Gay Activist Attacked in Wave of Hate Crimes Against New York City’s LGBTQ Community
Graphic created by Memeographs Studio protesting the gay bashing of the latest hate crimes victim in NYC, activist Eugene Lovendusky.
New York, New York – A direct action protest leader of the the gay community in New York City was attacked Monday night in yet another anti-gay hate crime attack as the city’s Gay Pride celebrations approach. Eugene Lovendusky, co-founder and organizer for the LGBTQ activist organization, Queer Rising, was attacked by a group of 9 to ten people shouting “faggot” as they beat and punched him. His jaw was severely injured in the assault. Reports from friends say that the beating took place in the Theater District. The list of areas now demonstrably unsafe for LGBTQ people now include, besides the Theater District, Midtown Manhattan near Madison Square Garden, East Village, West Village, SoHo, Chelsea, and Greenwich Village. Lovendusky, a teacher of young children in New York, is well-regarded as an unapologetic voice for human rights. The New Civil Rights Movement reports that Lovendusky’s friends spread the word throughout the internet world almost as soon as the attack occurred.
Outrage throughout the New York Queer community spread rapidly upon news of the homophobic attack. Scott Wooledge, founder of Memeographs Studio, wrote on his Facebook page: “This hits home as I know this man personally. There have been a spree of anti-gay hate crimes in New York City this month. As people are unable to enforce their bigotry by laws and policies, they will turn to expressing their impotent hate on the streets.”
Wooledge went to to address the perpetrators of the rising crime wave of violence against LGBT people in New York and around the nation: “I can’t do much to help make the world safer for my friends. But I have a platform, and I’m sending out this message to gay bashers: ‘You can kick us. You can punch us. You can shoot us dead as you did Mark Carson and Harvey Milk. But the LGBT community will not go back to the days before Stonewall Riots and DADT repeal. We will not abandon our righteous claim to be treated equally under the US Constitution and the laws of our states. You will lose eventually. And eventually we LGBT people will meet our respective Gods with our hands clean of blood.'”
Another Facebook contributor,Tasha Wiegand, vented her frustrations, as well. “I cannot begin to express my feelings of disgust, anger, frustration, and horror for the kind of behavior that leads some people to express hate and violence towards others,” Wiegand posted.
Daniel Lawson, a political activist involved with President Obama’s re-election and now Organizing for America, wrote on his Facebook wall: “So it turns out that the latest victim of the antigay violent crimewave is someone whom I know personally and have worked with at queer demonstrations/events around NYC. Unf—ingbelievable. This has all gone miles beyond the limit. Shit just got real. Lookout homophobes, you have some very angry NYC queers on your hands.”
Using social media, a group of LGBTQ people led by Alan Leo Bounville, founder of the In Our Words Project, rallied for and informational protest against the attacks on Lovendusky and others on Friday night at the corner of 7th Avenue and 34th Street. The peaceful protest engaged passers-by and answered their questions about what it is like for queer people in the city to live through this mounting tide of dehumanizing attacks. Members of the rallying group carried signs saying, “I’m a Homosexual. #Ask Questions.”
The irony of this latest attack has not been lost on many in the New York City Queer community. Lovendusky helped organize the first street protest against the outbreak of anti-LGBTQ violence in the city, including ongoing protests by Queer Rising against the murder of openly gay man, Mark Carson, who was fatally shot in the face last Saturday at point blank range by man who laughed and bragged about his actions. As co-founder of Queer Rising, Lovendusky leads his peers and allies throughout the metro area to direct action in support of extending full and equal rights and protections to queer people of ever description. As Lovendusky wrote on the Queer Rising blog site, “Formed in late 2009 by people tired of watching LGBTQ rights put on the back burner or given no attention at all, Queer Rising vows to continue to pressure legislators and the public until all queer people are equal.”
The spate of recent attacks in the cradle of the Gay and Queer Rights movement challenges members of the LGBTQ community and officials of the City of New York to act decisively, both to win the hearts and minds of average citizens to non-violent acceptance of queer folk, and to secure all residents from bias motivated acts of terror such as these.
Gay Philly Party Promoter and Gay Hispanic Couple Attacked in New York City as Hate Crime Spree Widens
Dan Contarino, one of the latest victims of anti-gay violence in New York City (Facebook photo).
