Bill Obstructing Federal Protections for LGBT Oklahomans Passes OK Senate
OK State Senator Steve Russell (R-OK City)
Oklahoma City, OK – A controversial bill limiting what law enforcement may do to investigate and prosecute hate crimes against LGBT residents of Oklahoma passed the State Senate this Thursday. The bill, SB 1965, passed the upper house 39 – 6, and now goes on to the Oklahoma State House of Representatives. According to the OUDaily, SB 1965 would prohibit local and state law enforcement agencies from sharing information about hate crimes with federal authorities if the state of Oklahoma did not recognize the crime as a hate crime by its own statutes, thereby effectively opting out of federal protections for LGBT persons in the Sooner State. John Wright of the Dallas Voice writes that the originator of the legislation, State Senator Steve Russell (R-Oklahoma City) proposed the bill because he contends that the James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed by both houses of Congress last year and signed into law by President Obama, oversteps the bounds of what the federal government may do and abrogates freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Russell, who equates sexual orientation with necrophilia, said to the press that he was concerned that a religious leader could be blamed for inciting violence against LGBT people and charged with a hate crime under the provisions of the Shepard Act. The attachment of the Shepard Act to a Defense Appropriations Bill also upset Russell, who once served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. The Oklahoma LGBT community was swift to condemn the passage of the State Senate Bill, and drew attention to the dire consequences of the enactment of the provisions of the bill into law. The Equality Network (TEN) issued a statement Thursday from President Kathy L. Williams: “Senator Russell’s bill is truly terrifying in its implications. This legislation sends the message that violence against LGBT Oklahomans is acceptable. It also sets a chilling precedent that Oklahoma will only enforce certain federal laws and cooperate only with selected federal agencies. We believe this unconstitutional and blatantly discriminatory bill will harm all Oklahomans, regardless of their identity and regardless of whether they are victims of hate crimes.” The Metro Star reports that the only thing standing in the way of this legislation becoming law will be refusal in the House or a veto by Governor Brad Henry. The State House of 101 representatives is controlled by the Republican Party, 61 to 40. Governor Henry is a Democrat.
BB Gun Attackers Face Hate Crimes Charges in San Francisco
San Francisco, CA – Three cousins from Hayward are being charged with a hate crime for shooting a gay man in the face with a BB gun because they assumed he was a homosexual. The Oakland Tribune reports that Mohammad Habibzada, 24, Shafiq Hashemi, 21, and Sayed Bassam, 21, saw a man standing outside a gay bar around 10 p.m. on February 26th in the Mission District of San Francisco smoking a cigarette. They opened fire with a air rifle, hitting him in the face. BB shot struck the victim in the cheek. He was not seriously hurt, but as Assistant District Attorney Brian Buckelew noted to the Tribune, “Here we have a guy, shot in face with BB gun, who could have easily been shot in the eye.” The victim got a clear look at a silver Volvo and reported the attack to police, who arrested the suspects within 15 minutes of the crime thanks to the description of the vehicle. The alleged attackers had videoed the assault, and their handiwork is in the hands of police as evidence. According to Buckelew, the video also includes evidence of similar crimes that are now under investigation. Under police interrogation, the three suspects, all cousins with Hayward addresses, admitted that they chose their target because they thought he was gay. The trio are facing three felony counts including assault with a deadly weapon with a hate crime enhancement, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, and attempted mayhem. They are also charged with a misdemeanor, violating the civil rights of their victim. As the Tribune reports, all three suspects are now out of custody, each having posted a $50,000 bond. They are scheduled to be arraigned Friday, when the district attorney will request bail be raised to $100,000 because of the severity of the charges against them. Other victims are in the video seized by police, representing several other crimes the trio may have committed. The Assistant District Attorney said that there could be other charges against the three cousins if victims seen on the video come forward.
