Oregon’s “Pink Poodle” Gay Bashing Draws Federal Hate Crime Charges
Gay Bashing victim David Beltier (l), partner Jeremy Mark (r), and their poodle Beauty.
Hillsboro, Oregon – A bizarre anti-gay crime case at a busy highway street crossing has attracted national attention as Federal prosecutors issued hate crimes charges against a man whose homophobic rage was sparked by the sight of a pink poodle. The assailant, George Mason Jr., 22, was charged this week with a violation of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act for attacking a gay man with a heavy bolt cutter and screaming anti-gay slurs during a peaceful, midday stroll with his boyfriend and their pink-dyed poodle on March 1. Multiple witnesses say Mason shouted slurs at the gay couple from his SUV, did a U turn, raced back to the intersection, and allegedly attacked David Beltier with his fists and the bolt cutter. Beltier sustained blows to the upper arm, and to the back of his head. The assault could very nearly have cost Beltier his life.
Portland, Oregon court documents record the hate crime in legal language, but preserve the horror of the assault, coming from a complete stranger: “(Mason) willfully caused bodily injury and, through the use of a dangerous weapon, attempted to cause bodily injury to (Beltier), who is gay, because of (Beltier’s) actual and perceived sexual orientation.” The Associated Press, in a story carried by the Columbus (IN) Republic, also reports that Mason faces Oregon state charges including second-degree intimidation, second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, and reckless driving. The intimidation charge is a bias-motivation charge in the Oregon state code. Mason’s wife, Saraya Gardner, who was in Mason’s vehicle at the time of the attack, has also been charged in the case for obstructing justice.
George Mason Jr. Alleged gay basher enraged by the sight of a pink poodle.
In an interview in Komonews.com, Beltier and his partner, Jeremy Mark, recounted that they were crossing the street with their pink-dyed poodle, Beauty, when the attack occurred. Beauty, explained Beltier and Mark, had been harmlessly dyed pink with Kool-Aid for a bit of pre-Easter fun, and to match their two other pastel-dyed dogs. The sight of the pink poodle proved too much for Mason, who screamed profanities at the couple from his moving vehicle. The intersection was filled with witnesses who blared their horns in protest of the attacker. Beltier credits the witnesses with saving his life. “If I didn’t hear all the other people honking, all the people seeing what was going on, he could have probably severely hurt me, maybe even killed me right there and then,” he said. The New York Daily News reports Mark’s account of the slurs Mason hurled at his boyfriend. “[Mason] was saying, “Your poodle is a weird color and that’s just un-American” and “f— you, you f–s” and shouting,” Mark said.
Beltier then picked up the story for Komo News: “After that, [Mason] turns around, he goes back to his car, runs back to his car and brings out this long wrench-looking crowbar tool or something like that, and he comes back after me.” Mason then struck Beltier on the upper arm and in the back of the head. Beltier’s boyfriend was frantic with fear for his lover’s life. “I just couldn’t believe it,” said Mark. “I was shouting at the guy to stop. There’s no need for violence. There’s nothing to provoke him. … I was fearing for his life.”
As Mason raced away from the scene of the crime, witnesses tried to block his vehicle, and one witness took off after him, capturing Mason’s license plate number. The information led to the arrest of Mason and his wife, Gardner.
Though officials advised the gay couple to eliminate the bright pink color from his pet’s fur, Beltier and Mark remain adamant. They say that they did nothing wrong, and they are not going to let fear dictate their lives. They just allowed Beauty’s fur to grow out naturally over time.