New York City, New York – The spread of anti-gay violence continued Tuesday night with an attack on an openly gay party promoter, and in a separate incident, upon a gay couple, both occurring in East Village. Just hours after thousands marched in the streets of New York to demand justice for the mounting number of gay victims of homophobic brutality, Dan Contarino tweeted that he was assaulted by men shouting anti-gay epithets. He posted on Facebook that about 10:30 pm he was punched and kicked by a group of hostile men who called him “faggot.” Neighbors rushed to his aid, and the attackers ran into the night. NY Police are searching for the suspects, but no one has yet been arrested for the hate crime as of this writing.
According to Nightlifegay.com, Contarino, a Philadelphian who promotes Shampoo Nightclub’s “Shaft” Parties on Friday nights, wrote: “THANKS FOR CALLS…. GAY BASHED LAST NITE…. back from small surgery…. CHEST XRAYS THIS AM…. suspect still at large… police n media waiting to interview me… U JUST WANNA CRY N MOVE ON….” and later Contarino posted, “UGH…. THIS IS JUST AS BRUTAL AS the ATTACK…. 3 hours… 8 detective interviews… now waiting for Hate Crimes Unit main interview… THEN BACK TO HOSPITAL….”
Nightlife Gay’s blogger Bruce Yelk posted that he had spoken to Contarino personally after the attack: “I talked with Dan last night and this morning and he is very shaken and as you can see by the photo banged up pretty good. I am thankful it was not worse as NYC’s hate crime spree continues.” Yelk then summed up how many in the Greater New York City Metropolitan area are feeling today about the the growing epidemic of anti-gay violence in a city that prides itself on LGBTQ acceptance. “Shock, outrage, anger sums up how I am feeling today as one of my very good friends was gay bashed last night in New York City,” he wrote Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, according to NBC New York, a gay Hispanic couple were assaulted in SoHo, on Broadway between Prince and Houston Streets. Police reports say that the gay men were attacked at about 5 am by two assailants shouting homophobic slurs in both English and Spanish. The victims, 41 and 42 years old respectively, were punched and beaten, and one of the men suffered an injury to his eye. Two suspects, 31 and 32, were quickly apprehended by NYPD officers, and are facing assault as a hate crime charges. Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke out forcefully against the attacks on LGBT people in his city. “New York City has zero tolerance for intolerance,” the Mayor said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We are a place that celebrates diversity … hate crimes like these are an offense against all we stand for as a city, and we will do everything possible to stop them.”
With Gay Pride Month just around the corner, in June, and no end in sight for the spike in bias motivated crimes against LGBTQ people in the city where the modern Gay Pride and Human Rights movement was born, something swift and strong needs to happen if queer folk are to start feeling safe in New York City again.
Savage Anti-Gay Murder in NYC Highlights Increasing Danger for LGBT People
Mark Carson, 32, openly gay NYC man fatally shot in the face (Gay Star News photo).
New York City, New York – A gay man shot to death at point blank range early Saturday morning became the fifth anti-gay hate crime to strike fear into Gotham City in recent weeks. Mark Carson, 32, an openly gay yogurt shop worker from Brooklyn, who was walking with a companion in Greenwich Village, faced his harasser, who taunted his victim with homophobic slurs before fatally shooting him in the face, saying “You want to die here tonight?”. The assailant was collared in a matter of a few blocks by a police officer who had the description of the shooter. The officer seized the murder weapon along with the suspect. Elliot Morales, 33, is in the custody of the NYPD, charged with second degree murder as a hate crime, and is being held in jail without bail.
After being goaded by a series of previous gay bashings in Midtown Manhattan in the Madison Square Garden area, some involving Knicks fans in full team attire, the LGBTQ and Allied community in the greater NYC metro area has erupted into angry, frightened protests. The Associated Press reports that thousands took to the streets on Monday to cry out against Carson’s murder, making this the most powerful demonstration of anti-hate crime street activism since the days of Matthew Shepard, fourteen years ago. NYC Council Speaker, Christine Quinn, marched arm in arm with Edie Windsor, the key plaintiff in the case for Marriage Equality now before the Supreme Court of the United States. Emotions on a spectrum from disbelief that such a brazen crime could occur in the City, through towering rage against the cold-blooded killing of a defenseless gay man in the heart of the most tolerant neighborhood in New York, to abject fear that the streets of the city are unsafe to walk openly for gay people. Carson fell just blocks from the site of the birth of the Gay Rights Movement during the famous Stonewall Riots of 1969.
Morales, the alleged shooter, once charged with attempted murder in 1998, was filled with “homophobic glee,” laughing as he confessed to police that he pulled the trigger on Carson, according to the New York Daily News. Morales was seen just 15 minutes before the attack, publicly urinating outside an upscale Greenwich Village restaurant beside the storied Stonewall Inn. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly candidly commented to the press that Carson had done nothing to antagonize his assailant, according to USA Today. “It’s clear that the victim here was killed only because and just because he was thought to be gay,” Commissioner Kelly said.
The Daily News speculates that Morales’s homophobia had been ignited by the way Carson, a proud, out gay man, was dressed–in a tank top with cut off shorts and boots. Prosecutors say that Morales shouted at Carson and his friend, “Hey, you faggots! You look like gay wrestlers!” According to his family, Carson was happy, well-adjusted, and loved the West Village where he met his death . “He was a courageous person,” Carson’s brother, Michael Bumpars, said. “My brother was a beautiful person.”
Makeshift shrine at the spot Mark Carson was shot to death in West Village.
Naïve pundits have said that the increasing visibility and political success of LGBT people to gain mainstream acceptance have ushered in a new era of queer acceptance in American life. Some have even declared the “victory” of the gay rights movement. Such self-congratulations are premature. Carson’s brazen murder by a totally unapologetic homophobe, coupled with the rash of LGBT youth suicides in schools across the nation, and reports of skyrocketing statistics of violence against transgender people of color, are giving the lie to the notion that the United States is safe for queer folk. Some are now reversing their previous opinions, calling the violence evidence of a “backlash” against the recent success of Marriage Equality in New England, New York, the District of Columbia, and Minnesota. Though New York State made same-sex marriage legal in 2011, NYC Police Commissioner Kelly revealed that though last year’s bias-crimes against LGBT people in the city numbered 13, the total now stands at 22 and counting.
June is Gay Pride Month in New York City. Nerves are frayed. Top city officials, politicians, and police top brass are scrambling to make this year’s celebration in Greenwich Village and around town safe. New York City has earned the reputation of being the cradle of queer tolerance, and Mayor Bloomberg obviously wants to keep it that way. Yet the violence in the streets of New York, now turned ominously fatal with Mark Carson’s grisly murder, may be a bellwether for things to come throughout the nation. Morales, the alleged shooter, laughed and joked that he was proud to terrorize the LGBT community. Foes of gay equality may be on the back foot because of the rapid acceptance of gay, lesbian, transgender, and bisexual people, particularly by younger Americans. But homophobic, irrational hatred, the sort that maims and kills, has by no means gone away. Nor does this recent spate of violence suggest a “backlash.” When 38 states have written homophobia into their constitutions, or bolstered anti-gay statutes, this outbreak of harm can hardly be seen as anything but good, old fashioned American bigotry. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects (NCAVP) is closely monitoring events in New York and around the nation. They advise non-confrontational efforts to diffuse potentially dire situations of violence. Yet, the queer community has come too far to go back into the closet ever again. To do so would dishonor the hopes, loves, and courage of openly gay men like Mark Carson. Sharon Stapel, NCAVP’s executive director, said that these events must be understood in the context of a nation where basic equality is still denied to LGBT people. Her message to New York’s gay community? “We want to give people tools that can de-escalate situations but also say, ‘You need to be yourself,'” Stapel said to ABC News. “We’re not telling people, ‘Take your rainbow sticker off.'”
2nd and 3rd Vicious Anti-Gay Attacks in New York City in Matter of Days
Gay bashing survivors attacked outside Midtown Manhattan billiards club on Friday (WABC 7 images).
New York City, New York – Port Authority Police report the third brutal anti-gay hate crime in the Midtown area of Manhattan this Friday, when two gay men were assaulted, beaten, and dragged by homophobic New York Knicks fans. WABC 7 and NBC 4 New York report that the two victims whose names have not been released to the public (but are pictured to the left) attempted to gain access to Space Billiards, an after-hours billiards club around 5 a.m. Friday morning. They were denied admission, but as they left, a crowd of five men wearing NY Knicks fan jerseys targeted the gay men outside the club, yelling anti-gay slurs at them, and commencing the attack.
The pair ran toward the 33rd Street PATH Station in a vain attempt to escape their attackers, but were grabbed, punched, stomped and beaten, and then dragged along the pavement, sustaining heavy injuries to their faces, arms, and torsos. The victims were treated at Bellevue Hospital where one of the victims underwent eye surgery as a result of the vicious bashing.
