobic feelings in religious language. WSMV4 reports that conservative lawmakers are presenting the bill, SB 760/HB 1153, making outspoken anti-gay statements in Tennessee schools legal “if that is what religious beliefs call for.” Like opponents of human rights around the nation, Volunteer State conservatives such as FACT (Family Action Council of Tennessee) are framing the bill as a matter of freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Fox News 17 quotes progressive high school student Emmanuelle Loyer in opposition to the “License to Bully” bill. Loyer said anti-gay students will take advantage of the protections the bill offers: “They can say cruel things they want to say under that protection.” Loyer went on to say that supporters of the bill are dangerously misinformed about realities in today’s public schools. “I don’t think they realize how cruel high school students can be,” she said.
The Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) opposes the bill and its intent. Jonathan Cole of the TEP said, “It’s time for Tennesseans to stop using children as pawns for social, religious and political agendas. We need to be focusing on ways to ensure that Tennessee students receive an education free from bullying, harassment and intimidation.” In a statement to the press, the TEP said, “The religious liberty and free speech rights of students are already protected by the U.S. Constitution. This legislation would give special protections to students of a particular religious point of view. If made into law, FACT would give students a ‘license to bully’ that allows them to hide their irrational biases behind an extreme religious belief.”
Already under assault from the “Don’t Say Gay” (HB0229/SB0049) bill last year, LGBTQ students and their allies in public schools are organizing to fight for vulnerable youth and teachers who are targeted for harassment, slurs, and harm. The Tennessean warned that harassment of gay youth already has already proved lethal, as in the case of Jacob Rogers, Cheatham County Central High senior who took his own life in response to years of relentless bullying based on his perceived sexual orientation.
Against the claims of FACT and right-wing lawmakers, the Tennessee Equality Project quotes a recent study in the Journal Pediatrics showing “an association between an objective measure of the social environment and suicide attempts among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. The social environment appears to confer risk for suicide attempts over and above individual-level risk factors. These results have important implications for the development of policies and interventions to reduce sexual orientation–related disparities in suicide attempts.”
Conservatives ignore these documented connections and protest against using the stories of gay teen suicides in the debate on the “License to Bully” bill. At a time when Tennessee lawmakers should be offering more protections for LGBTQ students, they are poised to take Tennessee in the direction of shielding homophobic students and their right wing supporters.
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…
-
Where are our readers?
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
Follow Unfinished Lives on Facebook
Box Turtle Bulletin- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- HRC Back Story
- Know About The Gender Identity Movement
- Why Is There A Need For Human Rights?
- Kinds Of Human Rights
- Human Rights Purposes And Violations
- Human Rights For Every Human Incident
- 8 Reasons Human Rights Are Important
- Everything About Human Rights
- Human Rights Issues Education & Law
- We Need To Stand Up For Our Rights And Those Of Others
- Coca-Cola Receives Perfect Score On Human Rights
- The Advocate: Daily News
- Transgender Woman Tasiyah 'Siyah' Woodland Gunned Down in Maryland
- The Tragic Confluence of Guns, Kids, Mass Shootings, and Trans Identities
- Elon Musk Called Out as Anti-LGBTQ+ Slurs Rise on Twitter
- 7 Florida Bills That Threaten LGBTQ+ Rights Right Now
- The Far Right Is Exploiting the Nashville Tragedy to Promote Transphobia
- 12 Years Later, Iowa Lawmaker's Speech on Marriage Equality Still Inspires
- Madonna Adds Tour Date to 'Celebrate' LGBTQ+ Community
- Dolly Parton & Miley Cyrus Song About Acceptance Deemed Inappropriate by School
- Minnesota Hopes to Become Refuge for Trans Minors Seeking Health Care
- Nashville Police Say School Shooter Was Transgender
- Dallas Voice: Instant Tea
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Unfinished Lives 
