Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Remembering Sean William Kennedy (1987-2007)

April 8 would be Sean Kennedy’s birthday, if someone hadn’t killed him for being gay.  Sean would have been 23.  He would be doing all those things he loved to do on his birthday, according to his Facebook Profile: “Hanging Out, Music, “Playing” Music, Talking, Being Crazy,Going Out, Movies, Driving Around Being Crazy, Listening To Music, Watching My Shows, Clubs (When Im In The Mood)” But in the wee hours of May 16, 2007, a fun night at Croc’s Bar in Greenville, South Carolina turned deadly when a homophobic young white man took it upon himself to punish Sean for being “other.”  Sean’s mom, Elke Kennedy, relates what happened that night on the home page of Sean’s Last Wish, a foundation she and the family established so that Sean’s memory would live on, and his story would continue to change hearts and minds about LGBT people in America: “[That night] Sean was leaving a local bar in Greenville when a car pulled up beside him, a young man got out of the car, came around the car, approached my son, called him a ‘faggot’ and then punched him so hard that it broke his face bones.  He fell back and hit the asphalt.  This resulted in his brain [being] separated from his brain stem, ricocheting around in his head.  Sean never had a chance.  Sean’s killer got back in his car and left my son dying there.  A little later he left a message on one of the girl’s phones who knew Sean, saying, ‘You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand!'”  Stephen Moller, Sean’s 19-year-old killer, was given virtually every break the legal system in South Carolina could give him.  He was sentenced to 5 years for involuntary manslaughter by subtly shifting the blame to his victim, and pleading for special treatment because he had fathered a child.  The sentence was shortened to 3 years, he was given credit for time served and for being a good prisoner.  Moller was given an early release parole hearing in February 2009, but thanks to the efforts of his mother, his stepfather, and hundreds of letter-writing protestors from around the nation, he was denied parole.  Even then, Moller, who had gotten his GED behind bars, was released on July 7, 2009, a full week early from the already short sentence he had served for killing a young gay man who did him no harm other than being who he was.  The justice system failed Sean as it has failed so many before and since.  Elke Kennedy has gone on to become one of the most courageous and effective witnesses to the rights of LGBT youth in the United States.  Sean’s Last Wish Foundation is making a difference for LGBT young men and women every day.  But Sean is gone.  The loss of his life is inestimable to his family, to the queer community, to his friends, and to the world he made a better and happier place because of his unquenchable spirit.  One of his favorite sayings rings as true today as it did when he first published it on MySpace and Facebook: “We Could Learn Alot From Crayons” he wrote: “some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are differant colors… but they all exist very nicely in the same box.”  Who was this funny, wise, vivacious gay soul?  We read his words about himself, and catch just a glimpse of what we lost when hatred and ignorance took Sean away:  “i am 19 and my name is sean. i live in greenville, sc. it is a boring city. i love to meet new people. i love hanging out with people, chilling, shopping and having have a crazy fun time. ill do anything , i can have a fun time doing anything. i can have a fun time doing anything. i am a fun and crazy guy. ill do almost anything.im always on. so dont be scared to leave me a message.” We wish we could, Sean, today on your birthday.  It will have to suffice that we will work in your name, remembering you, until justice comes for all your people and ours.

April 8, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Law and Order, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Remembrances, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, South Carolina | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Remembering Sean William Kennedy (1987-2007)

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.

March 3, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, gay men, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, Legislation, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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.

March 3, 2010 Posted by | Anti-LGBT hate crime, California, FBI, harassment, Heterosexism and homophobia, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, transphobia, vandalism | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Graffiti Attack Sprays Hate at UC Davis: Students Rally

Miami Beach Police Disciplined for False Charges Against Gay Tourist Who Turned Them In For Beating