The attackers were apparently so intent on harming the gay men that they continued the beating and yelling epithets in front of the PATH Station, where Port Authority Police witnessed the hate crime in progress, and rushed to break it up. Most of the attackers fled the scene, but officers arrested two 21-year-old men, Asllan Barisha and Brian Ramirez, charging them with felony assault and anti-gay hate crimes.
On Sunday, May 5, a gay couple were assaulted by Knicks fans with much the same m.o. in the same general area of Midtown. The New York Anti-Violnce Project (AVP), an organization that combats anti-LGBTQ violence, reports the second incident involving an attack on a gay man by an assailant hurling homophobic slurs in Union Square on Tuesday, May 7. Police have a suspect in custody in relation this assault. In response to the rash of bias-motivated hate crimes against gay men in New York City, the AVP has issued a Community Alert.
Investigators are working to understand the relationship between the three incidents of bias-motivated crimes against young gay men, separated only by less than a mile and a half and a matter of days. New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who spoke out against Sunday’s assault, issued this statement in the wake of theses most recent anti-gay attacks: “I am outraged by this string of assaults. These vicious assaults are not reflective of the diversity that defines New York City. Our city prides itself on its inclusiveness, and hateful slurs and physical attacks against anyone, for any reason, go against the very fabric of what makes our City great. I thank the NYPD Hate Crime’s Task Force and the PAPD for their continued work to identify and bring those responsible for these heinous attacks to justice, and urge all New Yorkers to stay alert, safe and vigilant.”
Cleveland Transgender Woman’s Body Found With Multiple Stab Wounds; Now 3 Trans Murders in April
Transgender woman Cemia Acoff, 20, stabbed to death and submerged in a pond west of Cleveland.
Cleveland, Ohio – The badly decomposed body of a local transgender woman was found sunken in a pond on Wednesday, April 17. The victim, Ms. Cemia Acoff, 20 years of age, also known as Ci Ci Dove by her friends, had been reported missing since March 27. The pond, located in Olmstead Township west of Cleveland, was built to recycle runoff water from a once thriving greenhouse operation in the area. Ms. Acoff’s body, riddled with stab wounds and naked from the waist down, was tied to a concrete block in order to weigh the corpse down to the bottom of the pond. The Advocate reports that a resident of a close by apartment complex discovered the body, and notified police. The coroner had to identify Ms. Acoff by testing her DNA, because of the state of the her remains.
Adding insult to the grief of family and friends, local news outlets heaped disrespect upon Ms. Acoff’s memory, sensationalizing her transition and employing a deeply insensitive reportage template to her story, referring to her as “a man in a dress,” a stock response of transphobic ignorance in situations like these. The Cleveland Plain Dealer and Fox 8 were called to task by GLAAD, faith leaders, and local LGBTQ advocates. For example, Fox 8 published a whole paragraph in their report demeaning Ms. Acoff’s character for having a police record, and describing the clothes found on her corpse. The outcry against such negative coverage of the murder of a transgender woman caused both the Plain Dealer and Fox 8 to modify their previous stories, but GLAAD representative Aaron McQuade issued a statement to the press calling on both local news outlets to meet with GLAAD and members of the transgender community to learn what more they need to do to redress the damage they have already done to the memory of Ms. Acoff. In part, McQuade stated: “The truth is, when someone like Cemia appears to identify as female sometimes and male other times, it’s because it’s still socially unacceptable (and often dangerous) to be transgender. The fact that some people in Acoff’s life didn’t know she sometimes identified as female, and the fact that her legal identification might not have reflected her gender identity, doesn’t change the fact that she was a transgender woman.”
TransGriot points that the murder of Ms. Acoff is the third anti-transgender hate crime homicide of an African American transwoman reported in the month of April alone. Besides Ms. Acoff, 29-year-old Kelly Young was shot to death in Baltimore on April 3, and 30-year-old Ashley Sinclair of Orlando, Florida who was also found shot to death the next day, Thursday, April 4. The murder of transwomen of color has reached alarming proportions throughout the nation in recent months–all the more reason to get the sad news of the loss of Cemia and her transgender sisters of color widely, sensitively, and accurately distributed throughout the media. For a further report on the slow rolling decimation of the transgender population in the United States, see the landmark study, “Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey,” which may be accessed in detail on the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force website.
