Unfinished Lives

Remembering LGBT Hate Crime Victims

Anti-Gay Sect Leader Pleads Guilty for Murdering 4-Year-Old Boy and Adult Woman

Jadon Higganbothan, 4, (l) shot for allegedly being gay, and Antoinette McKoy, 28, (r) murdered for being unable to bear children.

Durham, North Carolina – The leader of an anti-gay sect has pleaded guilty to murder for killing a 4-year-old boy because he thought the toddler was gay, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Peter Lucas Moses, 27, the leader of a polygamous group known as the “Black Hebrews,” has agreed to testify against his mother, brother, and sister in order to avoid the death penalty for himself. He faces two life sentences for the murders of Jadon Higganbothan, 4, and Antoinette Yvonne McKoy, 28, if convicted of the crimes.

WRAL-TV reports that members of the Black Separatist cult addressed Moses as “Lord,” and lived together in a house in Southeast Durham. In October 2010, because he believed he saw Higganbothan touch one of his sons “inapproriately” (the boy had allegedly spanked Moses’ son on the bottom), he ordered the boy’s mother to take him into the garage, where Moses shot the child in the head.  The women in the group had arranged computer speakers in the garage to play the Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew loudly enough to drown out the sound of the gunshot.  Two months later, when Moses found out that his consort McKoy could not have children and had decided to escape the cult, he shot her to death in a bathroom of the house.  On June 8, 2011, investigators found the bodies of Higganbothan and McKoy buried in trash bags in the basement of another house belonging to the sect.  Moses’ fingerprints were found on the tape used to secure the trash bags, and his handgun was proven to have been used in both murders.

The father of the little boy, Jamiel Higganbothan, told WRAL-TV News that he was furious the District Attorney had offered Moses a plea deal to save his life. “Me and my family wanted the death penalty,” Higganbothan said after the deal was announced. Moses’ brother, P. Leonard Moses, his sister, Sheila Moses, and his mother, Sheilda Harris, have been charged with accessories to the murder of Antoinetta McKoy. Jadon’s mother, Vania Sisk, and two other women who lived with Peter Moses, Larhonda Renee Smith and Lavada Quinzetta Harris, have been charged with murder in McKoy’s killing, and as accessories to the murder of the little boy.

The Black Hebrews, according to the SPLC, have roots going back to Black Separatist  and Black Nationalist movements in the 19th century.  They hold that they, not the Jews, are the true descendants of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible.  While most members of the modern movement in the United States are non-violent, a growing number of cells have become increasingly anti-Semitic, anti-gay, and prone to violence. They hold that modern Jews are imposters. These extremists also condemn whites for enslaving Blacks, and say that they are worthy of death or slavery because of it.

June 14, 2012 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Anti-Semitism, Black Hebrews, GLBTQ, gun violence, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, LGBTQ, Mistaken as LGBT, North Carolina, religious hate speech, religious intolerance | , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Anti-Gay Sect Leader Pleads Guilty for Murdering 4-Year-Old Boy and Adult Woman