Flamingo Park Area of Miami Beach

Miami Beach, FL – “What is happening in Miami Beach?” —  Miami Herald reader Jeffrey Garcia questioned Miami Beach Police Chief  Carlos Noriega after reports that two MBPD officers falsely charged a gay tourist.  The officers were apparently unaware that the tourist was speaking on his cellphone to the 911 line to report them for beating a man on the street.  The large majority of the abusive arrest, shouts by the officers of anti-gay epithets, and their physical assault on gay tourist Harold Strickland were all recorded for the world to hear.  Once they realized the tourist was reporting them, they allegedly made up charges against him that have now been dropped. Under pressure from the ACLU of Florida, both MBPD Officers Frankly Forte and Elliot Hazzi have been put on desk duty while the investigation against them proceeds.  The Chief’s assurances of good relations with the Miami Beach LGBT community to the contrary, a flurry of reports are emerging that Miami, Miami Beach, South Beach, and other Dade County locales once considered gay Meccas are no longer safe for queer folk.  The made up charges against Mr. Strickland are the most recent example.  According to Miami Herald reports, Mr. Strickland observed two men beating a person at about 1 a.m. on March 13, 2009 in the Flamingo Park area of Miami Beach.  As Steve Rothaus of the Herald reports, “Strickland called 911 when he saw a man being beaten by two men just outside the park. ‘I saw a guy running and then I saw two, what looked like undercover cops running. And they pushed this guy down on the ground, the one cop did, and the other cop came up as if he was kicking a football … and kicked the guy in the head,” Strickland told a dispatcher during a recorded phone call to 911.”  Rothaus continues his report, “For nearly five minutes, he talked to the dispatcher, who encouraged him to get closer for more detail ‘if it doesn’t put you in any danger.’ A few seconds later, Strickland told the dispatcher: “Now they’re coming after me!””  The officers, Forte and Hazzi, demanded to know what Mr. Strickland was doing.  According to a spokesperson for the ACLU,they then grabbed his cellphone away from him and said, “We know what you’re doing here. We’re sick of all the f—ing fags in the neighborhood.”  Pushing him to the ground, they bound Mr. Strickland’s hands and proceeded to kick and beat him, hurling anti-gay slurs at him.  The ACLU report continues, “While Strickland was on the ground, the officers continued to spew anti-gay epithets. They called him a ‘f—ing fag’ and told him he was going to ‘get it good in jail.”’  Though Mr. Strickland tried to tell the officers about his call to 911, they would not listen.  They arrested him on prowling-and-loitering charges.  A half hour later, Officer Forte in his arrest report charged Mr. Strickland with breaking into six cars in the area.  In a hearing the next morning, a judge advised Mr. Strickland that he would get out of jail quicker if he would plead guilty to misdemeanor charges.  He did, but as soon as he was free, he called the ACLU, and changed his plea to not guilty.  The State Attorney General’s Office has dropped all charges against Mr. Strickland, as well as loitering and resisting arrest charges against Mr. Oscar Mendoza, the man Mr. Strickland saw Officers Forte and Hazzi beat near Flamingo Park.  The ACLU has informed the mayor of Miami Beach that they will sue both the offending officers and the city for the incident.  Robert F. Rosenwald Jr., director of the ACLU Florida’s Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Advocacy Project, told the Herald’s Steve Rothaus, “This is an issue that we have hoped to address for a long time. Miami Beach Police have for a long time harassed gay men around Flamingo Park without probable cause.”

February 16, 2010 Posted by | ACLU, Anglo Americans, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, Florida, gay men, harassment, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, police brutality, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Stomping and Kicking Violence | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Miami Beach Police Disciplined for False Charges Against Gay Tourist Who Turned Them In For Beating

Phelps Clan to Protest at Gay Fashion Designer’s Funeral: When Religion Turns Preposterous