As of this writing, Ms. Acoff’s killer or killers remain at large with no leads.
Anti-Gay “Conversion Camp” Allegedly Tortures Effeminate Teenage Boy to Death
Raymond Buys, 15, near death from the ravages of an anti-gay conversion camp.
Johannesburg, South Africa – “Man Up or Die.” That is the way an international human rights advocate characterizes the philosophy of an ex-gay conversion camp radically committed to “beating the gay” out of boys with “feminine traits.” South African born activist, Melanie Nathan reports in her blog that 15-year-old Raymond Buys died as a consequence of torture and starvation allegedly imposed on him at a three-month “training course” at Echo Wild Game Rangers Camp, located an hour south of Johannesburg. Esteemed British newspaper, The Telegraph, confirms that Buys is one of three young men whose deaths are being blamed on Alex de Koker, 49, Echo Wild’s director, and his accomplice, Michael Erasmus, 20. Both of the accused are in custody awaiting trial under charges of “murder, child abuse and neglect, along with two cases of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in relation to Mr Buys’ death.” Scott De Buitléir, a blogger for Elie, reports that de Koker has claimed to be innocent of the charges.
Young Mr. Buys, who suffered from a learning disability, was sent to Echo Wild to help him become more masculine by his mother, Wilna Buys, in January 2011. His mother says she spoke to her son three times during the training camp, allowed to speak with him only on speakerphone so their conversation could be monitored. De Koker claimed young Buys was “self-harming.” When his mother asked him to explain what prompted his self-injuries, the youth denied that he was doing these things to himself, as she later told the court. It remains unclear why Mrs. Buys did not act at that time to withdraw her child from the training course, an expensive proposition at $2,000 per month. Two months into the three-month-long course, which turned out to be a full blown ex-gay, reparative therapy boot camp, Mr. Buys lay dying in hospital. He allegedly had been beaten until his arm was broken multiple times, electrocuted with a taser-like device, chained to his bed and not released to use a bathroom, starved until he was severely dehydrated and emaciated, forced to eat his own feces and laundry detergent, and hit until his skull was cracked and his brain was damaged. Hospital officials told that he had a “zero chance” of survival. Within two weeks, The Telegraph reports, the teenager died. “My child was a skeleton,” Mrs. Buys told the Vereeniging District Court. ”He had head injuries and torn ears, there were bruises on his face and arms and cigarette burns on his body.”
Two other young men, 25-year-old Erich Calitz and Nicolas Van Der Walt, 19, also died of brain injuries allegedly inflicted at the camp, according to the Huffington Post. Alex de Koker, also the chief suspect in the deaths of Mr. Calitz and Mr. Van Der Walt, had reassured Mrs. Buys that he could help her boy become a man and find a good job in the wildlife service. De Koker’s ties to a rightwing white supremacist homophobic group called the AWB/Iron Guards movement are being investigated.
The sexual orientation of the three young victims of these heinous anti-gay crimes has never been definitively established. But, as Melanie Nathan points out, any young man who exhibits “feminine characteristics” in Afrikaans culture is considered to be a “moffie,” an epithet akin to “faggot.” Ms. Nathan explains, “The idea of the [Echo Wild] camp is to apparently make men of teens and to ‘cure’ ‘feminine traits’ in male youths…another way of saying gay reparative therapy, instead in this instance that therapy involved ‘beating the gay out of the kid’– torture, and if torture didn’t effect the desired change, then certainly murder would; after all a dead teen is not a gay teen.”
Mrs. Buys told The Telegraph, “I trusted Alex de Koker with the life of my child.” Whether wittingly or unwittingly, she turned her son over to a virulently, homophobic group for a “cure.” And it cost the boy his life.
Transgender Woman Shot to Death in Baltimore
Kelly Young, 29, shot to death in a possible transphobic hate crime.
East Baltimore, Maryland – A beloved member of the transgender community of Baltimore was found shot on the floor of her apartment this Wednesday morning. Kelly Young, 29, died in transit to the hospital.
The murder remains unsolved. Baltimore City Police are investigating, but say that it is too early yet to determine that this homicide was a hate crime, according to WJZ TV, CBS Baltimore. Officials say that they will make the determination about the hate crime status of the case as evidence warrants. “Internally, we’ll investigate any incident as a hate crime if there is any sort of physical evidence that indicates it’s a hate crime,” said Sgt. Eric Kowalczyk, Baltimore City police. “She had a lot of friends and a lot of loved ones who really want to bring this case to closure.” Matt Thorn, spokesperson from the GLBT Resource Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland (GLCCB), said that the police were following every lead, and that the murder of Ms. Young might very well prove to be a transphobic hate crime meant to send a message to the LGBT community.