Gay Jews in Chicago Targeted by Terrorists

Chicago, IL – A predominantly gay and lesbian synagogue in Chicago was specifically targeted for a terrorist attack this past weekend.  Though the plot was foiled by law enforcement, Chicago’s Jewish community is on alert.  The terrorist plot, originating in Yemen and thought to be the work of Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, involved explosive-filled packages to be delivered to Or Chadesh, a congregation of around a hundred gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their families, that worships in space rented from Emmanuel Congregation, on the north side of Chicago.  According to WLS Radio reports, a highly placed Jewish source informed Emmanuel’s Rabbi Michael Zedek that the LGBTQ synagogue his congregation housed one of two Jewish houses of worship to be targeted in the Chicago area.  Zedek, in turn, communicated with the spiritual leader of the Or Chadesh congregation, Rabbi Larry Edwards, to let him know about the plot to attack the LGBTQ congregation.  Rabbi Edwards told WLS that members of his flock took the news “rather calmly,” saying that their identity as an LGBTQ synagogue may have been an added reason for terrorists to choose their congregation for an attack.  Rabbi Edwards said to The Advocate: “Immediately, you kind of think, ‘well, [representing the gay community], maybe that makes us an additional target…. It could be totally random, somebody went on the Internet and picked a couple of synagogues.” The FBI has affirmed that religious institutions in the Chicago area were specifically chosen by terrorists in the Yemen-based plot, but the FBI has refused to confirm that Or Chadesh (and another, predominantly heterosexual Jewish congregation) was singled out for the attack.  Rabbi Edwards says he is puzzled that he and Or Chadesh had not been informed by federal officials.  Edwards told a reporter for WLS: “How did you find me? If you could do it, the FBI could do it. … I haven’t heard anything (from the FBI).” Still, Rabbi Edwards and his congregation are “grateful that the system worked in this case and law enforcement tracked [the plot] down.” Press and police came to the Friday services at Emmanuel Congregation, as well as supporters from the community.  Rabbi Zedek said that Emmanuel routinely provides a security service whenever anyone is in the building, and has done so for a long time.  He did not plan for extra security measures to be implemented at this time.  “We’ll operate as business as usual,” Rabbi Zedek said.  “That is part of the usual business that has come to our world.” According to the Wall Street Journal, Zedek and other leaders at Congregation Emmanuel discovered that the syangogue website has been visited “dozens of times” by sources in Egypt.  Zedek has informed the FBI, and leads are being followed. Prior to nesting with Emmanuel Congregation, LGBTQ-predominant Or Chadesh rented space from Second Unitarian Church in the Lakeview area.  Pastor Adam Robersmith of the Unitarian congregation told reporters that he had heard of the possibility that Or Chadesh had been selected by the terrorist in the failed attack, but he also said that he had no reason to believe his congregation was in any peril.

November 1, 2010 Posted by | Anti-LGBT hate crime, Anti-Semitism, Bisexual persons, Bombs and explosives, FBI, gay men, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Illinois, Law and Order, Lesbian women, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, synagogue bombing, transgender persons, transphobia, Unsolved LGBT Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Gay Jews in Chicago Targeted by Terrorists

Dad Teaches Little Son to Hate Gays, Jews, All Americans: Phelps’ Legacy of Hatred

WBC often uses child protestors - PinkNews photo

Topeka, Kansas – Steve Drain, a member of Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, is proud of his 7-year-old son Bo.  Young Bo has learned to hate on a grand scale: Gays, “hundred and hundreds of Jews,” all citizens of the United States, are bound for eternal hellfire.  ABC News 20/20 reports that from the cradle, children of the notorious, gay-hating Topeka church are taught that anyone who violates their interpretation of the Bible is bound for everlasting punishment.  Gay people are particularly singled out in Bo’s young mind, thanks to the indoctrination he has received from his father, mother, and teachers at WBC. Bo sincerely believes gays by the millions are headed for damnation: “You get destroyed and you get put in hell. Hell is like a burning place where it can never be stopped, burning, and it can burn millions of people every day,” he said.  Because the government allows diversity, and for the most part does not punish lesbians, transgender people, and gays, Bo has been taught that all Americans are de facto “fag enablers.”  His father, Steve, was so impressed by the message of Phelps back in 2000 when he came to film a story on the church, he returned to Florida, packed up his family, and moved them to Topeka to join the 70-member congregation.  He and his wife Luci live just outside the church compound with their four children.  The allure of the church is not unlike other utopian, world-hating sects from the past: certainty based on a fundamentalist reading of the Bible and morality, security in a swiftly changing world, salvation from hellfire, and purity from the stains of sin and immorality.  The Southern Poverty Law Center has highlighted this church before, and others like it because of the potential for violence that religious bigotry and hate speech breed.  While the connection between indoctrination in hatred and physical violence is hotly debated, and courts have upheld the first amendment rights of groups like Westboro Baptist Church to protest at synagogues, LGBT churches, schools, and the funerals of fallen U.S. soldiers, there is little doubt that when fringe personalities act violently to harm vulnerable individuals and groups, “true believers” like WBC see the hand of God in the deeds.  When the Drains take their children to picket the funerals of military service members killed in the line of duty, they and the other members of WBC praise God for taking the life of another “fag enabler.”  According to ABC’s 20/20, Steve Drain, Bo’s father, said the church arrives at the funerals to let families know their loved ones are in hell because they fought for a supposedly damned country. “Remember what we all say: No God fearing man or woman would lift a finger fighting for a country awashed in sin like this,” Steve Drain said to his son.  Though the Drains have an estranged eldest daughter, Lauren, who rejects the hatred her family and WBC has taught her, the younger children are content to protest, picket, and preach for hate, at least for now.  Bo tells ABC News, “I’m preaching and I’m going with this church, and that’s what the church says. I’m going to go with that my entire life”—A sobering thought for Father’s Day.

June 19, 2010 Posted by | Anti-Semitism, Florida, Fred Phelps, funerals, gay men, harassment, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Kansas, Lesbian women, military, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Slurs and epithets, Southern Poverty Law Center, transgender persons, transphobia | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

10 Year Old KKK Hate Preacher

Andrew Pendergraft - Bancroft USA photo

Harrison, AR – Ten-year-old Andrew Pendergraft has a picture-perfect American family, and preaches hatred against LGBT people and racial minorities.  He hates “homosexual heroes” and “race mixing.”  In the most recent edition of “Hatewatch,” the Southern Poverty Law Center highlights the story of this young, blond boy and his sisters  Charity, 19, and Shelby, 17, who are being reared by their parents in the culture of hatred for all things non-white and homosexual.  The Sun carries an extensive article with revealing photos of the boy, who recently ranted against the Disney animated film, “The Princess and the Frog.”  While Andrew opines that the African American Princess is good for all the “black kids,” the fact that the Prince is white is terrible, because that is “race mixing”: “If all other people mix up there won’t be any more white kids,” the Sun quotes him as saying, “So don’t race-mix.”  Andrew goes on to complain that the film is anti-Christian since the “good guy” is a Voodoo priest, and Voodoo is a black race blasphemy, while Christianity is the religion of white people. “Voodoo doctors worship the Devil so it’s a pretty bad movie for kids, especially white kids,” Andrew concludes. “Be white and proud. Bye.” The story of the Pendergrafts who have swallowed Klu Klux Klan doctrine hook, line, and sinker, is a warning to American society about the new shape of deadly hatred in this country: the intersection of oppressions and hatreds.  Race hatred and anti-semitism do not exist in a vacuum from homophobia and heterosexism.  In the Sun interview, Andrew’s mother Rachel proudly states that she home schooled her children because if they were to attend a public school, her kids would be taught about “heroes of the homosexual agenda, and that it is OK to race-mix.”  Mrs. Pendergraft goes on to say, “They would be taught that there is a great socialist agenda in America and they can get on that bandwagon.”  Undergirding the new face of American hatred is an old evil: support for hate ideology by a particularly intolerant version of the Christian religion.  Little Andrew loves to go to the White Christian Revival Center in Harrison where he preaches, and after he finishes shooting his latest segment on the family internet TV project, “White People TV,” he and about 30 other Klan Kids go out bowling. “It is so much fun!” Andrew enthuses.  The flaming cross is central to the whole hate project, according to Andrew’s sister, Charity, and has been misunderstood by outsiders and race-mixers: “We don’t call it cross-burning. It is meant to highlight that Jesus died for us on the cross,” she told the Sun.  The sincerity of this belief, that the Christian God only approves of white, straight people, and their paranoia about the supposed “extinction of  the White race,” make for a dangerous future when inculcated in children so young.  According to The Sun, current membership of the KKK in the United States stands at around 8,000, and is growing strongly after the election of America’s first African American “race-mixing”  President, Barack Obama.

June 10, 2010 Posted by | African Americans, Anglo Americans, Anti-Semitism, Arkansas, gay men, Heterosexism and homophobia, Klu Klux Klan, Media Issues, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacy, Racism, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Southern Poverty Law Center, transgender persons, transphobia | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Anti-Gay Church Smears Students and Teachers at “Fag-Infested” Boston School