Topeka, KS – Alexander McQueen, renowed gay fashion designer, died on February 11.  That same day, Fred Phelps, founder and chief screed-monger of Westboro Baptist Church, issued an announcement declaring that WBC would demonstrate at McQueen’s funeral “in religious protest and warning”  (see WBC web site graphic to the left).  Alexander McQueen (1969-2010) was a genius in the fashion industry who was named British Designer of the Year four times, and most recently was honored by Queen Elizabeth II with the rank of CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2003 in recognition of his lifetime achievement.  His obituary in The Times of London notes that he was formerly head designer at Givenchy and then moved into partnership with Gucci.  The shock value of his designs drew attention to his genius, and he counted Rihanna, Björk, and Lady Gaga among his more famous clients.  McQueen’s sexual orientation was no secret throughout the fashion world.  Phelps announced that his church was picketing McQueen’s funeral because he spent his life “teaching rebellion against God” and “committing crimes against God,” presumably by living openly as a talented, notable gay man.  Phelps also used the moment to slam Lady Gaga, calling her a “proud whore” who had “blood on her hands” for wearing McQueen’s creations.  Though Phelps and his independent Baptist Church are engaging in protected speech under the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, their scramble for contributions and attention goes beyond innocence when they lambaste fallen U.S. servicemembers, synagogues and churches,LGBT people, and celebrity figures under the banner of freedom of expression/freedom of religion.  It would be a mistake to underestimate the effect of this brand of hate speech on the gullible and impressionable–when direct links between hate speech and violence can be established, the full force of law must be brought to bear in order to prevent harm and loss of life. The link between hateful speech and hate crimes continues to be hotly debated, but though Phelps may not be guilty of hate violence yet, he and his followers have made their brand of religion look silly.  Should anyone take him seriously?  Alexander McQueen may rest undisturbed by the rantings of the likes of Phelps.  If anything, Lady Gaga can bask a bit in the knowledge that she has made WBC’s “Anti-Christ List” along with so many other worthy people.  The King James Version of  the Book of James 3:11 reads: Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Phelps twists the goodness of religion turning it into a bitter hate-filled caricature that sours what it touches.  Exponents of Good religion, the Golden Rule/Great Commandment kind, must work overtime to repair the damage to faith communities that Christian jihadists like WBC do in the name of God.

February 14, 2010 Posted by | gay men, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Kansas, Law and Order, Protests and Demonstrations, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Slurs and epithets | , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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.

January 26, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Florida, gay men, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, stabbings | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Arrest Made in Lesbian Stabbing Case

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.”

January 22, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Latino and Latina Americans, Law and Order, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Protests and Demonstrations, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, Stomping and Kicking Violence, Vigils | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Gay Man Murdered in Buffalo; Hate Crime Suspected

Buffalo, NY – Christopher Rudow, a 32-year-old gay man, was found murdered in his Buffalo loft apartment on Tuesday, January 5.  His friends suspect a hate crime motive in the killing.  Rudow was a well-liked employee of GEICO who moved from New York City to Buffalo six years ago.  He was known throughout the LGBT community largely because of his expertise as a DJ, his avocation on the side.  Friends describe Rudow as a real professional who had the equipment and the know-how to be a great tune-spinner.  He owned expensive audio components that he kept in three trunks inside his Elk Terminal apartment, but none of it was disturbed by whoever killed him.  WIVB Television reports the coronor determined Rudow’s cause of death to be blunt force trauma.  No suspects have surfaced in the investigation thus far.  Rudow’s murder took place hot on the heels of two other possible anti-LGBT hate crimes in the Buffalo metro area.  In nearby Cheektowaga, two women were charged with assaulting a 20-year-old gay man on December 31 at the Walden Galleria while yelling homophobic slurs.  On New Year’s Day, Lindsay Harmon, a 29-year-old lesbian was stabbed in the face and eye by a young woman shouting similar slurs at her.  LGBT activists in Buffalo say that many more hate crime attacks have occurred in recent months but go unreported, either because of fear of exposure, or out of a sense of despair that law enforcement will ever prosecute the crimes under New York’s hate crime law.  As Kitty Lambert, President of Outspoken for Equality, a Buffalo LGBT rights organization said to The Buffalo News, “I personally know of 10 unreported hate crime assaults in the city in the past two months. Why? Because people are frightened to report it.  Why should they bother reporting it?,” she added.  “It won’t be prosecuted as a hate crime.”  The LGBT community is alarmed and on their guard, expecting more attacks.  In the meanwhile, the investigation into Christopher Rudow’s murder goes on.  His case has yet to be designated as a hate crime, but human rights advocates throughout Western New York are demanding answers as to why authorities seem so reluctant to employ the hate crimes laws in the battle against violent homophobia.

January 12, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Beatings and battery, Bludgeoning, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, New York, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, stabbings, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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.

January 12, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, harassment, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Lesbian women, New York, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, stabbings, Unsolved LGBT Crimes, women | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Woman Stabbed In Eye by Homophobe

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.

January 3, 2010 Posted by | Anglo Americans, Anti-LGBT hate crime, Beatings and battery, Blame the victim, harassment, Hate Crime Statistics, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Kansas, Missouri, Mistaken as LGBT, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Slurs and epithets, Stomping and Kicking Violence | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »