East Texas Acknowledges ’93 Anti-Gay Murder–Finally
Tyler, Texas – A young gay Texan kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in East Texas will be remembered at at plaque-laying ceremony at the park from which he was kidnapped in October 1993. Project TAG (Tyler Area Gays) and Tyler AIDS Services plan to place a plaque honoring Nicolas West in Bergfeld Park on World AIDS Day, December 1, according to the Dallas Voice. West, 23 at the time of his murder, was lured to the park by three men with the offer of sex. The men abducted West, drove him out to a remote area of Smith County, and forced him to strip and kneel in a clay pit. His murderers tortured him, and shot him no fewer than 15 times. The three assailants, Donald Aldrich, Henry Earl Dunn, and David McMillan, were arrested and charged with capital murder. The trio confessed they targeted West because he was a gay man. Both Aldrich and Dunn were executed for the crime. Since McMillan was 17 at the time of the murder, he received a life sentence that he is still serving. Bill and Kent’s Place, a memorial site where LGBTQ hate crimes victims are remembered online, quotes Aldrich’s cold blooded logic for attacking and murdering a gay man. Aldrich said, “If you can walk into a 7-11 and rob a 7-11 for 15, 20 bucks, get your face on videotape, have somebody that’s gonna call the police; or if you can go into a park, rob somebody that’s out in the dark, come away with a hell of a lot more – because of the fact that they’re homosexual and they don’t want people to know it, they’re not gonna go report it to the police. Who you gonna go rob? Where you’re gonna get in the least amount of trouble.” The negative stereo-types assigned to gays and lesbians caused Aldrich to assume no one would really miss “a queer.” At the time of Aldrich’s sentencing to death in 1994, Diana Hardy-Garcia, executive of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Lobby told the press, “In Texas, there is a history of devaluing the lives of gay men and lesbians, which means people who murder them tend to receive lighter sentence because of who their victims are. But today justice was done. This is the first time a gay basher has been convicted of capital murder in Texas.” Though the hate crime murder of Nicolas West received some attention in the press and from independent film makers, the East Texas culture of denial and heterosexism resisted any attempts to remember West publicly until now. In the summer, activists and the arts community staged “The Laramie Project” in memory of West, a performance many locals tried to prevent from ever happening. Community sentiment turned more and more sympathetic to a public memorial for the young gay man who died because of hatred thanks to the work of TAG and its courageous leadership. West’s memory was invoked during the Dallas Stonewall Rebellion Memorial March in June 2010, as hundreds of Texans marched through the steel and glass canyons of downtown Dallas. After the plaque is laid in Bergfeld Park, the community plans a candlelight vigil for victims of hate crimes, and a service of remembrance for those who died of AIDS at a local Presbyterian Church. Nothing compensates for the unimaginable pain, suffering, and terror Nicolas West endured at the hands of his killers seventeen years ago. But the memorial plaque ceremony to be held in Tyler next month shows that East Texans are coming of age in regards to LGBTQ people. Nicolas West did not die in vain.
