Fate of Angie Zapata’s Confessed Murderer Goes to Jury
Allen Ray Andrade, on trial for the Murder of transgender woman Angie Zapata, awaits his verdict in Greeley, CO today. Prosecution goes for first degree murder. Andrade, already confessed to the murder, was deeply homophobic, according to statements from the jail to girlfriends, such as “Gay things must die.”
Drag Queen Murdered in NC
Jimmy McCollough, also known as Imaje Devera
Fayetteville, NC – “Ms. Jimmy,” also known on stage as Imaje Devera was found stabbed to death outside Club Emages, a local gay and lesbian night spot around midnight on April 14, 2009. Jimmy McCollough, 34, was a talented female impersonator who struggled to make ends meet in the recession economy. Police are investigating the murder as a hate crime, but since North Carolina does not have hate crime legislation addressing LGBT hate crime violence, and neither does the federal government, resources to investigate and prosecute such a crime are slim in the Old North State.
Transgender community leader Janice Covington, wrote in response to Ms. Jimmy’s murder: “This morning, April 14, 2009, the murdered body of Image Devereux (Ms. Jimmy) was found on Joseph Street behind the old Club Spektrum in Fayetteville, N.C. She was a local Drag Queen who many of us knew as a friend. She will be missed but not forgotten. My prayers go out to her family.”
An underreported aspect of this story is the high degree of anti-LGBT prejudice in hiring practices in Fayetteville and around the nation. The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, now transgender inclusive, is necessary to confront and begin to rectify the desperate situation so many trans and gender-non-conforming men find themselves in today. Southerners On New Ground (SONG), founded by Black and White lesbians in order to advance Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer multi-racial, multi-issued education, commented on Ms. Jimmy’s death: “Mr. McCollough was presumably simply working the streets on the night he was murdered, trying to pay his bills. Like too many in our communities, he was a gender non-conforming person of color in the South, known to be a sex worker, and a presence in the community. SONG continues to be committed to working for a day when folks like Mr. McCollough are not victims of violence, and when lives and livelihoods such as his as seen as just as important and precious as any other life.”
Homophobia Kills Straight People, Too
Eric Mohat, 17, committed suicide after merciless homophobic bullying at school. He was straight.
Mentor, OH: The parents of a 17-year-old straight son who was bullied in school so relentlessly for being homosexual that he killed himself filed suit in federal court on March 27, 2009 against the school system and officials who witnessed the name-calling, hitting, and pushing, but did nothing to protect the boy. Eric Mohat, whose nickname was “Twiggy,” was a tall, skinny boy who loved to play the piano, had a wonky sense of humor, and loved the theatre. The harassment proved too much to bear. A bully shouted at him in class on March 29, 2007, “Why don’t you go home and shoot yourself! No one will miss you!” Eric did.
Eric strikes a pose for the Yearbook
He went home, took out his father’s legally registered handgun, locked himself in the room, and shot himself in the head. His parents, William and Janis Mohat of Mentor, Ohio, allege that the suicides of three other youths at Mentor Senior High School, that occurred shortly after their son’s death, are also due to excessive bullying. Though the Mohats are seeking no punitive damages in their suit, they insist that the school system acknowledge the problem of homophobic bullying and address it effectively. School officials defend the operation of the 2,900 student school in an eastern exuburb of Cleveland, saying that they had already instituted a form of anti-bullying education, and took appropriate steps to address Eric’s fears when he brought them to their attention. Countering, friends of Eric’s attest that teachers and administrators saw what was happening to Eric and others, and in effect turned a blind eye. They say Eric was relentlessly badgered in class, and called “fag,” “homo,” “nancy boy,” and “queer” right in front of his teachers. Most of the bullying took place in a math class where the teacher, who is an athletic coach, failed to protect Eric. Experts on anti-bullying education note that the program the Mentor school is using has questionable results with homophobic jock culture when it is entrenched in a school or community.