Austin Rallies Against Downtown Anti-LGBT Hate Crime
Daily Texan photo
Austin, TX – The safety of LGBT folk in the Texas capital remains in question as University of Texas students and native Austinites struggle with the events of February 20. That night, two young gay men wearing Shady Ladies athletic jerseys were assaulted by four African American men shouting anti-gay slurs at them as the pair walked from one of Austin’s most popular gay bars to their car, parked near City Hall. The attack struck Emmanuel Winston and Matt Morgan from behind. They were brutally beaten and left on the sidewalk bleeding. News of the assault has shaken Austin, which prides itself with a progressive reputation in the Lone Star State. Though the investigation is ongoing, police are not yet able to label the attack a hate crime because of the peculiarity of Texas law. Until an arrest has been made and a defendant is prosecuted, a crime cannot be called a “hate crime” under state statutes. That is not stopping the supporters of the two gay men who were assaulted, however, according to News 8 Austin. Jeff Butler, a friend of the targeted men, said, “They were followed, attacked from behind, and brutally beaten by four men who uttered slurs. I don’t care how much lipstick you put on that pig. We will not allow you to cover this hate crime up.” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters, “I think we have to finish the investigation first to see what the totality of the facts, evidence and circumstances are.” Acevedo then joined over 1,000 marchers as Winston and Morgan led the crowd from Oilcan Harry’s, the bar they visited that night, to the site of the attack. The Shady Ladies, an LGBT friendly softball team, wore their distinctive pink and blue jerseys and brandished a banner reading, “Austin March Against Hate.” The Daily Texan, UT’s student newspaper, reports that Glen Maxey, the first openly gay legislator in Texas history, expressed concern about the meaning of the attack. Though anti-LGBT hatred was widespread in Texas twenty years ago, for such an attack to occur on the streets of Austin in 2010 is alarming to the gay rights pioneer. “This is supposed to be behind us,” Maxey said. A low-resolution camera caught the suspects on video, but because of the condition of the images, they could not be identified. City officials are debating whether to increase the number of high-resolution surveillance cameras on city streets as a possible way to deter such crimes. City Councilman Mike Martinez told The Daily Texan that the city had applied for federal funds to place more anti-crime cameras on the streets, but the feds denied the request. Voicing his hope that the news of this crime will thaw up federal money, Martinez remains skeptical about stemming the tide of hate violence through technology alone. “A camera can only take a picture of ignorance,” Martinez said. “It’s not going to cure it.” For now, citizens of the Texas capital city are not so much concerned about “Keeping Austin Weird” as they are about keeping the streets of Austin safe.
Graffiti Attack Sprays Hate at UC Davis: Students Rally
University of California at Davis – Vandalism swept UC Davis last week as LGBT and Jewish students reported being targeted by acts of hate on campus. San Diego Gay and Lesbian News reports that homophobic slurs were spray painted on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center building late in the night on Friday or early Saturday morning. A Jewish student found a swastika carved into her dorm room door last week, as well. The campus went into uproar, rallying to offer support to the victimized communities among them, and to let the unidentified perpetrators know that their actions will not pass without protest. LGBT students and supporters went to work immediately to erase the slurs from the walls of the Resource Center. KCRA News 3 reports that the anti-LGBT graffiti incident fits a pattern of other expressions of hate on a number of University of California system campuses recently. At UC Irvine, the Israeli Ambassador to the United States was heckled with hate speech, disrupting his talk. At UC San Diego, a fraternity weekend was punctuated with racial slurs surrounding the “Compton Cookout,” and a noose was found hanging from the campus library. Two hundred UC Davis students met to frame responses to the incident on their campus. Faculty and staff are meeting with the students to frame “actions steps” to address what is becoming a growing problem throughout collegiate populations in the Golden State. The FBI has begun investigations into the rising climate of campus hate.