Community outrage at the murder is running high, and some of her friends are concerned with their own safety. Dondria Naieem, a friend of Ms. Young, said to CBS Baltimore, “I’m scared to walk by myself and hang with a lot of people so people don’t get me. It’s really hard to cope with her death.” Ms. Young was born near where she died, and was a well-known and well-loved entertainer who performed regularly at a local club. She had the reputation of being an accomplished dancer.
On Thursday, her family and friends gathered to remember Ms. Young and give thanks for her life. Her sister, Monique Mack, told WMAR TV, the local ABC affiliate, “The neighborhood embraced her — boys and girls, straight or gay she was embraced.” “It wasn’t always a smooth road but I will say it was more smooth than not.” Her mother spoke of her gifts and qualities, as well: “Everybody accepted her. That’s why everybody is here because everybody accepted her. She kept it real.”
Everybody except the person or the persons who gunned down Kelly Young, that is. Neighbors, family and friends are determined to get to the bottom of why a person so beloved could be killed so cruelly. Tanya Eley, Ms. Young’s longtime friend, said, “God knows whatever happened to her, God has them; they’re going to regret whatever they did to her because she was loved.”
The Golden Rule and Anti-Gay Discrimination
Dallas Voice photo
College Station, Texas – The Texas A&M University Student Senate voted on April 3 to discriminate openly against their fellow LGBT students under the guise of “religious freedom.” By a vote of 35 to 28, the notorious “Religious Funding Exemption Bill,” S.B 65-70, was approved, endorsing the request of any student “who has a religious objection” to opt out of the use of their student activities fees to support the Texas A&M GLBT Center. The only religiously appropriate response this ordained Baptist minister and theologian is able to muster at this sad news is “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
Cynical efforts to cloak anti-LGBT discrimination in religious authority have been tried and found wanting many times before, even on the Texas A&M campus. In 2011, such a bias-driven initiative was defeated, along with a parallel effort in the Texas legislature to defund other university LGBT service centers throughout the state. This year, such a parallel legislative effort using the disguise of religious liberty has already begun in the legislature. One is left to wonder whether there is a conspiracy between a conservative faction of the Texas state government and bias-driven student activists, given these strangely similar resolutions. It should be lost on no one that arch-conservative and openly anti-gay Governor Rick Perry is an alumnus and former cheerleader from Texas A&M.
Religious people of goodwill everywhere should sound the alarm when the language of the Bible and religious teachings are hijacked to support an extremist agenda. Such abuses not only harm the marginalized communities they target, in this case the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. They also harm the perception of religion in public life, making religion seem bigoted, narrow minded, and hostile to the very idea of diversity that makes both church and state stronger and more humane.
The vast majority of scholars of religion and philosophy, Christian and Jewish, have rejected the sort of religion-based bigotry being used to justify efforts to roll back the calendar to a less diverse, less just day and time. No credible argument can be made for the Bible’s opposition to committed, loving, same-sex relationships. No ancient faith leader, from Moses to Jesus to the Apostle Paul, ever had a concept of sexual orientation in their worldview at the time of the establishment of Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Credible biblical scholarship debunks the “religious argument” from Scripture that the so-called traditional values folks have been hanging onto for decades now. While zombies may be popular on cable television, such attempts to marshal biblical texts through efforts like S.B. 65-70 that discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students, faculty and staff in the name of “religious freedom” are no more than the walking dead.
The administration of Texas A&M long ago saw fit to leave the prejudices of racism, misogyny, ableism, anti-Semitism, and anti-gay bias back in the bad old days of the past, when people were less educated and less attuned to the demands of a pluralistic, diverse, multi-ethnic, and multi-orientational country. Multitudes of LGBT Texans, their families, friends, and their progressive allies are proud of the A&M community for establishing one of the premier GLBT resource centers in the state of Texas and in the United States. Such narrow minded proposals as the one passed by Student Senate in College Station deny the fact that millions of dollars come from tax paying LGBT Texans who are glad to support a great university like A&M, whether they attended there or not, and do not need to vet every use of funds on a university campus. A state school is answerable to millions of people beyond its campus, and the progressive community in the Lone Star State surely does not want a public university to endorse discrimination against anyone.