Halloween Hate Crime Attack in San Diego
Jacob Harshbarger, gay bashed in San Diego (Fernando Lopez photo)
San Diego, California – A gay man was brutally beaten behind his home on Halloween morning by a mixed gender gang who shouted anti-gay epithets as they punched, kicked, and body-slammed him. “Come over here and kick the fairy!” they shouted, among other slurs. San Diego Gay and Lesbian News (SDLN) reports that Jacob Harshbarger, a well-known 32-year-old San Diegan gay man, was walking his two dogs in the alley behind his home about 3 a.m., after the bars closed on Sunday, October 31. He noticed a group of three women and two men in the alley who seemed suspicious. Intent on finishing his dog-walking, Harshbarger did not respond when one of the suspects asked him a question. That night, Harsbarger had donned a tee-shirt with a catty, gay theme on it to wear out to the local bars for the Halloween parties. Upon returning to his home, he wore a hoodie over the tee-shirt that covered the slogan. The victim wondered if somehow during the exchange, one of the gang read his shirt, igniting the attack. One of the males shouted out that Harsbarger was a gay man, drawing the others into the assault. SDLN reports that the assailants fell upon Harsbarger, screaming that he was a “f*****g faggot.” A neighbor recalls hearing a loud “bang,” which was most likely the sound of Harsbarger’s body as he was slammed into the house during the gay bashing. The neighbor and her son investigated the commotion in the alley beside their house and found Harsbarger unconscious on the ground. Though brief, the assault was savage. Harsbarger was diagnosed with a concussion, and needed thirteen stitches to close his split lip, and was beaten so severely in the face that he sustained bruising behind his eyes. The victim remembers very little, once the attack commenced. He recalled for SDLN that one of the female gang members tried to get the chief attacker to stop when he kicked Harsbarger in the face, and that in the argument that broke out between the females and the males, one of the male attackers kicked one of the women in the stomach. The next thing the victim remembered was the journey to a local hospital in an ambulance. Harsbarger was treated and released to recover at home. LGBTQ activists in San Diego say that the North Park section of the city is supposed to be safe and friendly to LGBTQ, people. This attack is a wake-up call to the community, and a further indicator of the mounting violence against gay and lesbian people throughout the nation in the wake of the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law last October. Local activist Fernando Lopez told reporters, “We think of San Diego and North Park as being progressive and safe. It’s devastating that someone would do this to Jacob, or any member of our community.” Police officers are not willing to label the attack a hate crime. A spokesperson for the San Diego Police Department speculated that Harsbarger was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” likely a spurious opinion, since the North Park area is thought to be relatively free of problems for LGBTQ people. Investigators found that Harsbarger’s hoodie was zipped up when paramedics found him lying unconscious on the ground, so the attack was not sparked by the victim’s clothing, as he feared. One of the attackers left a cell phone at the scene, which may prove to be a critical element in locating the suspects. Since no one saw the bashing, investigators are left with the partial memories of a shaken and hurt victim of yet another crime of hate violence against the LGBTQ community in southern California.
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.
Bigots Target Birthplace of Gay Rights Movement With Hate-Crime Wave
Stonewall Inn, NYC, site of one of many recent anti-gay attacks
Greenwich Village, New York City, New York – The Villager reports a “hate-crime wave” striking Greenwich Village, acknowledged widely as the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ Rights Movement. In the past two weeks, police and anti-violence advocates noted four violent attacks against patrons of gay bars. A 45-year-old Queens man has been charged in the two most recent assaults with third-degree assault as a hate crime, and third-degree robbery for the attacks which both took place on October 11–just ten minutes apart. Frederick Giunta allegedly punched a 31-year-old gay man in the face at Ty’s Bar on Christopher Street after grabbing the victim’s wallet. Guinta then walked to Julius’ Bar on W. 159th and Waverly Place, where he allegedly attacked an African American bartender while shouting anti-gay and anti-black slurs at him. According to The Villager, the suspect struck Greg Davis, 48, in the face while yelling at him, “What are you going to do?” and calling him a racial slur, then yelling at him, “You are a f—— faggot.” Sources in the police department told reporters that Guinta had a record of violence against gay men in the area since 2002, when he pleaded guilty to robbing a gay man he picked up at Rawhide Bar in Chelsea. On October 4, two Staten Island men attacked a man in the restroom of the historic Stonewall Inn on Sheridan Square–but their intended victim fought back. The New York Post reports that Matthew Francis, 21, and Christopher Orlando, 17, both of Staten Island, gay bashed a Washington, D.C. visitor to the Stonewall Inn with intent to harm and rob him. Benjamin Carver, 34, their intended victim, fought back against the thugs, and drove them out of the restroom. Carver and his boyfriend, with the assistance of the Stonewall Inn staff, threw the Staten Island men out of the bar. Carver told the Post, “I was never afraid, throughout the whole experience. To so many of these bullies, they think that gay people are an easy target, and that we’re just going to give in. Those two guys found out that night that’s not the case.” Carver and Orlando have been charged with assault as a hate crime and attempted robbery. Choosing historic gay establishments like Stonewall Inn and Julius’s bar sends LGBT residents of the village an ominous warning: gay liberation is still a long time coming in the Empire State and the nation. The Stonewall Inn was the scene of the outbreak of the Stonewall Uprising of June 1969, when street kids, lesbians, gay men, and drag queens fought back agains the oppression of the NYPD. Julius’ Bar is the oldest continuing gay bar in Manhattan. On October 1, 20-yer-old Andrew Jackson was arrested and charged with hate-crime assault and gang-related assault on three gay men on Ninth Avenue and 25th Street in Chelsea, just blocks away from the West Village bars where the later anti-gay attacks occurred. Two other suspects are being sought by police in connection with the October 1 incident. New York City Council Speaker, openly-lesbian Christine Quinn, credits the swift arrests in all these cases to the professionalism of the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force. Quinn told the Villager, “Tragically, this is just the most recent in a series of hate crimes to strike our city and neighborhoods in recent weeks.” New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Program’s Executive Director Sharon Stapel told the press, “This [October 11] attack underscores our need to stop the hate speech and anti-LGBTQ vitriol that results in this kind of attack.”