Threatening Postcards to Gay Profs Ignite Investigations
Images on hate mail sent to gay professor, John Koster photo for North County Times
San Marcos, CA – Authorities for the county, state, and federal governments launched a co-ordinated investigation last week into menacing postcards being sent to three gay Palomar College professors. Since mid-2008, 20 postcards threatening murder have been sent to the trio, with 1o of these targeting Dr. Fergal O’Doherty, an open and out gay man who teaches English at the San Marcos campus. O’Doherty said that FBI agents had contacted him on January 21, informing him that they are carrying out an investigation. Sending threats through the U.S. Mail is an automatic federal offense. O’Doherty told Morgan Cook, staff writer for the North County Times, that the cards sent to him have included images of sexual violence and death, the most disturbing of which showed skeletons engaged in sex acts with a repetitive caption reading “I’m glad I’m not dead” 10 times. The tenth caption omitted the word “dead.” One of the most recent cards Professor O’Doherty received shows a collage of pop culture images, a Nazi swastika, and a drawing of Elvis Presley sporting devil’s horns. The caption on this postcard reads, “I want to go to Hell like Elvis.” Authorities have not yet determined that these cards constitute a hate crime, but colleagues on the Palomar College campus are not waiting for such a determination. They have founded a group to raise awareness of hate crimes and combat them before they are acted out, called the Palomar College Committee to Combat Hate. Members of the group are committed to the human rights of LGBT people on the campus. O’Doherty says that since he is one of the few openly homosexual professors at the 30,000 student community college, located 30 miles north of San Diego, his sexual orientation is probably the magnet for the hate mail. From the variety of academic and pop culture icons incorporated into the cards, some as eminent as singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen and author Ernest Hemingway, but also including relatively obscure philosophers, O’Doherty speculates that the person creating them is intelligent, well-read, and dangerous. “[The card-creator] mentions works by writers and philosophers that aren’t even assigned in undergrad classes,” he told the North County Times. While this is not the first time O’Doherty and other gay faculty have been harassed for their sexual orientation, this is the first time officials have taken the threat seriously. Even then, when the postcards started appearing, campus police refused to act, apparently believing that they were written by a harmless crank. With over 13,000 documented violent crimes perpetrated against LGBT people throughout the nation in the decade prior to the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in October 2009, and spiking numbers of anti-LGBT hate crimes in California where Proposition 8 and Marriage Equality are such hotly contested issues, the decision to launch an investigation is more than prudent on the part of law enforcement. Prevention is possible only when the menace is taken seriously. That is exactly what Professor O’Doherty knows to be true, as he shows his most recent death threat by mail to the press.
Arrest Made in Lesbian Stabbing Case
Suzanne Glover on the way to court
Buffalo, NY – From prosecution witness to defendant, all in one day. That’s how it went down when Buffalo Police arrested Susanna Deanna Glover of Tonawanda last week, charging her with stabbing a lesbian in the eye on New Year’s Eve outside a popular gay bar. Glover, 21, was taken into custody just hours after testifying against a man who shot her boyfriend to death right before her eyes in April 2009. Glover’s testimony helped jurors convict Jerome Thagard, 17, of the murder of Glover’s lover, Stephen Northrup, who was 31 at the time of his death. After her boyfriend’s murder, Glover moved to Florida where she now lives, returning to Buffalo for the express purpose of testifying against Thagard. The verdict in the Northrup case was handed down Monday evening. By that time, Glover was under arrest for the stabbing, which law enforcement authorities are calling a hate crime. The attack on Lindsay C. Harmon, 29, along with the murder of Christopher Rudow, a 32-year-old gay man, has rocked the Buffalo LGBT community in recent weeks. Glover allegedly attacked Lindsay Harmon outside Roxy’s, an LGBT nightclub, stabbing her in the left eye while yelling homophobic slurs. A grand jury will have to make the determination whether the charges against Glover for the attack warrant a hate crime designation, based on their judgment of Glover’s motivation for the attack. According to WIVB News 4, Glover attempted to hide her face from cameras as she was hustled into a city courtroom to face a judge. Harmon also attended the proceeding to get the first glimpse of her attacker since New Year’s, white bandaging prominent on her right eye. Some vision is returning to Harmon, according to her father, Michael Harmon, who told reporters for News 4 that his daughter still had a long way to go before full health would be restored to her. “It’s gonna be a long time and some more surgery,” he said. Glover has retained her own attorney, so the trial has been pushed back to later in February.