Gay Bashing in Midtown Manhattan: NYPD Investigating Brazen Hate Crime
![Gay couple, Nick Porto (l) and Kevin Atkins (r), bashed in broad daylight near Madison Square Garden. Atkins wrist was broken in the attack. [DNAInfo/Ben Fractenberg photo]](https://unfinishedlivesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/porto-and-atkins.jpg)
Gay couple, Nick Porto (l) and Kevin Atkins (r), bashed in broad daylight near Madison Square Garden. Atkins’ wrist was broken in the attack. [DNAInfo/Ben Fractenberg photo]
The gay men were then knocked to the pavement, beaten, punched, and kicked. The pair attempted to fight off their attackers, but in vain. “Fists started flying. I was on the ground, and the only thing I could do, I reached out and grabbed someone’s hair,” Porto said. First responders rushed the couple to Bellevue Hospital where Atkins was put in a cast for a broken right wrist. Atkins reported that his iPad was smashed in the attack, as well. Since his job for reality television requires accurate typing, Atkins will be unable to work until he heals. Porto, a clothing designer who is a resident of Brooklyn now says he cannot feel safe as a gay man in New York City. “I was being foolish,” he said, hampered by a broken nose. “I was so naïve to think that things were better here.”
The brazen attack in broad daylight elicited anger and resolve to catch the men who harmed Porto and Atkins. Mayoral candidate and city council woman Christine Quinn issued a statement on Tuesday condemning the attack in strong terms. She said, according to Pix 11, “I am appalled by reports of a gay bashing in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday afternoon. Hateful assaults like these are an affront to everything our great City stands for and I urge the perpetrators to turn themselves in immediately. I also implore anyone who may have witnessed or recorded footage of the attack to come forward to the authorities at once.” Instinct Magazine reports that police are searching for four men whose images were caught on surveillance cameras. Authorities are approaching the case as an anti-gay hate crime.
Gay Law Student Office Vandalized at Boston College
Crude sex slurs and homophobic hate scrawled in Boston College LGBTQ Center Office.
Boston, Massachusetts – Gay students and Law School officials were stunned to discover homophobic slurs scrawled on the walls of the Lambda Students Association the day following the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. When LGBTQ students arrived at the Boston College Law School LGBT Center, they found the door unlocked and scads of epithets demeaning queer folk covering the office walls.
Demeaning slurs such as “cum shot,” “muff diver,” “felching,” “cock gobbler,” “gay bukkake,” and the like competed with a few racial ethic epithets that seem to have been thrown in for good measure. Some sources opined that LGBTQ people were not singled out for humiliation, since Blacks were also targeted by the vandals. Sexual minority students, however, are not buying such denial. They feel the crosshairs of hate aimed directly at them. The Boston College Police Department and the Newton Police Department are investigating the incident.
Robert Trescan, Regional Director for the Anti-Defamation League of New England, said to Boston.com that while hate speech incidents occur on many campuses, this one has a more sinister character to it. “This is a targeted message at a particular place that is important to students, specifically designed to send a message,” he said. “From the police and school’s perspective we want this to be treated as a priority, and all indications is that they are treating this as a priority.”
EDGE Boston reports that the Dean of the Law School was notified in a meeting of the hate graffiti, and rushed to the LGBT Center immediately to see the damage himself. Dean Vincent Rougeau wrote an open letter to the college community, a portion of which says,“The administration of Boston College Law School condemns this reprehensible action and will not tolerate hateful or threatening speech of any kind. This behavior is the antithesis of all we stand for as an institution, and is an assault on our shared values of a welcoming, loving, and inclusive community.”
Joe Triplett, co-chairperson of Above the Law, a student group, said that the entire Boston College community has been concerned and supportive, according to Huffington Post. Triplett also related that a student suggested that the hatefulness of the incident could be diffused and channeled to energize the pro-LGBTQ effort on the Jesuit school’s campus. Inspired by President Obama’s Inaugural endorsement of LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, the unnamed student said that the vandalism should serve as a “backdrop for a dedication to the gay rights movement… posting articles, pictures, and quotes on top of them that show our fight for equal rights from Stonewall to the President’s historic inclusion of gay rights in his inauguration speech yesterday… to show where we have come from and yet how far we still have to go.”
Gays Terrorized by Panhandle of Texas Hate Crime
Anti-gay death threat painted on the porch of a gay couple in Clarendon, Texas on October 1.
