Gender, Sexuality, and Justice Initiative Launched in the Southwest
Rev. Dr. Joretta Marshall, Director of the Carpenter Initiative at Brite Divinity School
Fort Worth, Texas – Brite Divinity School, on the campus of Texas Christian University, launched a ground-breaking program set on changing the role of theological higher education in the human rights struggle in the Southwestern United States. At Chapel on Tuesday, Rev. Dr. Joretta Marshall, Professor of Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Counseling, preached to inaugurate the Carpenter Initiative on Gender, Sexuality, and Justice, made possible by a grant of $250,000 over five years by The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. Dr. Marshall headed the effort to gain the grant from the Carpenter Foundation, which is the leading grantor of funding for sexuality, gender, and justice concerns in the nation. She has been named the Director of the Carpenter Initiative in addition to her professorial duties.
The Rev. Ann B. Day, daughter of the originators of the Carpenter Foundation and an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, was instrumental in reviewing Brite’s proposal, and advising the foundation to make the grant. The Disciples News Service reported that “the Carpenter Initiative will not only help cover the salary costs of the faculty member who directs the program, but will also support courses at Brite that address these issues, and fund programmatic initiatives in the wider community.” These programmatic initiatives will engage matters of human rights, articulation of a public theology of full inclusion in the faith community of those marginalized because of gender, gender variance, and sexual orientation, and the development of resources local congregations and denominational offices need to move their membership toward long-lasting acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, a member of the Brite faculty and Director of the Unfinished Lives Project, said, “This initiative is the next vital step in Brite’s ‘coming out’ process as a center for the full inclusion of all God’s children, especially those who have formerly been shunned by churches, synagogues, and mosques because of their actual or perceived sexual difference.” Over the course of several years, Dr. Marshall and Dr. Sprinkle, together with allies in the faculty, staff, board of trustees, and alumni of the school, have worked for the full inclusion of the LGBTQ community, along with the commitments Brite has also made to Black Church studies, Asian/Korean Church studies, and Latina/o Church studies. By vote of the Board of Trustees, Brite has officially acted to welcome students, faculty and staff regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or gender expression, making it unique in the Southwestern United States. The roots of Brite’s shift toward this progressive stance reach back at least to 1992, when administration opened married student housing on the campus to partnered same-sex couples, and to the hiring of the first openly gay faculty member in 1994.
At a community conversation held immediately after the inauguration service, members of the Brite community voiced a whole bevy of vibrant ideas about the directions the Carpenter Initiative could take, including an institution-wide process to become Open and Affirming, a center for civil discourse on issues of human rights in North Texas, resources on homosexuality and the Bible, a history project to record and preserve the story of the LGBTQ movement on both the Brite and TCU campuses, and a think-tank to delve into the sources of violence and fear in American religious life. Brite’s Office of Advancement is actively seeking support for the expansion of Brite’s developing leadership in public theology and social justice.
Anti-Gay Rapist Sought by New York City Police
Suspect Julius "Stinky" Wright (NYPD photo)
Brooklyn, New York – “Stinky” is as “Stinky” does (allegedly, at least). The New York Police Department is searching for suspected hate crime perpetrator, Julius “Stinky” Wright, 21, for a sexual assault in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district on a 24-year-old Hispanic male. The Advocate reports that Wright confronted the Hispanic around 3 a.m. on September 5 with a fake firearm, and demanded to know his sexual orientation. Wright then allegedly cursed the Hispanic with homophobic slurs, and berated him for being weak. Social justice advocates report that the assailant then brutally sodomized his victim. The New York Daily News posted that the suspect stole his victim’s cell phone, and ran from the scene. The victim was transported to Woodhull Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries, and was later released.
City Council Member Al Vann who represents the district where the crime occurred was joined in a statement by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn: “We are disgusted and horrified to hear about this incident. Hate crimes hurt everyone, and any act of violence against one member of the LGBT community is an act of violence against us all. Too often we hear about acts of violence committed against LGBT people in our city. We must put an end to the intolerance that breeds this hatred. New York City prides itself on diversity and acceptance of all its residents and this act goes against the very fiber of what our city stands for.”
The NYPD is asking anyone with information about the whereabouts of Wright to contact them immediately at 1-800-577-TIPS.
Harass Gays at Your Own Peril in New Jersey
Douglas Brown (Essex County Prosecutor's Office photo)
Newark, New Jersey – A 36-year-old harasser in Essex County found out the hard way that attacking gay people is costly–to himself! Douglas Brown started harassing his former gay neighbors in the Ironbound section of Newark back in May–chanting slurs and epithets, spewing hate speech. Unsatisfied with the results, Brown escalated his aggression against the couple, pouring oil on their home, destroying their property, and eventually slashing their car tires. Brown was arrested on Thursday, and faces harassment, bias intimidation, and criminal mischief charges, according to reports by the Associated Press, The Advocate, and NBC New York. Brown obviously never counted the cost of his bias against his next door neighbors, acting on it with abandon until his arrest. He is being held under $25,000 bond at the Essex County Correctional Facility. Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray is preparing to prosecute Brown for anti-gay hate crime. There is no information yet about who Brown’s attorney will be. In the Brick City, once notorious for the 2003 hate murder of lesbian teen Sakia LaTona Gunn, the times appear to be a-changing. Attacking gay people in Newark will now get you prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is History: We Must Not Forget Its Cost
Washington, D.C. – Today marks the advent of full repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the 1993 law making gay and lesbian servicemembers liable for discharge if they admitted their sexual orientation. While there will be celebrations and night watch parties throughout the nation marking this historic day in the struggle for LGBTQ equality, we cannot afford to forget the terrible cost anti-gay discrimination has wrought in the Armed Forces of the United States. So, today, we lift up the lives and patriotic service of four gay men who died because of the ignorance and bigotry of other servicemembers, and the systemic bigotry of the services themselves which at best permitted these murders, and at worst encouraged them.
Seaman August Provost of Houston, Texas, was shot to death on duty in a Camp Pendleton guard shack, and his remains were burned to erase the evidence of the deed on June 30, 2009 in San Diego, California. He had recently complained to his family that a fellow servicemember was harassing him because of his sexual orientation. He feared speaking with his superiors about the harassment because of the threat of discharge due to DADT. His partner in life, Kaether Cordero of Houston, said, “People who he was friends with, I knew that they knew. He didn’t care that they knew. He trusted them.” Seaman Provost joined the Navy in 2008 to gain benefits to finish school, where he was studying to become an architectural engineer.
Private First Class Michael Scott Goucher, a veteran of the Iraq War, was murdered near his home in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on February 4, 2009 by an assailant who stabbed him at least twenty times. Known locally as “Mike on a Bike” by neighbors and friends, Goucher was an assistant organist for a congregation of the United Church of Christ, and Captain of the neighborhood Crime Watch. He also was a selectively closeted gay man, hiding his sexual orientation from his community. Goucher survived deployment in Iraq, only to meet death at the hands of homophobes back home.
Private First Class Barry Winchell of Kansas City, Missouri, was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat as he slept in his barracks by a member of his unit at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on July 6, 1999. Winchell had fallen in love with a transgender woman, Calpurnia Adams, who lived in Nashville, Tennessee. In the fallout from his murder, President Bill Clinton ordered a review of DADT, which resulted in the addition of a “Don’t Harass” amendment to the policy, but little else. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, who represented Winchell’s parents in litigation with the U.S. Army, demanded to know who in the upper ranks of Fort Campbell knew of the murder and its subsequent cover up. The commandant of the fort was promoted over the objections of many human rights advocates. Winchell’s story has been immortalized by the 2003 film, “Soldier’s Girl.”
Petty Officer Third Class Allen R. Schindler Jr. of Chicago Heights, Illinois was murdered on October 27, 1992 in a public toilet on base in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. His killer was a shipmate who despised Schindler for being gay. He had been outed while on board the U.S.S. Belleau Wood, and was supposedly under the protection of his superiors until he could be separated from the service. Schindler had called his mother to tell her to expect him home by Christmas. Instead, the Navy shipped his savaged remains home to Chicago Heights before Thanksgiving. The only way family members could identify his remains was by a tattoo of the U.S.S. Midway on his forearm. Otherwise, he was beaten so brutally that his uncle, sister, and mother could not tell he was their boy. Schindler’s murder was presented as a reason DADT should never have been enacted, but authorities in Washington brushed his story aside and enacted the ban against gays in the military anyway. Schindler’s story is told at length in Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims, authored by the founder of the Unfinished Lives Project, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle.
We at Unfinished Lives celebrate the repeal of DADT tonight with thanksgiving for the courage of lesbian and gay servicemembers who chose to serve their country in the military though their country chose not to honor them. More than 13,500 women and men were drummed out of the service under DADT. But in addition to the thousands who faced discharge and shame, we cannot forget, we must not forget, the brave souls who died at the hands of irrational hatred and ignorance–the outworking of a blatantly discriminatory policy that never should have blighted the annals of American history. The four lives we remember here are representative of hundreds, perhaps thousands more, whose stories demonstrate the lengths to which institutions and governments will go to preserve homophobia and heterosexism. We will remember with thanksgiving our gay and lesbian dead, for to forget them would be to contribute to the ills wrought by DADT.
Religion, LGBTQ People, and the Post-9/11 World: Special Comment
Austin, Texas – Has religion strengthened or weakened the ability of LGBTQ people to address the traumas of the post-9/11 world? When will LGBTQ people have the long-overdue discussion about organized religion and spirituality between queers of faith and faith-free LGBTQ people? These are but two of the questions Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, founder and director of the Unfinished Lives Project, addressed at the 10th annual Multi-Faith Pride Service in Austin on September 8. The service, a highlight of the yearly Austin Pride Festival, drew Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Wiccan, and Unitarian adherents, among others. University United Methodist Church, adjacent to the main campus of the University of Texas at Austin, hosted the evening.
Dr. Sprinkle challenged Austinites to heal their sacred/secular rift in order to lead the nation in healing and wholeness during the second decade since the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. In this excerpt, he makes his case:
“Unless and until we LGBTQ people of faith and our secular, faith-free sisters and brothers heal the rift among us over religion and learn how to work side-by-side, we will remain too divided and too weak to engage the mission our faiths call us to accomplish: the healing of the nation’s lingering wounds after 9/11. I have a wonderful mentor and colleague here in Austin, Chaplain Paul Dodd, an ordained Baptist minister, a distinguished retired U.S. Army Chaplain, and leading pastoral counselor. He is co-founder of the Forum on the Military Chaplaincy, a visionary group of national leaders, both Gay and Straight, who have labored ceaselessly for the Repeal and Implementation of the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Paul deals with the religious reservations of gays and lesbians compassionately day-in-and-day-out. But he told me recently that the time has come to say to those LGBTQ leaders who are still hung up about religion, “It is time you just get over it, and move ahead!” I couldn’t say it better!”
Dr. Sprinkle’s speech was interrupted by applause several times, and he received a standing ovation at the end. One observer who has attended many Pride Services said that this was the first time in ten years anyone has been given such an honor.
For the full text of Dr. Sprinkle’s address, use this link.
Off Duty D.C. Policeman Fires into Transwomen’s Car, Injuring Three
Officer Kenneth Furr appears in court to answer charges of shooting into transgender women's car (Bill Hennessy drawing).
Washington, D. C. – A veteran D.C. cop has been arrested for allegedly pumping five shots into a car occupied by transgender women. Three people were wounded by the gunfire. The five occupants of the vehicle included three transgender women, and two male friends. The officer, 47-year-old Kenneth Furr, is a 21-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police. He is being held pending a hearing.
The shooting incident was sparked by a confrontation at a CVS Pharmacy on 4th and Massachusetts Avenue early on the morning of August 26. According to court documents, Furr approached one of the transwomen, soliciting her for sex. After she refused, she and her companions got in their car and drove away. Details are contested at this point in the story, but the most often discussed account is as follows: Furr was angered by the refusal, and raced in his vehicle to head them off. Furr blocked the path of the victims’ car with his Cadillac, pointing his gun at the driver, who ducked as his car collided with the parked Cadillac. Officer Furr then leaped on the hood of their Chrysler 300, and shouted “I’m ‘a gonna kill all of you!” as he fired his weapon five times through the Chrysler’s windshield. Two transwomen were wounded, and one of their friends, according to reports from NBC Washington. The front-seat passenger suffered multiple gunshot wounds, though none of them were determined to be “life-threatening,” according to a police report.