Westboro Baptist Church children protesting a military funeral

Boston, MA – Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church has issued a press release saying that a protest will take place June 7 at Boston Latin School.  What sets this protest action apart from many others the church has mounted is the virulence of the verbal attacks on the “violent, freakish, worthless, brute-beast children,” who attend the school, and the “perverts” who run it, according to Baywindows.com.  On the church’s online picket schedule, the stated purpose of the protest is “to remind this nation that God is cursing Doomed america [sic] because parents raise their children for the devil and teachers teach them the twin lies that ‘God loves everyone’ and ‘it’s OK to be gay!'”  WBC’s contention that Boston Latin School is “fag-infested” is a theme the Phelps clan has ridden to international attention many times before.  The Topeka, Kansas church gained infamy by picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard in Casper, WY, and then attempting to build a monument in a public park there declaring Shepard’s murder date to be the day he “entered hell.”  Shepard died in October 1998, the victim of the most widely publicized anti-LGBT murder in U.S. history.  The Casper City Council denied WBC the right to erect the offensive monument, a decision upheld by the courts.  Finding it difficult to gin up enough support from gay-bashing tactics in recent years, WBC has switched its attention to private funerals of fallen U.S. servicemembers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The “logic” seems to be that the U.S. government, which according to WBC pronouncements is “fag-enabling,” has sent women and men to die in foreign wars only to consign them to the nether regions thanks to the “pro-homo” policies of the government.  In what may be a landmark freedom of speech case, WBC and Phelps are counting on the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold their defense this Fall in the celebrated suit of Matthew Snyder’s family, according to the Washington Post.  The Snyders took action against the church for “invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy” at their son’s 2006 funeral.  Snyder, a Marine Lance Corporal, was killed in the line of duty in Iraq.  The Snyder family suit contends that statements on the WBC website, his actions, and those of members of WBC including some of Phelps’ own family who comprise a large percentage of the Topeka church membership are not protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The Phelps led church has also turned its attention against Jewish schools, synagogues, and temples. Supporters of Boston Latin School are preparing for the Phelps protest with the aid of an organization named “Phelps-a-thon,” founded by Chris Mason to counter WBC’s homophobic presence by raising money for LGBT causes in a unique way.  For every minute the WBC protest demonstration takes place at the school, Phelps-a-thon will raise donations for the Boston Latin School’s Gay-Straight Alliance.  Since the protest is scheduled to occur for a full 30 minutes, the amount should be considerable, undercutting the hateful purpose of the anti-gay picket. After every Phelps-a-thon money raiser, Mason sends a Thank You card to Fred Phelps informing him of the total donated during the protest for LGBT human rights causes.  As the subversive website says, “We can turn these hateful words into positive change.”  Boston Latin School is the oldest school in the United States, founded in 1635 by the town of Boston, a full year before Harvard University was founded.

June 2, 2010 Posted by | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Anti-Semitism, Boston Latin School, Fred Phelps, funerals, gay men, Gay-Straight Alliances, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Kansas, Law and Order, Massachusetts, Matthew Shepard, Monuments and markers, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Phelps-a-thon, Protests and Demonstrations, religious hate speech, religious intolerance, Slurs and epithets, Social Justice Advocacy, U.S. Supreme Court | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Anti-Gay Church Smears Students and Teachers at “Fag-Infested” Boston School

“Remain Vigilant!” Warns Southern Poverty Law Center

splchead2009_50072

Montgomery, AL – In a letter to supporters dated June 17,  J. Richard Cohen, CEO and President of the Southern Poverty Law Center urges the entire SPLC network to “remain vigilant” in the wake of the murder of Holocaust Memorial Museum Security Guard Stephen Johns.  The SPLC carries out the most extensive program of tracking hate groups and extremist organizations of any non-governmental organization in the nation, most recently on the anti-LGBT hate monger, Scott Lively and his band of co-extremists, Watchmen on the Walls.  Two Slavic Christian fundamentalists from Sacramento, CA with ties to Lively’s group carried out a fatal attack on gay East Indian immigrant Satendar Singh during the July 4 holiday season of 2008.  Cohen’s important letter reads in part:

“In addition to the Holocaust Museum shooting, we’ve seen the murders of five police officers by extremists in recent months and the assassination of a prominent Kansas physician by an extremist tied to the anti-government militia movement.  These killers may have acted alone, but they were all influenced by the hate movement in America. What’s alarming is that this movement is now being aided and abetted by far-right pundits on cable TV and talk radio, who are fanning the flames of hate with their increasingly hysterical rhetoric targeting President Obama, the government, Latino immigrants and others who are not like them. These are the same commentators who ridiculed the recent Department of Homeland Security that predicted the very kind of violent attacks we’re now seeing.”  Cohen concludes by urging all fair-minded Americans to stand firm against hatred:  “We all need to speak out against hate — whether it’s in the national media or in our communities….  We hope the lessons from this latest tragedy won’t soon fade from our national consciousness.”

June 18, 2009 Posted by | African Americans, Alabama, anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Anti-Semitism, Domestic Violence, gay men, gun violence, Hate Crimes, Heterosexism and homophobia, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacy, Perpetrators of Hate Crime, Racism, religious intolerance, Social Justice Advocacy | , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on “Remain Vigilant!” Warns Southern Poverty Law Center

   

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