Clarendon, Texas – A gay couple have been put on notice that they are in danger by vandals in a small community an hour from Amarillo. Two weeks after an anti-gay diatribe by a local Church of Christ pastor appeared in the community newspaper, Joshua Harrison and Jeremy Jeffers found their front porch defaced by the scrawled warning, LEAVE OR DIE FAGS. The gay couple, partnered for better than a year, say they have never been so afraid for their lives.
Pronews 7 reports that the Donley County Sheriff, Charles “Butch” Blackburn, is calling the vandalism “a hate crime.” The Donley County Sheriffs Department is investigating who painted the ominous warning on the gay couple’s property. Harrison and Jeffers are arranging to leave Clarendon because of the threat to their lives.
In late September, Minister Chris Moore, spiritual leader of the Clarendon Church of Christ, published his provocative advertisement in the Clarendon Enterprise, condemning gays and lesbians for an “agenda” that included compromising the “values” of ordinary American citizens, and making their children “prey for pedophiles” (full ad available for viewing here). Moore based his screed upon a “platform” published “sometime back” by a group known as the National Coalition of Gay Organizations, a short-lived group convened in Chicago in 1972, but which has not been in existence for over 40 years. Moore apparently dredged up his “factual” claims from this old, extremist chestnut, and sought to incite anti-gay discussion in the Panhandle. Moore is surely aware that charges of pedophilia incite strong negative reactions against gay people, though they are not grounded in any truth. Moore defends his ad in the paper, but has gone on record denouncing the vandalism and violence threatened against Jeffers and Harrison as “unChristian.” As of October 8, readers of the Pronews 7 report of this hate crime said by a two-to-one majority that Moore’s anti-gay ad and the subsequent hate crime against the gay couple are directly connected.
Chuck Smith of Equality Texas condemned the atmosphere created in Clarendon by the Church of Christ ad: “No Texan should ever have to live in fear of violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.“ While Smith affirmed Chris Moore’s freedom of speech, he went on to say, “It is a fact that when people teach or preach homophobia and anti-gay rhetoric, it can inflame people to the point of violence.”
Rev. Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, Professor of Practical Theology at Fort Worth’s Brite Divinity School and ordained Baptist minister, says that there must be zero tolerance for hate speech in the Christian community, whether the group is conservative or progressive. “There is an undeniable link between religious leaders’ intolerant speech and acts of physical violence against LGBTQ people in this country,” he said. “Minister Moore’s hate speech ranks high on the anti-gay incitement scale, right along beside violence permitting statements by extremist ministers who favored Amendment One in North Carolina this year.” Noting that the online blog of Clarendon Church of Christ has carried anti-gay postings for better than two years, Sprinkle went on to say, “While Moore’s speech is protected under law,” Sprinkle went on to say, “Moore would be quick to deny responsibility for the fear, destruction of property, and physical harm such statements incite, but he must bear some indirect responsibility for this crime. This is unbecoming of a Christian minister.” Sprinkle called upon people of good conscience in all communities of faith to express their intolerance of all expressions of hate speech coming from pulpits everywhere.
Meanwhile, Harrison and Jeffers are still in fear for their lives because of irrational hatred against them, and their intimidators are still at large in the Texas Panhandle.
Anti-Gay Hazing Aboard Nuclear Submarine Leads To Top Non-Com Dismissal
USS Florida already had a “culture of homophobia” prior to the harassment of a crew member suspected of being gay.
Norfolk, Virginia – With little or no privacy, and nowhere to escape from his anti-gay torment, a sailor targeted for harassment aboard nuclear submarine USS Florida (SSBN/SSGN – 728), became the center of a homophobic hazing case that has created a public relations nightmare for the U.S. Navy. The Associated Press revealed that the Navy released its report in March detailing months of anti-gay taunts against the unnamed submariner–leading to the dismissal of the Chief of the Boat, the submarine’s top non-commissioned officer. Master Chief Machinist’s Mate Charles Berry was fired by Captain Stephen Gillespie “for dereliction of duty” related to his failure to report and advise the commanding officer of the boat on issues arising among enlisted men.