Eric's MySpace pic, a gift from his sister, Erin
His older sister Erin, whom Eric called his hero, heard the shot from another room where she was exercising on a treadmill. In a blog, Erin wrote about losing her little brother: “It’s so surreal. I just keep thinking he’ll walk through the front door, bouncy as always, and say, ‘Oh the wound wasn’t that serious, they patched me up just fine.’ But I know better. The coroner has called and asked to use pieces of his heart to save three children’s lives, and his corneas too. The police were there to tell me, yes he was dead. But I knew from the moment I found him. I didn’t want to admit it because I was still hoping that just maybe my mind was playing tricks on me…. but that’s not the case and I knew it the moment I saw all that blood and I saw part of his brain on that floor. I can’t get it out of my head. The image of it all makes me sick but even with my eyes wide open I can see it.” Now Erin, who is 21, is studying to be a school psychologist.
Eric’s dad told ABC reporters, “When you lose a child like this it destroys you in ways you can’t even describe.” He and his wife have opened their hearts and their home to any child contemplating suicide, just so no one will have to believe that she or he is alone and afraid.
The Columbine tragedy in Colorado, and numerous other shootings across the country demonstrate the negative effects of homophobic epithets and name-calling. Recent studies, including those carried out by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (www.glsen.org), show that youth who are bullied in school have a five to nine times higher incidence of suicide than those who do not suffer it.
Shrine to Eric in Mentor, Ohio, by his friends
Homophobia kills. LGBT folk are the primary targets of violent hate crimes due to homophobia and heterosexism. But as Eric Mohat’s story illustrates, the toll of murder and suicide is mounting for straight youth, too. When will the madness stop? Not until good people get involved and clamor for anti-bullying laws and hate crimes statutes.
Just days before the suicide, Eric Mohat told his mother, “I get picked on every day and I’ve got a whole nine weeks left. I can’t do this anymore.”
“We never had a chance to help him,” she said, choking back tears.
“It shouldn’t require legal action to get the school system to pay more attention to bullying than they do to their sports programs,” said his father. “How many suicides is enough?”
Fight Hate Crimes Campaign Launches Effort to Pass Matthew Shepard Act
The Human Rights Campaign has launched its big federal legislative push to enact the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also called the Matthew Shepard Act, named in memory of the most widely recognized LGBT hate crimes victim in American history. Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by two Laramie, Wyoming men in October 1998. Both pled guilty, and are serving life sentences for their crime. Visit the HRC site for more information: www.hrc.org/sites/hatecrimes/index.asp.
Martinez casket header for Denver Post article on F.C.'s murder
Fred C. Martinez, Jr. (1985-2001), a sixteen-year-old Navajo, is featured in the HRC campaign. He was one of the first subjects of research for the Unfinished Lives Project, and will figure prominently in Dr. Sprinkle’s forthcoming book, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memory of LGBT Hate Crimes Murder Victims. The book is still in the writing stage at this point, with a projected completion date of September 2009.
"Dance to the Berdache," George Catlin, ca. 1830
Martinez was a Two-Spirit person, also called a berdache. F.C., as his friends called him, suffered harassment in the Cortez, CO public schools for his transgender identity. In June 2001, on the night of the Ute Mountain Carnival and Rodeo, Shaun Murphy, a resident of Farmington, NM, lured F.C. into a narrow, deep canyon cut diagonally through the south part of Cortez, and cracked open his skull with a 25 pound rock. Murphy left him to die of exposure and blood loss, bragging the night of the murder that he had “bug-smashed a joto,” slang for “fag.” At the time F.C.’s body was discovered by small boys playing on the canyon floor five days after the homicide, his remains were so decomposed that his mother could identify him only by the blue bandana he wore when he left her home.
Shaun Murphy, F.C.'s killer
Murphy, 18, was sentenced to 40 years for F.C.’s murder. There is little to indicate that F.C., the most famous person ever to live in Cortez, had ever existed. Neither Colorado nor the United States has enacted anti-hate crime legislation. His mother, Pauline Mitchell, still works as an advocate for LGBT people and for the memory of her son. She visits his grave often, kneeling on the grass, talking to him in Navajo and English, thanking him for understanding that things are taking so long to change.
F.C. and his mom, Pauline Mitchell
There is strong medicine in the F.C. Martinez, Jr. story. As a nadleeh, as Navajo people refer to their Two-Spirits, he was a sign of the balance between the feminine and the masculine in us all. He walked the Way of Beauty. As the Navajo Blessingway Chant says:
Earth’s body has become my body
by means of this I shall live on.
Earth’s mind has become my mind
by means of this I shall live on.
Earth’s voice has become my voice
by means of this I shall live on.
Michael Scott Goucher and the Deadly Web of Homophobia
Michael Scott Goucher
Michael Scott Goucher, 21, thought he was meeting Shawn “Skippy” Freemore, 19, for a second tryst when he left his Stroudsburg, PA, apartment on the night of February 3, 2009 (see Towleroad, “Internet Tryst Leads to Murder of Pennsylvania Army Veteran, 2/13/2009”). Instead, Goucher was being set up for murder. Goucher met Freemore online. According to his MySpace page, Freemore identified as bisexual, but more interested in men. After the initial meet up in January, Freemore enlisted his friend, Ian Seagraves, 17, to ambush Goucher.
Goucher followed Freemore out of his car in a wooded area off of Snow Hill Road in Price Township. Seagraves, who was hiding under a nearby bridge, surprised Goucher, stabbing him in the neck. During the attack, his two assailants stabbed Goucher “45 to 50 times” according to police affadavits. They rifled his pockets, taking credit cards, his ID, and a cell phone. A DVD belonging to Goucher was later confiscated at Seagraves’ home. They covered his body with snow, and drove his car away.
Ian Seagraves & Shawn Freemore, courtesy of Pocono Record
When he was arrested, Freemore contended that he had acted alone and used the “gay panic” defense, saying that he resisted Goucher’s sexual advances in the car, and only after Goucher pursued him outside, stabbed him in the neck and stomach “about 20 times.” On February 11, 2009, Freemore showed police the location of Goucher’s body. Detectives secured a knife and a meat cleaver near the body, and a roll of duct tape with Seagraves’ fingerprint under the bridge. Seagraves, who apparently celebrated his part in the murder by changing his MySpace moniker to “ThrOwt Stabba,” was soon arrested, and the pair is now charged with premeditated murder.
This is one murder the FBI will surely miss in its Hate Crimes Statistics. The murky details of online hookups, closeted gayness, and bisexuality mingle with drug and alcohol addiction (on Freemore’s part at least), theft, and the involvement of the teenage men in a violence-exalting subculture called “the Juggaloes.” Anti-gay hate murder has been facilitated online before, as the story of Michael J. Sandy showed in 2006, as well as the role that homosexual self-loathing plays in the psychological makeup of some attackers. But this was a brutal, homophobia-instigated and motivated hate crime.
Michael Goucher at the Zion UCC organ
Goucher, a U.S. Army veteran, was a contributing member of his community. He worked for the local school system, and volunteered as the assistant organist of the Zion United Church of Christ in Stroudsburg, where he had impressed the pastor and the membership with his talent, sincerity, and friendliness. He was captain of the East Stroudsburg Crime Watch. He was a gay man. Though he came out to his family as early as 14, according to his uncle, William Searfoss, Goucher did keep his orientation from his Army superiors.
His killers will be judged according to the evidence. Allegedly, they own the guilt for this terrible crime. But Freemore and Seagraves are, in their own ways, victims of American-style homophobia, too. They were products of the same school system as Michael Goucher. They loathed gay men enough to turn a consensual sexual encounter into a bloodbath, with all the marks of homophobic overkill. They victimized Michael Goucher, giving way to their own self-loathing.
UPDATE: Following a Supreme Court ruling that juveniles cannot be sentenced to life without parole, Ian Seagraves was given a new hearing in hopes of securing a lesser sentence. His attorney filed a petition to the court based on the Supreme Court decision. But the judge was unmoved by the arguments, and after hearing the profanity laced lyrics of Seagraves’ song about the Goucher murder, reaffirmed the sentence Seagraves was serving. Goucher’s uncle, William Searfoss, said to PA Homepage, that the focus of the story can now return to Michael Goucher: “This isn’t about [Seagraves]. This is about Mike.”
Has the “War” Against LGBTs Ceased in Fort Lauderdale?
A kinder, gentler Ft. Lauderdale may be in the cards, as John P. “Jack” Seller takes over as Mayor after 18 years of an anti-gay administration. Ex-mayor Jim Naugle scapegoated the LGBT community for a non-existent sex and crime problem in public toilets along the city’s fabled gay-friendly beaches. Enraged at Naugle’s homophobic rhetoric and his enlistment of right wing church groups in a “war” against “immorality,” LGBT opponents of Naugle launched a “Flush Naugle” campaign, parodying the mayor’s effort to get $250k robo-toilets installed on the beaches.