Other Metro Police responded to the sound of the car crash and the shots. The police report says that they found the off-duty officer standing on the hood of the victim’s vehicle with his pistol out. They ordered him to drop the weapon. Furr is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, and driving while intoxicated. His blood alcohol content was in excess of 0.15, determined by a breath test.
Police were quick to issue a statement to the press on Friday morning: “Preliminary investigation reveals a confrontation occurred involving an off-duty officer and five other individuals, some of which are members of the transgender community. The officer discharged a handgun and one person was shot and sustained non-life threatening injuries.” The police statement goes on to say, “Two other individuals involved in the incident sustained injuries which are also non-life threatening. The nature of those injuries is under investigation to determine their cause.”
Reaction from the transgender activist community was also swift. The Washington Blade reports that D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray, “shocked” by the incident, joined local LGBT activists on Friday to express concern and solidarity for the victims, and for the transgender community of the District. A series of violent attacks on transgender women,especially transgender women of color, have plagued the District for two years. Relations between the Metropolitan Police and the transgender community have been strained by perceptions that the MPD has not served or protected the community well. The actions of Officer Furr have further aggravated the troubles, with some transgender activists openly declaring that they expect nothing to change with the police, no matter what they do. Mayor Gray issued a statement praising the LGBT community, and saying, “I am deeply troubled by the apparent circumstances surrounding this incident and await the results of a full MPD investigation. These are serious charges, and they are particularly disturbing to have been brought against one who is sworn to protect and serve.” Leaders from Transgender Health Empowerment and the D.C. Trans Coalition have pledged to help the police with the investigation.
Judge in Larry King Murder Case Declares Mistrial: Jury Hung
No Justice Yet for Hate Murder Victim Larry King
Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California – In breaking news, the judge in the trial of teen Brandon McInerney for the hate crime murder of bi-racial student Larry King has declared a mistrial. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether they will seek to retry McInerney, now 17 years old, for the murder of his gender variant classmate in 2008. Steve Rothaus of Gay South Florida picked up the Associated Press report late this afternoon, detailing how the jury could not come to a unanimous verdict in the case. Nine women and three men on the jury informed Judge Charles Campbell that they were stalemated over whether to find McInerney, who undisputedly shot 15-year-old Larry King to death with a .22 caliber pistol in first period computer class at E.O. Green Middle School in February 2008, guilty of manslaughter, first-degree murder, or second-degree murder. Seven jurors declared they were in favor of a verdict of voluntary manslaughter, while the other five were split between first- and second-degree murder.
The defense team appears to have scored something of a victory, convincing a majority of the jury that their client was in some sort of “dissociative state” at the time of the killing. More disturbingly for LGBTQ legal advocacy observers and hate crime activists is the partial success of the “gay panic defense” that Scott Wippert and the defense team denied was a part of their strategy, but which most sure was. Defense hammered the jury with claims that teen gay student King was somehow responsible for his fate because of their rendition of “bizarre sexualized behavior” and “sexual aggression.” The gay panic defense, which blames the victim for the crime, has been discredited for years in American courts, but the special circumstances of a youth like McInerney who came from a dysfunctional family background (both his parents were addicts) successfully clouded what was otherwise a clear cut case of first-degree, premeditated murder.
Under California law, McInerney was old enough to be tried as an adult. Ventura County Prosecutor Maeve Fox argued that since the defendant told at least six people he was going to kill King, premeditation was clearly established. Further, Fox argued that McInerney was a fervent anti-gay boy, influenced by white supremacist and Neo-Nazi skinhead ideology and teachings. McInerney was in possession of a trove of Nazi items and symbols, as well as white supremacist literature at the time of the murder.