The targeted sailor whose identity and sexual orientation have not be released in the investigative report, suffered incessant anti-gay jokes, was subjected to anti-gay epithets and nicknames, and was the victim of an alleged attempted rape at knife point by a man while the Florida was in a foreign port of call–Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Prior the the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the sailor was constantly taunted to “come out of the closet” as a gay man and jeered at for having a Filipino boyfriend, the ethnicity of the attempted rapist. He was labeled “Brokeback” for the famous gay-themed motion picture, Brokeback Mountain. The Navy report said that the sailor endured the harassment because he thought it would cease at some point. After eight months of constant homophobic harassment in 2011, the sailor finally passed along a note for help, saying that the combination of the attempted rape, the hounding, and the constant pressure put on him by crew members was driving him to suicide, or to an act of violence against his tormentors.
The Navy report says that sailors who participated in the hazing did not appreciate the psychological harm their actions caused their shipmate. The report also states that Chief Berry did not participate in the anti-gay hazing of the sailor, but did not report what was going on to his superior officers, either. As background to the embarrassing revelations of anti-gay abuse, the report also detailed that the Florida had developed a whole culture of heterosexist and homophobic prejudice, and detailed a number of examples.
In response, the Navy ordered training and counseling up and down the line to prevent anything like this from happening again. Besides the chief of the boat, several junior crew members who participated in the anti-gay harassment have also faced disciplinary actions, including loss of rank and pay. In its March 30 statement to the public, the Navy said: “The Navy’s standards for personal behavior are very high and it demands that sailors are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. When individuals fall short of this standard of professionalism and personal behavior, the Navy will take swift and decisive action to stop undesirable behavior, protect victims and hold accountable those who do not meet its standards.”
This week, Vice Admiral John Richardson who commands the Norfolk-based submarine force, issued a blog post in response to the scandal this incident had created in the submarine service in which he focuses attention on the importance of character in Navy life. “A violation by one seems to be a violation against all,” the admiral wrote.
The USS Florida, an Ohio-class nuclear submarine homeported at Naval Submarine Base King’s Bay, Georgia, participated in action against Libyan forces loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi in March 2011 by launching scores of Tomahawk missiles, the only one of the four Ohio-class SSGNs available to serve in Operation Odyssey Dawn. Apparently, the senseless anti-gay torment of the sailor in question was going full tilt during the period of combat operations.
Anti-Gay Racism Hits New Low; Pastor Lynches President Obama In Effigy For Supporting Gay Equality
Racism and homophobic bigotry on display in a Florida church’s front yard.
Gainesville, Florida – President Barack Obama hangs in effigy from a gallows with a gay flag in his hand in the front yard of a Florida church in a blatant grab for publicity–but Pastor Terry Jones is flirting with incitement to violence against blacks and gay people. The Smoking Gun blog says that the Obama effigy is also holding a baby doll in its other hand. A trailer emblazoned with the motto, “Obama is Killing America” sits facing the road in front of the Dove World Outreach Center. In an interview with Huffington Post, Jones said that the flag was to protest the President’s support for LGBTQ people, and the doll symbolized Mr. Obama’s position “on abortion.” As USA Today reported, Jones came to international attention for his “Burn a Koran” campaign in 2010 and 2011 which inflamed anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S., imperiled the lives of American service members stationed around the world, and ignited Islamic protests against this nation throughout the world. After Jones oversaw the burning of the Muslim holy book in 2011, three days of riots broke out in Afghanistan, with over 21 homicides including seven dead United Nations workers. Now, seeking the glory days of his past buffoonery, Jones is making a visual statement he says is protected by the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.