Robo-Toilet Mayor Naugle Proposed to Address Non-Existent Gay Crime Wave on the Beaches
Naugle’s “war” claimed victims, most notably Simmie L. Williams, Jr., a 17-year-old trans person, known on the Sistrunk Avenue strip where he died as “Chris,” or “Beyoncé.” Two assailants shot him to death on the night of February 22, 2008, and as yet are not apprehended. Homophobia has a crooked arm. No straight line of cause and effect need link Naugle’s diatribes against the LGBT community to Simmie Williams’ murder, but the mayor’s irresponsible rhetoric set the stage for violence against queer folk in Broward County to escalate.
Simmie Williams died in the street wearing a dress, a casualty in a “war” he didn’t even know he was enlisted to fight. Mayor Seller, who has just taken office, has his work cut out for him. Shall it be, “Come Bask in the Sun,” in Fort Lauderdale, or “Come Bash in the Sun”? At the Unfinished Lives Project, we know which one we vote for.
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director, The Unfinished Lives Project
Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes in California Increase Alarmingly
Ventura County Star Editorial Cartoon on Prop 8
365gay reports a 300% increase in homophobic hate crimes in Santa Clara County, California, just south of San Francisco. Two years ago, 15% of hate crimes were designated as anti-LGBT in nature. Last year’s statistics showed a dramatic increase to 56% of all hate crimes in the county.
An official for the District Attorney’s Office said to reporters for the Mercury News, “Marriage equality and Proposition 8 have been in the news, and we have seen an increase of gay bashing.” Stats for the rest of California’s counties will be released in the Attorney General’s annual report on hate crimes, due out in July.
In November, the “Yes on 8” campaign prevailed at the polls, 52% to 48%. The California Supreme Court has heard arguments on both sides of the question concerning a repeal of Proposition 8 on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Also at stake are the 18,000 same-sex marriages carried already in the state. The judges have 90 days to issue a ruling.
In the meantime, the potential voting public in the Golden State remains sharply divided over the issue of same-sex marriage. A public opinion poll shows that 47% would now vote to maintain the ban. 48% report that they would vote to repeal Proposition 8.
Meanwhile, the bashings continue at a breathtaking rate. Stay tuned.
Anti-Gay Monument Struck Down
Advocate.com reports that the US Supreme Court has ruled against Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, in their petition to build an anti-gay monument condemning slain LGBT icon, Matthew Shepard. Phelps wanted to erect the monument in a governmental plaza in Kansas reading, “Matthew Shepard Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God’s warning ‘thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is an abomination.’ Leviticus 18:22.”
Phelps Anti-Gay Monument
The Supremes ruled unanimously that government parks receiving monument donations are under no obligation to accept them all. Phelps previously attempted to erect a similar monument condemning homosexuality and Matthew Shepard in a city park located in Shepard’s hometown, Caspar, Wyoming. The city council rejected the offer. Shepard, who was openly gay, was brutally murdered by two young men from Laramie where he was attending the University of Wyoming, in October 1998. The news of the heinous hate crime murder rocked the nation, and awakened millions to the existence of anti-LGBT violence in their own backyards. Both his attackers, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, are serving life sentences. To date, no federal hate crimes prevention statutes have been enacted into law. The Matthew Shepard Act is under consideration during this Congress once again.
Special Comment on the Proposition 8 Protest Movement: “Now is Our Time”
by Stephen V. Sprinkle
One step too far: that is the step opponents of civil rights for LGBT people, the LDS Church and the Knights of Columbus, took in their all-out effort to repeal same-sex marriage in California. I do not contest the freedom of church organizations to voice their opinions about court decisions in America. But the desperate over-reach of Mormons and Roman Catholics to strip same-sex couples of the right of civil marriage the California Supreme Court had vouchsafed to them has awakened millions of LGBT people and allies to the power of a movement whose time has come. Pouring millions of church dollars and thousands of radio/TV advertisements into the struggle over Prop 8 has rebounded upon those who briefly celebrated beating back the high court’s decision on same-sex marriage. The agents of heterosexist theocracy may have won a single battle at the ballot box, but in doing so they have set in motion a war for public opinion they cannot win.