Nonetheless, the mistrial gives the prosecution pause. As commentator Lisa Bloom, a respected attorney, noted on a CNN panel discussing the trial last week, the jury is not supposed to ignore premeditation or be swayed by sympathy for the sad circumstances of a defendant. “[The gay panic defense] is not an acceptable defense in an American courtroom,” she said. Bloom went on to assert that no jury would allow a racist to claim that rage over the acts and speech of a black person altered the consciousness of the defendant enough to push him to murder. What is the prosecution to do in a situation in which the message that a boy was gay was enough to get him killed, and to hang the jury in his slayer’s murder trial? McInerney killed King. Now, whether he will face the justice his actions deserve is up in the air–as well as the memory of his victim, Lawrence Fobes “Larry” King.
Fate of Larry King’s Teen Murderer Goes to Jury in California
Brandon McInerney (L), and Lawrence Fobes "Larry" King, (R)
Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California – After prosecution’s closing statement yesterday, and defense’s closing statement today, the trial of teen Brandon McInerney goes to the jury. Long weeks of hard-fought testimony, evidence and counter-evidence have come down to the judgment of twelve citizens over a deadly serious question: Is the victim of a homicide responsible for his own death, or not? McInerney’s defense team, led by Scott Wippert, has tried mightily to paint 15-year-old Larry King as the aggressor in his own slaying, justifying their client, the confessed killer, somehow for shooting his classmate twice in the head in broad daylight. Bridling at any suggestion by the prosecution that he and his team were using a version of the discredited “gay panic defense,” in which the psychic trauma of encountering perceived harassment by a gay person “ignites” a passion to kill, Wippert nonetheless has consistently used that logic to paint King as a “sexual aggressor” who made all the boys at E.O. Green Middle School in Oxnard feel unsafe. According to The Advocate, King’s manner of effeminate dress and language “harassed” the boys (most especially his client), and disrupted school life to the point that, as Wippert put it to the jury, “The [E.O. Green] boys didn’t feel safe in the school,” because of the 5-foot 4-inch, 125-pound King.
Prosecutor Maeve Fox sought to counter such an argument, calling the strategy of the defense an appeal to anti-gay sentiments and oppressive anti-feminine stereotypes. “It’s an attempt to reach somewhere deep down,” she said in her rebuttal to the jury. “To a dark place.” Fox showed a photo of King taken just days before his execution-style murder, smiling as he held up a green dress given him by his teacher, Dawn Boldrin. According to The Advocate, King was wearing a school uniform at the time of the picture, not women’s clothing, and had on unobtrusive makeup. Fox asked the jury as she held up the picture, “This is the guy that you are being asked to believe was a sexual predator who tortured the defendant into a state of despair.This [person] is so threatening to the average male psyche of 14 or 44 or 84?” She reminded the jury that if they bring in a verdict of manslaughter, they would be ignoring the testimony of students who said McInerney told them days before the killing that he was going to end King’s life, and further, the expert psychiatric report in which McInerney said he did not even consider his victim a human being. A manslaughter verdict would mean the jury believed that any average person would have acted in the same way McInerney did on the day he took his teenage classmate’s life. But premeditation of the sort the defendant exhibited by planning and waiting until first period class was well underway before he pulled out his pistol and shot King in the back of the head dictates a first-degree murder sentence.
Wippert reported referred to the tender age of his client 39 times in his closing statement to the jury. He contended that King’s quip to McInerney the day before he killed King, “What’s up, baby?”, was “the straw that popped the balloon,” and pushed McInerney to shoot him. Fox rebutted that King was just giving back something of the stress that he had experienced from McInerney and his clique as they bullied him for being different.
But would an average person take such umbrage at affectations and effeminate ways, even if aimed at such a person, that he would plan and shoot an unarmed person in cold blood? Prosecutor Fox said no. McInerney wasn’t acting as an average person. He was acting out his white supremacist schooling to kill a sub human, as reported by the Associated Press. He believed, Fox contended, that killing King was doing everyone a favor, and that he would be congratulated for doing it.
The jury will decide soon. No case of a hate crime killing against a gay person has drawn more attention since the murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. If the jury brings in a verdict of manslaughter, McInerney, who is now 17, may be eligible for release before he is forty. If they decide for first-degree murder, he may not see freedom before he is 57.