Queens Gay Bashers Indicted for Hate Crimes
Defendant Daniel Rodriguez
Queens, NY – Both men charged with the savage assault that left gay New Yorker Jack Price near death in mid-October have been indicted for 14 counts of assault and robbery as a hate crime, as well as possession of stolen property. Daniel Rodriguez, 21, and Daniel Aleman, 26, both from College Point, Queens, allegedly attacked Jack Price, 49, early in the morning on October 8. The assault, sudden and brutal, lasted for roughly three minutes. A surveillance camera caught the bashing on tape, a damning piece of evidence the defense will have a hard time explaining away. According to Gay City News, if convicted, each defendant could receive up to 25 years in prison, with the stipulation that neither of them could be released before 21 years of the sentence had been served. Police investigators said that the bashing took place 4:30 a.m. on October 8 as Price was leaving a local 24-hour delicatessen. Rodriguez and Aleman allegedly accosted Price in the deli as he was buying a pack of cigarettes, and then followed him outside to press their attack. During the beating, Rodriguez allegedly yelled at Price repeatedly, calling him a “faggot.” After rifling through his pockets, the pair shown on camera left the scene. Price, before falling into a coma, was able to identify his assailants to police. Unbeknownst to Rodriguez and Aleman, who allegedly taunted him in Spanish, Price understood the language, and gave details of what he heard to the investigators. Price lay in the New York Medical Center of Queens for better than three weeks, suffering from a broken jaw, a lacerated spleen, broken ribs, and two collapsed lungs. Protests against hate violence were organized swiftly, the largest of them comprised of over 500 who demanded justice for Price. A small contingent of supporters of the defendants staged a counter-protest. Aleman was arrested in short order in Queens. Rodriguez fled to Norfolk, Virginia, where he was arrested on October 13. After his transport back to Queens for arraignment, Rodriguez confessed to NYPD officers that he assaulted Price, and gave the following details of the run-up to the attack, according to WABC News: “According to prosecutors, Rodriguez admitted he and the other suspect Daniel Aleman confronted Price believing he was about to write his phone number on a wall in order to solicit other men. It was that confrontation that led to the beating. Prosecutors also say Rodriguez admitted to yelling anti-gay epithets while beating Price. Rodriguez’s attorney says that his client never confessed and that the NYPD detectives basically put words in his client’s mouth.” Price counters that he never wrote graffiti on the deli wall, and did nothing to provoke the attack. Rodriguez’s animus toward Price was clear to investigators who report that Rodriguez admitted to using the anti-gay slurs because “Jack is disgusting.” Both defendants are being held at Riker’s Island without bail. Price has substantially recovered from the physical aspects of the beating, but the psychological injuries he sustained will take a lifetime to cope with. When he woke up from his coma in the hospital, he told relatives that he was “surprised to be alive.”