Our opponents managed one thing by their desperation and arrogance: they have galvanized the grassroots power of the millions of LGBT folk and allies who surged to the polls on November 4 to elect Barack Obama president. With the internet as the vehicle for equality, 300 protest events sprang up in less than twelve days. No other civil rights movement in American history has been launched in cyberspace before, and as the presidential campaign of 2008 demonstrated, the internet has vast potential to rally millions and to fund a national movement. As a witness to the No On 8 Protest at the Austin, Texas Town Hall, I can report the zeal and determination of 3,000 mostly first-time protesters to seize this time as our time, the long-deferred time for a true LGBT Civil Rights moment. As a marcher myself, I can testify to the thrill of taking it to the streets as a 50-something gay man in a new way. I was too closeted and too far removed from the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 to take to the streets then. But this is today, and Prop 8, no matter what LGBT people may privately think of marriage for ourselves, is a thumb in our eye. Myriads of young Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Transgender people built up their electoral muscle in Obama Pride, and now are ready to infuse new life, energy and possibility into the struggle for sexual and gender expression equality. The rally organizers did a fine job at the Austin Town Hall Plaza for the thousands who came out. All the usual advocacy groups were there, lending leadership and direction to the surging crowds of neophytes straining at the bit to do their part for justice. But closing the proceedings and urging protesters to sign up on contact lists or to buy tee shirts could not shut off the electricity generated by restless youth. When a movement goes viral, it cannot be shut down with the flip of a switch.
Perhaps the organizers of the Austin No On 8 Protest tried to get a march permit, but couldn’t. Whatever the story, hundreds of fired up queers and allies took their signs and passion into the streets, and marched up to the Texas State Capital, where we demonstrated outside the gates in the shadow of the tallest governmental dome in America. “What do we want?” “Equality!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” ricocheted up and down Austin streets as dozens of cars and pickups sped by blaring horns and shouting encouragement. The citizens of Austin stepped back, some smiling, some scowling at the surging rainbow line marching up Congress Avenue. Two descriptors came to my mind as I marched along chanting with the others: Power and Peace. This was no flash-in-the pan afternoon protest, no lark by first-timers seeking to get their pictures in the paper. Others have seized their moments: the anti-war movement, African Americans, the Moral Majority, women. But this has the feel of our time, the time when the issue of same-sex wedlock changed from a political hot potato into a viral movement elevating marriage to the status of a civil right for all Americans.
There are serious problems to work out. Before the rift with people of color tears any further, African Americans and Latinas/Latinos must be appealed to directly. LGBT people and straight people of color have a stake in the fight for justice together, not apart, and LGBT people of color must lead white queer folk to avoid driving a wedge between natural allies and us. That is where LGBT people of faith and progressive religious leaders have a major role to play by giving a faith rationale for the marriage equality movement. One of the lessons of the defeat in California is that when church bigotry waves crosses and distorts the issues for the voting public, the most potent antidote is the public witness of queer and progressive faith leaders wearing all their ecclesiastical regalia. God must not be hijacked any longer by the radical right in the fight for equality. Further, from what I saw and heard, LGBT rallies need media savvy and speakers need coaching on how to call out the passion and motivation that will translate into effective action for change. It was clear that we haven’t learned how to do this ‘thing,’ yet. But we must learn how, and quickly, if we are to ride the tide of commitment building in our queer communities.
My work on LGBT hate crimes murder victims teaches me that our movement already has its martyrs. I cannot help thinking of Harvey Milk, wondering if after 30 years since his assassination in San Francisco we have finally become ready to realize his vision and to vindicate his death and the deaths of so many hundreds of others. As we march and protest, their stories can give us the drive to confront a society yet unwilling to see us as equals. Never again must LGBT people stay silent when some of us are killed for simply being who we are. And never again may we sit idle on the sidelines while others struggle to win our freedom and equality. I saw and felt a justice movement building in the capital of the Lone Star State this past Saturday. As one sign in the Austin No on 8 Protest proclaimed, “Our Love Will Outlast Their H8!” We who believe in justice cannot rest! We who believe in justice cannot rest until it comes!
Stephen V. Sprinkle
Director
The Unfinished Lives Project
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
Contact Us
Communicate with the Unfinished Lives project team:
info@unfinishedlivesblog.com
Schedule a Presentation
Dr. Sprinkle will gladly present his acclaimed presentation to your organization. To arrange an Unfinished Lives presentation for your organization or group, please contact us.
Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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Unfinished Lives 
Bullfrog in the Kettle: On Not Being Lulled into a False Sense of Security About Anti-LGBT Violence
How do you boil a bullfrog? Don’t try to plop it in a steaming kettle on the stove. Ease it into a nice warm bath in the pot, and let it swim around until it drops its guard. Nudge up the heat nice and slow. Caught unawares, the frog won’t wake up to its danger until it is too late and the water is about to boil.
Larry King Cover in The Advocate magazine
Last year saw a rash of murders of young, feminine-presenting men about this time. In January, Adophus Simmons of North Charleston, South Carolina was shot to death while carrying his trash out to the dumpster. In February, just after Valentine’s Day, Larry King was shot in the back of the head in his middle school computer class by his classmate in Oxnard, California. Then, near the end of February, Simmie Williams, Jr. was shot down in the street in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by two still-unapprehended murders. Simmons was 18, King was 15, and Williams was 17.
Simmie Williams' Mother Mourns his death
It took some weeks for the LGBT press to connect the dots and cry out that young, gender non-conforming men, especially young men of color, were in the crosshairs of deadly prejudice in the United States. King’s murder drew a cover story in The Advocate, and then the mainstream press picked up the theme with its flawed cover in Newsweek. The nation shrugged off the murders of the other two boys. Now, things have gone strangely silent about the morphing of murder against LGBT people, with minimal interest in the new outbreak of violence against African American transwomen in Memphis, Tennessee. Queer folk are still being killed, but in the glow of President Obama’s first 100 Days, with all eyes turned to the beautiful First Couple and the stumbling U.S. economy, even the LGBT press is falling to sleep again, lulling the LGBT population who are still at risk everywhere into a false sense of security. The bullfrog is doing the backstroke in the kettle, and the heat is rising oh-so-slowly.
Joan Crawford, LGBT Icon, in Johnny Guitar
Just like queer folk used to sit through whole tiresome movies like Johnny Guitar just to see Joan Crawford descend the stairs wearing a butch shirt waving a gun, the LGBT and progressive press are hanging onto every hint of “gay” in President Obama’s speeches and press releases. He said “gay and lesbian” in Chicago on Election Night! He didn’t mention us in the Inaugural Address at all, but has our issues on the White House web site! His team invited Rick Warren (who opposes us 100%) to pray, but Joseph Lowery (who kinda likes us), too! The Inaugural Committee chose Bishop Gene Robinson to pray at the Lincoln Memorial (but then botched its broadcast, and somebody cut off his mic), and at the last minute invited him to the platform for the Inauguration! Please!
Here is what we know for sure:
1) Queer folk are still being killed and attacked in heightened numbers throughout the United States, especially in the Heartland of the Upper Midwest, the Left Coast, and the South, as NCAVP and FBI statistics demonstrate.
2) Even the presumption that someone is gay is deadly, as was the case of José O. Sucuzhañay, a straight man attacked while walking arm-in-arm with his brother in Brooklyn just before Christmas.
3) Transgender women and men, especially if they are of color, are dying in our streets in alarming numbers, as the Memphis attacks testify.
4) A gay man’s life is worth less than an animal’s in some states, as the imminent early release of Sean William Kennedy’s convicted murderer shows in Greenville, South Carolina.
5) Silence-of-the-Lambs style murders apparently cannot shake urban governments awake to the peril of their LGBT citizens, as the gruesome dismemberment of Richard Hernandez and the subsequent veil of silence surrounding it in Dallas, TX points out.
6) Most LGBT people would rather not read about this right now, with Spring Break coming up, and Easter, and the next Circuit Party, and all.
Who wouldn’t rather ignore the reality of violence and neglect that makes LGBT jobs, loves and our very lives so fragile in March 2009, the Obama Administration notwithstanding? Please don’t “let Barack do it” and abdicate responsibility for acting for and end to anti-LGBT violence in this country. Barack Obama needs all of us who feel the heat to make him keep his promises to enact the Matthew Shepard Act, ENDA, and to repeal DADT.
Don’t be fooled. Don’t be lulled. The kettle is on to boil.
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director
The Unfinished Lives Project
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March 11, 2009 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, Anglo Americans, gay men, gun violence, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Legislation, Mistaken as LGBT, Politics, Racism, School and church shootings, Special Comments | Comments Off on Bullfrog in the Kettle: On Not Being Lulled into a False Sense of Security About Anti-LGBT Violence