Police Refusing to Report Anti-Lesbian Hate Crime Could Lose Their Jobs
Washington, D.C. – When several Metropolitan Police refused to report a brutal attack against five lesbians in the District of Columbia, they had no idea how big a mistake they were making, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch. Brushing off the attack by two males who shouted anti-lesbian epithets as they assaulted the women, the police even threatened to arrest the victims because “they didn’t know how to act.” Now, these officers are under investigation themselves. The investigation could take as long as four months. They could face suspension, punishment, and even termination of their jobs with loss of pension benefits. Four police cruisers with seven officers responded to a 911 emergency call outside the Columbia Heights Metro station in the early morning hours of July 30. Two men had beaten their lesbian victims, and a third man accompanying the assailants stood by capturing video of assault on his cell phone. When the lesbians reported the attack to the police, the officers dismissed the violence. Though the police had restrained one of the assailants, they just let him go. Hatewatch has learned that the mother of one of the victims called the Metro Police to complain about the officers’ behavior. Then, on August 1, the D.C. LGBT liaison unit filed a report on the incident as a hate crime.
Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), a local LGBTQ activist group, met with D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to demand more rigorous protection of the queer community in Washington. The chief seemed inclined to act on the concerns of the group, according to GLOV spokesperson, A.J. Singletary. D.C. gays, lesbians, and transgender persons, especially those from racial/ethnic minority groups, have suffered an increasing number of violent attacks in recent years, most notably the murders of four transgender women of color, two of them teenagers.
The once strong and effective gay and lesbian liaison unit of the Metro Police Department was decimated by budgetary cuts three years ago. Its officers were distributed among police units throughout the city, rather than working together as a discreet group. Training in LGBTQ sensitivity for the police has been severely diminished, as well, according to Singletary. The anecdotal result has been an increase of attacks on queer folk, and many reported incidents where police have not even bothered to file hate crime reports when they have occurred. GLOV has asked Chief Lanier to beef up the number and quality of LGBT officers on the force, and to reinstate rigorous LGBTQ training for all members of the Metropolitan Police. Singletary reports that this latest act of neglect has spurred Chief Lanier to take charges against the police seriously, and to make some of the changes activists in the LGBTQ community are asking for.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has published study results showing that the LGBTQ community is beset by more violence, especially of an extreme nature, than any other community of persons in the United States. Compared to its rank in the population at large, according to the study, an LGBTQ person is 8.3 times more likely to be the victim of a violent hate crime than others in this country.
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
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Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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Unfinished Lives 
Hate Crimes and Capital Punishment: A Special Comment
Lawrence Russell Brewer, on the day he was booked for the murder of James Byrd Jr.
Huntsville, Texas – On September 21 at 6:11 p.m., before witnesses whom included his hate crime victim’s family and his own, Lawrence Russell Brewer, 44, was injected with lethal drugs in the execution chamber of Huntsville Prison. Ten minutes later, he was pronounced dead. Sentenced to death for the 1998 dragging murder of James Byrd Jr., there was no doubt about the convict’s guilt. Brewer and two accomplices, John William King and Shawn Allen Berry, abducted Byrd, a 49-year-old African American, in Jasper, Texas, beat him, bound him with a log chain attached to the backend of a pickup truck, and dragged him three miles down a rough East Texas road until his head was detached from his body when it hit a culvert. The racially-motivated murder made the nation shudder–and marked a decisive moment in the hate crime justice movement for LGBTQ people as well as for African Americans. But the justice of capital punishment for hate crime murders is still up for serious question, even after the execution of a bigoted man who displayed no remorse for his crime. Brewer had even urinated on Byrd before dragging him to his death.
In Texas, the racist murder of James Byrd Jr. was quickly equated with the anti-gay murder of young Matthew Wayne Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, that occurred barely four months later. After abortive attempts to get a state hate crimes statute naming gays and lesbians as a protected class, the Byrd family agreed to sign on with Shepard’s family to achieve a landmark Texas law including African Americans and LGB persons as protected classes from prejudicial murder. Governor Rick Perry, who today is the notably anti-gay Republican front runner for President, signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law back in May 2001, inclusive of “sexual preference” as a protected category. It took the federal government eight more years to enact a comprehensive hate crimes law inclusive of LGBT people in the United States. The James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, was signed into law by President Obama in October 2009. The families of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. were honored guests at the presidential signing ceremony in the White House.