Jesus practiced and taught the Golden Rule.
As a Baptist minister, ordained to the Gospel ministry for 36 years now, I can testify that support for the A&M GLBT Resource Center and others like it are a good thing—a very good thing, and one I am proud of, both as a Baptist and a Golden Rule Christian. I have had the great privilege of visiting the campus, of meeting the leadership of the GLBT Center, and of hearing of its history of service to the larger university community since its establishment in 1994. I wonder why some of my fellow-believers who profess to adhere to the teachings of the Bible and Jesus Christ so easily dismiss the very Golden Rule Jesus commended to his disciples—that we treat others as we would have them treat us (see Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 22:36-40)? Nothing else trumps that great teaching in either Christianity or Judaism, as the law, the prophets, and the Christ testify. Why would self-professed followers of the Word now seek to turn the oracle of true freedom into a form of discrimination, to pervert it from its gracious purposes? I do not know.
The heart of religion in a free state is to hold people above ideologies, and protect us from the very sort of discrimination this noxious Student Senate bill has enacted in the name of religion. We hope the A&M community will reconsider what it has done, will not make the same, tired mistakes of centuries of religiously-based bigotry, redress this misbegotten action, and come to a richer, fuller understanding of responsible religious freedom—to care for those who have no one else to care for them in the name of God—rather than to discriminate as if there were some sort of totalizing state religion in Texas.
I and many others like me stand with the brave LGBT students and their allies who spoke out against the harm and discrimination their elected representatives have enacted. I hope many of these LGBT Aggies will choose to run for Student Government office, and defeat some of their classmates so they may be sent back to the classroom of real religion, Golden Rule Religion, where good faith overcomes bad religion, and people of goodwill learn how to devise new ways to treat one another as they themselves wish to be treated.
~ Rev. Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Founder and Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas
Lesbian Savagely Beaten Unconscious Defending Girlfriend’s Bullied Son
Sondra Scarber, lesbian parent, beaten unconscious by a homophobic father for speaking up for her girlfriend’s child. [WFAA image].
Scarber’s girlfriend, Hillary Causey, recalled for WFAA the horror of watching her love thrashed mercilessly. The couple, who have been known each other since childhood, and who have been a couple for the past three years, took their child Jaxon to Seaborn Elementary School’s playground around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 17, for an outing. When other boys began pushing and shoving the little boy, whom the couple are rearing together, Scarber spoke to a father of one of the harassing boys: “Sondra said, ‘Can you please keep your hands off of him, he’s only four,’” Causey said. Only when the man realized that the woman speaking out for her child was a lesbian, he went ballistic, shouting epithets and striking Scarber unconscious. As the Dallas Voice reports, the assailant ignored Scarber’s pleas: “All she kept saying,” Causey recalled, was, “‘I’m a female. I’m a female.’ She never even had time to take her hands out of pockets to try and block herself.”
Scarber fell unconscious, with a broken jaw and multiple bruises. Emergency surgery had to repair her jaw with a metal plate, and she faces months of rehabilitation and recovery from her physical injuries, not to mention her psychological wounds from the attack. The assailant is still at large.
Causey and Scarber have called on the police to investigate the attack as a hate crime, since the attacker flew into a rage about the couple’s sexual orientation. The Mesquite Police Department, who say that they want to apprehend the suspect, refuse to designate the case as an anti-gay hate crime. Local gay advocacy groups are pushing for the Mesquite authorities to press the case as a hate crime. Daniel Cates, organizer for the Dallas Chapter of GetEqual, has called for the community to call the Mesquite Police Department “until the phone rings off the wall” to protest the downplaying of the crime. The Resource Center of Dallas, one of the nation’s largest LGBTQ service centers, issued this statement to the press, which we quote in full:
“Resource Center Dallas denounces the brutal attack of Sondra Scarber at the hands of a man who assaulted her based on her sexual orientation, as first reported February 28 by WFAA-TV (Channel 8). As reported, the circumstances of this case indicate a hate-motivated crime, and that should dissuade the Mesquite Police Department from lessening the severity of any potential criminal charges.
The incident is another example in which words and thoughts lead to destructive actions against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons. The reported violence included anti-gay slurs, followed by violent acts against a lesbian. Had Sondra’s partner not been present, her injuries could have been far more severe.