Woman Stabbed In Eye by Homophobe
Buffalo, NY – Amidst a spate of recent anti-LGBT assaults in the Buffalo area, a 29-year-old lesbian was stabbed in the face and the eye by a woman shouting anti-gay slurs. Lindsay C. Harmon was leaving a club on New Year’s about 2 a.m. when a woman assailed her and her friends with anti-gay slurs, and stabbed her in the right eye. No one has been arrested for the crime. While local law enforcement has not designated the case as a hate crime assault, Harmon has no doubt as to the reason she was targeted. She is gay. The Buffalo News reports that Harmon had never feared for herself or her friends until the attack, which authorities are calling “unusually severe.” Harmon and her friends were leaving a New Year’s celebration at Roxy’s, a popular downtown nightclub, when a group of men and two women began shouting at them. The exchange of words let to a confrontation. Harmon related to SheWired.com, “I just remember saying, “What did you say?’ It’s just crazy to me. I’d never think anyone would say that in the main gay area of Buffalo. I’ve been going to Roxy’s for like 10 years.” Then Harmon says she tried to break up the argument when a young woman in her late teens or early 20s stabbed her in the eye. “Let’s go home,” I said. “Let’s get out of here,” Harmon recalled. “I was walking away, and she [the attacker] came behind me, and I got nailed. I thought I’d been punched, and I fell. I just sat there waiting for her to kick me or something.” Her friends started to go after the assailant, but hesitated when one of them shouted warned that the attacker had a knife. At that moment, Harmon began crying out that she was blind in her right eye. Police are searching for two women who fled the scene after Harmon was stabbed. Following three hours of surgery, she has only recovered the ability to see shadows with her injured eye. No one knows whether she will ever be able to see normally with it again. According to Jay Tokasz of the Buffalo News, Harmon has stitches in her eyelid, cheek and arm and has to take three kinds of eye-drop medications every two hours. “I sleep as much as I possibly can,” she said in a phone interview, “because my eye gets really sore.” The story of the brutal assault on an innocent lesbian has resonated far beyond the Buffalo metro area. As of this writing, more than 17,000 Facebook members have joined a support group for Harmon online. A former resident of Buffalo, an anonymous insurance broker, was so deeply touched by Harmon’s plight that he put up a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the attacker. Harmon says she intends to write in response to every comment on her Facebook page. “I never thought it would get this big out into the world,” she said.
Wearing Pink Gets Straight Man Gay Bashed
Kansas City, MO – In a report issued by the Kansas City Police Department, the story of a straight man who wore pink to aid breast cancer charities was gay bashed by men at a Kansas City Chiefs game in October 2009. The victim, Sean McGarrigle, a father of three, had volunteered to wear pink clothing to draw attention to National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. He was vending pink ribbons, shirts, hats and other items to raise money for the cause, and had been successful at the Chiefs game that day, raising in excess of $900, the most of any volunteer at the stadium. It was the third quarter when McGarrigle decided to go home after a good day full of pleasant contacts with the fans. The Kansas City Star reports that as he was leaving Arrowhead Stadium, two men who appeared to be drunk began harassing him because of his clothing which clearly bore the breast cancer logo. They used homophobic slurs as they badgered him, demanding that he take off his pink hat and shirt because it offended them. An onlooking fan tried to get the two men to leave McGarrigle alone, but they would not relent. Finally, McGarrigle turned to confront them, saying, “Listen, I’m doing this to raise money. You guys are giving Kansas City a bad name.” He turned to down a grassy embankment to his car when he heard footsteps overtaking him. The two men caught up to McGarrigle, and one of them punched him in the face. The second man grabbed him in a headlock and threw him to the ground. Both of them laughed as they kicked him in the ribs. McGarrigle managed to escape them, he told police, and hid in his car. His assailants continued to search for him in the rows of autos in the parking lot. McGarrigle got his car out on the road, only to be pursued by his attackers who raced behind him in their car. They followed him onto Interstate 435 all the way into Kansas, pulled up even with his car, and shouted slurs at him as they sped down the highway. McGarrigle slowed down until they passed, and he lost them. He suffered a bruised face, sore ribs, and an awful fright. Under other circumstances, the hate attack could have turned out much worse. KC police report that they have recorded triple the number of hate crimes in their city for 2009, over the same period in 2008.
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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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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Hope for 2010: A New Year’s Special Comment
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December 24, 2009 Posted by unfinishedlives | Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Colorado, DADT, ENDA, gay men, gay panic defense, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, Marriage Equality, Matthew Shepard Act, Media Issues, military, Mistaken as LGBT, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Politics, Popular Culture, religious intolerance, Remembrances, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, trans-panic defense, transgender persons | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual people, Colorado, Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT), Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA, gay men, gay panic defense, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbians, Marriage Equality, Media Issues, New York, religious intolerance, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comment, trans-panic defense, transgender persons | 3 Comments