Can state-sanctioned execution remedy anti-gay or racially motivated hate crime murders? Brewer’s death by lethal injection, in the same week as the hotly contested execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, brought that issue to a head for the national media, human and civil rights activists, moral theologians, and the families of victims alike. Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC anchor of “The Last Word,” opined that the only way to prevent the execution of putatively innocent death row inmates like Davis is to outlaw the execution of even the most unrepentant of guilty killers like Brewer. Dick Gregory, the fabled comedian and human rights activist, was present in Huntsville protesting the execution of James Byrd Jr.’s murderer for just that reason. The Houston Chronicle quotes Gregory as saying, “Any state killing is wrong. If Adolph Hitler were to be executed,” he said, “I would be here to protest . . . I believe life in prison is punishment. Execution is revenge.”
Ross Byrd, James Byrd’s son, who is now 32, spoke out to Reuters the night before Brewer’s execution for the murder of his father. “You can’t fight murder with murder,” Byrd said, representing his family. “Life in prison would have been fine. I know he can’t hurt my daddy anymore. I wish the state would take in mind that this isn’t what we want.” The Reuters article concludes by presenting Ross Byrd’s position that for the state to execute Brewer is no more that a continuation of the cycle of violence that destroyed his father’s life on that lonely road in the dead of night in 1998. Byrd believes that all people, the government included, should decide not to perpetuate that cycle of death. “Everybody’s in that position,” he said. “And I hope they will stand back and look at it before they go down that road of hate. Like Ghandi said, an eye for an eye, and the whole world will go blind.”
Dennis Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s father, took a similar position on the day his son’s second killer was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. Speaking to Aaron James McKinney, the roofer who beat Matt into a fatal coma with a pistol, Shepard said that Matt was not opposed to the death penalty. As a matter of fact, at a family meeting, Matt had said that heinous murders like the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. deserved capital punishment. “Mr. McKinney,” Shepard said, “I, too, believe in the death penalty. I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr. McKinney. However, this is the time to begin the healing process. To show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy. To use this as the first step in my own closure about losing Matt. Mr. McKinney, I am not doing this because of your family. I am definitely not doing this because of the crass and unwarranted pressures put on by the religious community. If anything, that hardens my resolve to see you die. Mr. McKinney, I’m going to grant you life, as hard as that is for me to do, because of Matthew.” Shepard concluded, “Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives. May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”
Admittedly, all other hate crimes victims’ families do not necessarily agree with Mr. Byrd and Mr. Shepard. Some support capital punishment as justice for the heinous nature of the crimes committed against their loved ones. But Lawrence Russell Brewer’s Texas execution is not so cut and dried as the most ardent supporters of capital punishment would like to believe. The world is far grayer than any black-and-white wishes for closure can achieve in a culture where bigotry kills innocent people everyday, and where the state can and does execute anyone it deems legal to terminate. What is right and what is wrong about capital punishment for hate crimes murder perpetrators? What is just for the victims and their families, and for the society the killers have also grievously wounded by their deeds of hatred? We at the Unfinished Lives Project do not claim to have the final truth about these monumental issues. But we do agree with Ross Byrd and Dennis Shepard. Until our fallible knowledge is replaced by the divine in some other world than this and some other time than ours, we will err on the side of mercy. Honor the dead. Break the cycle. Stop the killing.
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September 27, 2011 Posted by unfinishedlives | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, capital punishment, Dragging murders, Execution, gay bashing, gay men, Georgia, GLBTQ, gun violence, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBTQ, Matthew Shepard Act, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, President Barack Obama, Racism, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, Texas, transgender persons, Wyoming | African Americans, Anglo Americans, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual people, capital punishment, Dick Gregory, Dragging murders, execution, gay bashing, gay men, GLBTQ, gun violence, Hate Crimes, hate crimes legislation, Heterosexism and homophobia, James Byrd Jr., James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Law and Order, Lesbians, LGBTQ, Matthew Shepard Act, perpetrators, racism, Social Justice Advocacy, Texas, transgender persons, transphobia, Washington D.C., Wyoming | Comments Off on Hate Crimes and Capital Punishment: A Special Comment