Potential Anti-Lesbian Hate Crime at East Carolina University
Bryan Berg, ECU Hate Crime Suspect
Greenville, North Carolina – Two women from off-campus were assaulted Friday outside an East Carolina University dormitory by two men yelling anti-lesbian epithets. ECU Police arrested Bryan Berg, an 18-year-old student, for allegedly punching one of the women in the jaw. Berg has been charged with assault, and then released from the Pitt County Detention Center on $27,000 bond. A second man is being sought by authorities for the crime. ECU Police Assistant Chief Dawn Tevepaugh told The Reflector that the victims of the attack were non-students from Chocowinity, a small town in the Greenville metropolitan area. The women, 18 and 19 years of age respectively, had visited friends in a university dormitory, and were exiting the building when Berg and the second assailant accused them of being lesbians before launching their attack. The violence took place at about 2:45 a.m., but the ECU Police were not apprised of the incident until the hospital informed them that the two women were hospitalized for the attack. The identities of the women are being withheld in the interest of their safety, according to Q Notes, the LGBT news source for the Carolinas. Authorities have not characterized the sexual orientations of the victims at this time. A witness told authorities that before Berg allegedly hit the 18-year-old woman, he spat on her. Both victims were hurt in the assault. They were treated at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, and the elder of the two was released on Friday. The younger woman remains hospitalized because of a severely broken jaw. Assistant Chief Tevepaugh says that investigators have not yet determined that the assault meets federal criteria for a hate crime, but the nature of the attack and the alleged anti-gay slurs used by the attackers led the police to examine the possibility closely. Tevepaugh told Q Notes, “We have to look at all the elements of the incident to see if they meet the federal requirements to be classified as a hate crime, including what was said and the actions that occurred. At this time, we believe it was an isolated incident.” Aaron Lucier, director of the campus LGBT Union, responded confidently that the investigation would be carried out in an efficient and fair-minded way. “Hate crime or not,” Lucier said to Q Notes, “it was a violent act, something we don’t want on our campus. We have a campus here that celebrates diversity on all levels. Our students find an educational campus here that is welcoming, but also learning, so it is a space that our students will find supportive and welcoming.”
“Wolf-Like” Street Gang Gay-Bashing Rampage In New York
Latin King Goonies Arrested for Anti-Gay Torture (NY Daily News composite photo)
New York City, New York – Members of the Latin King Goonies, a street gang based in the Bronx, went on the attack last week to brutalize men they perceived to be gay, including a 17-year-old allegedly sodomized with the wooden handle of the toilet plunger. The New York Daily News reports that seven members of the Goonies were arrested, ranging in ages from 16- to 23-years-old. At least two other gang members are being sought by police in connection with the homophobic series of crimes. “These suspects employed terrible, wolf-pack odds of nine against one, odds which revealed them as predators whose crimes were as cowardly as they were despicable,” Ray Kelly, Police Commissioner for New York City told reporters for the News. Throughout the attacks, the suspects shouted homophobic slurs at their victims. According to The Advocate, the suspects allegedly ran amok after learning that one of their new gang initiates, a 17-year-old, was a gay. They kidnapped and tortured a 30-year-old man believed to be the lover of the Goonies pledge, sadistically forcing the youth to burn his friend with lit cigarettes. The victim was also beaten with a chain, forced to chug large amounts of an alcohol-laced energy drink called Four Loko, and then was sodomized with a small baseball bat. A second 17-year-old male was kidnapped and sodomized with a wooden toilet plunger handle while the others were forced to watch. The Daily News report says that the gang topped off the day by beating and robbing a fourth man. Led by 23-year-old Ildefonso (Cheto) Mendez, the seven were transported to the 41st Precinct station, where they are being held pending arraignment. Besides Mendez, those arrested were David Rivera, 21; Nelson Falu, 18; Steven Carballo, 17; Denis Peitars, 17; Bryan Almonte, 17; and Brian Cepeda, 16. Still being sought, they said, are Elmer Confessor, 23; and Ruddy Vargas-Perez, 22. The suspects are charged with sodomy, abduction, imprisonment, menacing, assault, and robbery–all categorized as hate crimes. Reaction the anti-gay rampage has been swift. New York authorities are especially sensitive to anti-gay bias crimes in the wake of a recent bashing incident involving two young men who assaulted a gay man in the toilet of the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, the birthplace of the Gay Rights Movement in America. Numbers of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes are on the rise in New York according to The Daily News. As of Monday, this year’s total has reached 44 as compared with 41 at this same time a year ago. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., said, “Bronxites will not tolerate any form of bigotry in our borough,” and New York City Council Speaker, Christine Quinn demanded action against gay bashers throughout the five boroughs.”These attacks are appalling and are even more despicable because the victims were clearly targeted in acts of hate simply because they are gay,” she said. Police Commissioner Kelly told reporters that this latest attack had nothing to do with a gang initiation. This one was about pure hatred of homosexuals. One 17-year-old victim, Kelly said, was “thrown into a wall, made to strip naked, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger.” According to the New York Times City Blog, the tortures took place over several hours at 1910 Osbourne Place, a Goonies safe house often surrounded by as many as ten pit bull attack dogs. Residents of Morris Heights called the site, “the Goonies House,” and told investigators that the gang used it to throw parties, have sex, and as a staging ground for their attacks on a series of victims in recent months. Commissioner Kelly told the press that the attackers worked hard to clean up after their bloody work. The suspects pulled up linoleum, ripped out rugs, and repainted the torture chamber where the crimes took place. One detective told the Commissioner that the house was “The cleanest crime scene I’ve ever seen,” quote unquote. “Lots of bleach and paint were used to cover the blood shed by their tortured prey. They even poured bleach down the drains,” Kelly said. Still, the investigators were able to find significant amounts of evidence, including blood and human hair. “They could clean,” said Commissioner Kelly, “but they couldn’t hide.”
Asher Brown’s “Death By Bullies” Sparks Investigations, Demonstration
Asher Brown, Fox News 26 photo
Houston, Texas – Pressure is mounting for a fuller investigation into the reasons for the suicide of Asher Brown. After hundreds of mourners and supporters gathered on Saturday outside Moore Elementary School to pay tribute to Asher and support his family, Harris County prosecutors are investigating to learn all they can about the role school bullying played in the 13-year-old gay boy’s suicide at his home on September 13. On October 4, CBS and AP reported the release of a new study establishing that anti-gay bullying is a major contributing factor to LGBTQ depression and suicide. According to the report of the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, the mental health of LGBTQ youth is deeply impacted in many negative ways by the harassment and bullying they receive in school. “Our research makes it crystal clear that anti-LGBT bullying is a major reason that youth who don’t conform to gender rules or expectations have poorer mental health later in life,” study co-author Stephen T. Russell, a consultant with the Project, said in a press release. Asher Brown’s death has also sparked pressure on school boards and administrations to do more to make school experiences safer for children and youth. A demonstration is planned for Tuesday, October 5, outside Hamilton Middle School in Houston where Asher was a student to highlight the need for safe schools and for zero-tolerance of anti-LGBTQ discrimination and bullying because of the real or perceived sexual orientations and gender identities of teenagers. One of new initiatives calls for the passage of a law being called “Asher’s Rule” in memory of the gentle, small, and much-tormented gay youth who no longer could endure the hell he faced at school. The Facebook notice announcing the demonstration and vigil for safer schools in memory of Asher includes this appeal to the public: “Please join us to help educate the schools, the school district, the parents, the students to help make schools a safer place for kids. We all collectively hope and dream for Asher and all kids who are/were bullied…. that the world becomes a better place with what they would have hoped and dreamed it would be. We need more sensitivity and compassion… not bullying and meanness in this world. Please find ways to get kids help. We need these special kids to grow to adults.”