Anti-gay violence is a serious public health issue. According to the FBI’s 2011 Hate Crime Report—the most recent available—49 of the 152 hate crimes committed in Texas that year were motivated by anti-gay bias. Nationally, nearly 21 percent of the 6,222 hate crimes committed that same year were motivated by sexual orientation.
The Center calls on the Mesquite Police Department and Chief Derek Rodhe to thoroughly investigate and swiftly arrest the suspects responsible. As leaders in the LGBT community, Resource Center Dallas will be closely monitoring the situation to ensure that justice is carried out.”
Scarber told WFAA that her face is so bruised and swollen, and her jaw so tightly wired shut, that she cannot do much of anything for herself. “It’s hard for me to stay strong when I see myself in the mirror,” she said. She and Causey have the comfort that their little boy was spared from the bullying that nearly hurt him. And, they have each other. They are grateful that Scarber is alive.
Breaking News: Unfinished Lives Project Founder Becomes Official Huffington Post Blogger
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle now blogs for Huffington Post (Keith Tew photo).
Dallas, Texas – The founder and director of the Unfinished Lives Project, Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, has been officially accepted as a Blogger for the Huffington Post. Dr. Sprinkle’s inaugural blog post on the civil disobedience of a gay Louisville, Kentucky Baptist preacher and his spouse may be found by clicking here. Josh Fleet, representing the Huffington Post Blog Team, informed Dr. Sprinkle that his post had been accepted and posted Sunday on the Religion Page of the highly respected and widely read progressive news and opinion source. He will be a continuing Blogger for the Religion Page, which is overseen by the Rev. Dr. Paul Raushenbush as Senior Editor.
Sprinkle ventured into the cyber world as a blogger in June 2008 with the launch of Unfinishedlivesblog.com, a web forum for news, opinion, and discussion concerning the alarming rise of anti-LGBTQ violence in American life. With nearly 500,000 hits on the site currently, a notable achievement for a blog done by an academic and a theologian, the future of Unfinishedlivesblog.com looks promising. The continuing readership of the blog is, of course, largely due to the unabated rise in hate crimes murders perpetrated against the LGBTQ community since the Matthew Shepard, James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was signed into federal law by President Barack Obama in October 2009. Anti-violence programs throughout the United States, as well as the Hate Crimes Program of the FBI have registered higher numbers of bias-drivien murders perpetrated against LGBTQ people in each of the three years since the Shepard Act became the law of the land–and activists see no signs of these horrific statistics lessening in the near term. Sprinkle and the Unfinished Lives Project Team have chronicled this dismaying increase in anti-gay violence throughout the years.
Originally conceived as a supporting platform for the publication of Dr. Sprinkle’s IPPY award winning book on LGBTQ hate crimes murders in the U.S., Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims (Resource Publications, 2011), Unfinishedlivesblog quickly took on a life of its own, thanks to the cyber know-how of two savvy divinity school students, Todd W. Simmons of Houston, Texas, and Adam D.J. Brett of Syracuse, New York. As time passed, Huffington Post became an invaluable source of information on anti-LGBTQ hate crimes and the responses of the queer and religious communities to these outrages. “Being named a Blogger for HuffPo brings the spiritual and cyber journey of my activist life to a new milestone,” Sprinkle said in response to the news of his selection.
The brave story of the non-violent protest against Kentucky’s repressive anti-gay and anti-same-sex marriage laws by Rev. Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard, and his spouse, Dominique James, sparked a passion in him to write about this news for a wider audience than a personal blog can reach, Sprinkle said. The unflinching support offered by Blanchard and James’s pastor, the Rev. Joe Phelps, and the congregation of Highland Baptist Church, Lousiville, was also a feature of the story that begged to be shared broadly with the Baptist world, and beyond. The parent blog post that gave rise to the Huffington Post piece can be found by clicking here.
Sprinkle is himself a openly gay man and an ordained Baptist preacher (with the Alliance of Baptists) who has recently celebrated his 36th year of ordination. He is the Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry at Fort Worth’s Brite Divinity School, a post that he has held since 1994. Sprinkle is Professor of Practical Theology, and the first openly gay scholar to be tenured in the 99-year history of the school. He also serves as Theologian-in-Residence for Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, a congregation of the United Church of Christ, and the largest liberal Christian Church in the world with a primary outreach to the LGBTQ community.
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
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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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Publisher: Steve Sprinkle (Project Director)
Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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