Disavowing the obvious threat implied in the gallows installation, Jones says he only wishes President Obama to “die politically” for what he is “doing to America.” While some constitutional scholars may agree, taking a cue from the 2011 legal victory of Westboro Baptist Church protecting the Topeka, Kansas church’s protests at military service members’ funerals, Jones is hypocritically cloaking his violent symbology in freedom of speech language. Local Floridians are not buying his diversionary tactics, however. WCJB TV-20 interviewed Gainesville neighbor Mary Mamatsios who said of the controversial pastor, “He’s just over the edge and he has nothing better to do. He’s a total screwball.” This view is widely held throughout the Sunshine State.
The extreme violence portrayed by Jones’s church by including a gallows and a hangman’s noose disturbs the peace of African Americans and LGBTQ folk alike. Symbols matter, and the incitement to violence conjured up in the collective consciousness of the black community by the threat of lynching and the noose threatens to cross the legal line. The U.S. Secret Service is not only aware of the controversial installation in the Dove Center’s yard, but are actively investigating Jones and the church for threatening the life and wellbeing of the President, according to the Broward Palm Beach New Times. As Dr. James Cone, pioneer Black theologian, shows in his award-winning book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Orbis Books, 2011), nooses and lynching haunt the Black community due to the extermination by lynching of black men throughout the South during the “Strange Fruit” period of the 20th century. Stephen G.Ray Jr. of the Christian Century Magazine says Cone’s book “is a theological meditation on a dimension of the lethal oppression experienced by African Americans that has been formative for both the faith and civic posture of the black community for a very long time.”
But the LGBTQ community also has legitimate concerns about security and safety, too. The suffering of blacks and gay people as marginalized communities runs on parallel tracks in this latest controversy. Since the Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed into law by the President in October 2009, murders of LGBTQ people have risen sharply, this year reaching the highest number of hate crime homicides every seen in the USA. Gays and blacks are targeted by people who believe queer executions are justified by the Bible and the authority of church leadership. Like the African American fear of what a noose represents, the hanging of an effigy holding a rainbow flag in its hand conveys what bigots like Jones surely have in mind for LGBTQ people.
A parable: When a dog owner neglects to secure the pet pen, allowing a snapping dog to run free in the neighborhood, who is to blame if the dog digs up the rose beds, urinates on someone’s shoes and socks, kills two pet cats, and mauls a little girl? The dog? No! It was in the dog’s nature and conditioning to bite and tear. The person who unleashed a dog he knew was likely to bite on the other hand sets up the condition by which injury and death may occur–and the dog owner is legally responsible for the damage his pet causes to life, limb and property. When demagogues like Jones and his more practiced homophobe, Rev. Fred Phelps, breathe out their hatred of LGBTQ people, they are also potentially inciting “whosoever will” to violence against gays, lesbians, bisexual people, and transgender people. The incitement to commit a bias crime is a crime of violence in its own right, as Rev. Dr. Mel White has pointed out time and again–and it has to be stopped.
Author of Gay Hate Crimes Book Wins International Silver Medal
Stephen V. Sprinkle receives the Silver Medal for excellence in Gay/Lesbian Non-Fiction at the 16th Annual IPPY Awards.
New York, New York – June 4th, Dr. Steve Sprinkle received the international Silver Medal for Gay/Lesbian Non-Fiction at the 16th Annual Independent Book Publishers Awards Gala in New York City. The Director of the Awards, Jim Barnes, praised Unfinished Lives for being a “brave book,” and “the only such book of its kind.” Barnes asked Dr. Sprinkle to say a few words about his motivation for writing it–the only author he asked to speak to the gathering all night. A photo album of the event are accessible on Facebook by clicking on this link. Dr. Sprinkle expressed his gratitude for increasing interest in the book: “Thanks to everyone for your continuing support of Unfinished Lives and the blog Of the Unfinished Lives Project, https://unfinishedlivesblog.com/.”
In a press release by the Independent Book Publishers Awards, sponsored the the Jenkins Group, the international reach of the IPPYs is evident: “Independent publishers are extremely diverse, in both style and geography. This year’s IPPY competition attracted 5,200 entries, and the 372 medalists represent 44 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia, seven Canadian provinces, and ten countries overseas. Launched in 1996 as the first unaffiliated awards program open exclusively to independent, university, and self-published titles, the IPPY Awards contest rewards winners in 74 national, 22 regional, and five e-book categories with gold, silver and bronze medallions and foil seals for their book covers.” The Independent Publisher, a blog featuring the avant guard role independent presses play in launching distinctively different books annually, made this observation about the 16th Annual Awards for 2012: “This year’s entry totals are the biggest ever, with 4,813 print book entries, 390 e-book entries, and an average category size of 50. The largest category was Memoir, with 213 entries; the smallest was Classical Studies, with just 8 entries. IPPY medals go to entrants from 44 U.S. states plus D.C., 7 Canadian provinces, and 10 countries overseas.”
“Independent publishers are growing in number, and the quality of their work is increasing,” says awards director Jim Barnes. “One element driving the high rate of excellence is participation from university presses. This year, 29 medalists came from university presses and 9 came from museums. Their elevated level of writing, editing, design and production raises the bar and inspires us all.” E-Books were recognized in five categories this year, as well. Author and publisher enthusiasm for this publishing medium means that more categories of E-Book awards will be featured in next year’s IPPYs.
Sprinkle said that he owed the night to the ongoing memories of the 13,000 queer folk whose hate crimes murders have been documented since 1982, and especially to the memories of the fourteen women, men, and youth who lost their lives to unreasoning hatred just because of who they loved and how they presented their existential understanding of gender. Unfinished Lives may be accessed on the Unfinished Lives Blog, on Amazon.com, and Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Marine Murder Anti-Gay Hate Crime, Prosecutor Says
LCpl Philip Bushong, 23, mistakenly assumed to be gay, stabbed to death for hugging a friend.
Washington, D.C. – Yelling anti-gay slurs, a U.S. Marine stabbed another Marine to death after seeing him embrace his male friend outside a popular Barracks Row pub in the nation’s capital. The Washington Post reports that Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman confirmed that his office is proceeding with anti-gay hate crime charges against Michael Poth, 20, who stabbed Lance Corporal Philip M. Bushong, 23, on April 21. “This was a hate crime,” Liebman said. “The victim and his friend were embracing outside.” The Post goes on to say that a DC Metro Police homicide detective reported that the crime took place because Poth believed the two men hugging were both gay. In fact, while his friend is out and gay, Bushong was heterosexual.
The story confirms what hate crimes activists have seen time and again in fatalities like this: even the assumption that a person is gay or lesbian can be deadly.
Video surveillance of the area shows Bushong lifting his shirt after the attack with a startled look on his face, and then collapsing to the pavement. His assailant had stabbed him once in the chest with a pocket knife. When Poth heard that Bushong had been transported to a hospital to deal with the stab wound, he was heard shouting, “Good! I hope he dies!” Prior to the attack, Poth was heard threatening the two men he saw socializing outside the pub, “I’m going to stab someone and cut their lungs out.” Poth, who had already received a “less-than-honorable discharge” from the Marines according to court testimony, had been under investigation by the Marine Corps since last November for altercations with other Marines, and for drug offenses.
Poth has been charged with second degree murder. His attorney, who claims his client was defending himself from Bushong, unsuccessfully attempted to get the charge lowered to manslaughter. In the altercation, Bushong was heard calling Poth a “boot,” which in Marine slang suggests that Poth was a substandard soldier.
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.
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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Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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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 
The Outrage of Pulpit Homophobia: A Special Comment By a Baptist
Sean Harris (l), caught in the act of pulpit bullying.
Fayetteville, North Carolina – Pastor Sean Harris did not make news around the blogosphere because he preaches against gay people. He should have, of course, and been opposed for it. But homophobic messages from American pulpits are given passes every Sunday of the world. Because he got caught fanning the flames of homophobic bullying against children, however, he has become an infamous example of what can no longer be tolerated in any pulpit anywhere. In a sermon at Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, home to Fort Bragg, Pastor Harris shouted that any “limp-wristed” boy acting like a girl should be punished with physical violence. His wrist should be “cracked” and he should receive the blows of his father’s fists, the preacher said with great enthusiasm. Girls were not left out of his sights, either. Pastor Harris went on the say that girls could “play sports,” but they were supposed to conform to his notions of what a girl looked like, dressed like, acted like, and “smelled like.”
“Smelled like”? Pastor Harris’s sermon does not pass the “smell test.” Love of God and neighbor are apparently foreign to him, and the shouts of affirmation he received as he preached his homophobic message had nothing to do with the Good News. His message of harsh punishment smells like something dying, not something being born again. Sadly, there are too many like him in the pulpits of this nation, so-called men of God who give God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit a bad name.
It doesn’t take a theologian to know what Pastor Harris is up to. He is trying to say that God hates gay people, even those in the larval stage. He is a strong supporter of North Carolina’s proposed anti-difference amendment to the state constitution, Amendment One, which will be voted on shortly in the Old North State. Same-sex marriage is already illegal in North Carolina, but pulpit politicians like Harris want to inscribe discrimination in the constitution of the only southern state in the country that has had the good sense not to do so yet. So, Pastor Harris feels free to advocate violence against children who are stereotypically suspected of being gay.
Pastor Harris is abusing his pulpit in the name of a homophobia embedded within him, and which he reads back into scripture and Christian faith–a practice that is controversial at the very least, and has been repeatedly shown to be false by ministers, scripture scholars, and church leaders for decades. It is the oldest ministerial slight-of-hand in the Christian faith: find an outcast group it seems safe to demean, then proof text a Bible verse to support your bias (but be sure to wash your hands of the violence your words inspire and the attacks people you instigate carry out!). Jews, Blacks, women, and now gay people and their supporters in North Carolina know all about it. And it is no longer tolerable or acceptable for other Christians to put up with silently any longer. Where is the outcry from clergy? From church members who know better? Where is the demand that religion based bigotry must stop? Where are the voices of school administrators, teachers, and school board members who know full well that attitudes and advocacy like Harris’s lead to children being bullied to death in classrooms and school playgrounds?
Pastor Harris now says he wants to “retract” his advice about parental violence against their children. But he defiantly affirms that he still hates sinners like gay people, calling them “abominations,” homophobic biblicism’s shorthand for the worst curse imaginable. I would hope he changes his mind and heart about his fellow human beings, the ones God loves just as much as God loves his Berean Baptist flock. But I am not holding my breath until he does. I have worked educating ministerial students, speaking on panels in schools and universities, and writing on the role religion based homophobia plays in hate crimes for decades, and these two things I have learned about “true believers” like this pulpit abuser: You cannot take out of a person by rationality what rationality did not put into him. Neither can appeals to humanity change a heart of stone.
Though I suspect he would argue with me until Judgement Day, I know that every child is precious in the sight of God–even those who will one day identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, or something else. God doesn’t make junk. And, contrary to the homophobia he was taught somewhere and seems to have swallowed whole, being gay, just like being straight, is a gift from God, too.
One other thing is sure: what Pastor Harris is preaching about the gender identity and expression of children did not come from God.
Here is a scripture that came to me while I was listening to Pastor Harris’s diatribe in the guise of a sermon: John 11:35 – “Jesus wept.” ~ Rev. Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Baptist minister and professor of Practical Theology in Fort Worth, Texas
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May 2, 2012 Posted by unfinishedlives | Amendment One, Bullycide, Bullying in schools, gay bashing, gender identity/expression, Gender Variant Youth, Hate Crimes, hate speech, Heterosexism and homophobia, Homosexuality and the Bible, Internalized homophobia, LGBT teen suicide prevention, North Carolina, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Special Comments, transgender persons, transphobia | Amendment One, Bullying in schools, gay bashing, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Homosexuality and the Bible, LGBTQ teen suicide, North Carolina, Special Comment, transgender persons, transphobia | 1 Comment