Murdered NJ Transwoman Disrespected Even in Death
Maplewood, NJ – A 28-year-old transwoman who worked as a model was shot to death at a private residence in Maplewood, New Jersey on September 12. Victoria Carmen White, 28, was beautiful, talented, and greatly beloved by her friends. The transgender community and their allies are up in arms at the news of her murder, which is still under investigation, because initial reports by authorities and news media mis-identifed her by her birth identity as a male. Only after an outcry from the public was Ms. White’s identity corrected by the Maplewood Police and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. This statement was released to the press: “Following an examination by the Medical Examiner and further investigation, it has been confirmed that the victim was a post-operative transgender female having undergone sex reassignment surgery.” Calling the act of mis-identification an act of gross disrespect and “erasure,” the trans community is launching an effort to educate both straight and gay communities about the demands of human dignity transpeople need and deserve in today’s world. As Bird of Paradox wrote following the act of mis-identifying Ms. White as male: “That a society has such contempt for transsexual women that the first thing it does after we die is attempt to impose on us an identity which isn’t even legally ours, let alone one in which we lived, speaks volumes about the depth and intensity of insensitivity and downright hatred which we face each and every day of our lives.” The facts of the case are few. Ms. White was shot at approximately 5 a.m. on the morning of September 12 at an apartment complex located at 159 Jacoby Street in Maplewood, an upscale city of 22,000 named as “one of the most desirable places to live in America.” Incomes are generally high, and numbers of people living in poverty in Maplewood are low. The city is picturesque enough to be the setting for several recent films, such as Garden State, One True Thing, and Stepmom. Columbia High School, where Ms. White attended, is the birthplace of Ultimate Frisbee, and proudly displays a plaque to that effect. While the crime has not been labeled an anti-transgender hate crime by authorities, it is difficult for Ms. White’s friends and the trans community to believe that a significant aspect of the motive for the murder could not be transphobia and gender hatred. An outpouring of grief and admiration has come from friends throughout New Jersey for the beautiful woman many knew as “April.” Her longtime friend, Angela DeRocco, wrote about her determination to be who she was, no matter the misunderstanding she received since her days as a student at Columbia High School. “She did what she had to do to get through life and she didn’t care what anyone thought of her,” DeRocco wrote for Maplewood Patch. “If they did think negative, she just brushed it off her shoulders because she knew the ones who truly cared about her wouldn’t judge her and would always be there for her.” DeRocco continued, “I love her so much and respect her for keeping true to herself. She worked so hard becoming who she was, and it made her happy.” In the media frenzy since the death-by-bullying of Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi and so may other gay teenagers throughout the country, the outrageous murder and blundering (perhaps deliberate) mis-identification of Victoria Carmen White should not be forgotten. Pam’s House Blend, as usual, has done a great service by lifting up this sad story in the days running up the the Transgender Day of Remembrance in early November. Bird of Paradox leaves us with the question of justice for all transpeople in the wake of Ms. White’s murder: “If the authorities – having insisted we jump through all these flaming hoops in order to be considered the women and men we know ourselves to be – can then so casually dismiss everything about us except that we’ve undergone major abdominal surgery, and that we were once assigned identities which weren’t ours, then what hope do we have of ever being accepted as ourselves, dead or alive?” Rest in peace, beautiful sister. We have much work to do.
Bullied Gay Teen Dies 9 Days After Suicide Attempt
Seth Walsh, posted by teen friends on Facebook
Tehachapi, CA – A 13-year-old gay teen boy, bullied beyond endurance, died nine days after hanging himself from a tree in his backyard. Seth Walsh, a former student at Jacobsen Middle School, was tormented incessantly for years by school bullies for being gay and bisexual, according to KGET-TV News. The bullying and name-calling got so bad that Seth’s parents pulled him out of Jacobsen and independently schooled him, but the bullies follow Seth with their mission to harass him. The torment shifted from school to a park nearby Seth’s home in Kern County, California, according to friends. They say he never fully revealed how desperate the verbal attacks made him feel, but instead kept his despair bottled up inside himself until he couldn’t stand another day. On Sunday, September 19, he quietly went into the backyard, and hanged himself from the limb of a tree. When Seth was found hanging from the branch, he was unconscious and barely alive. Parameds rushed him to a nearby medical center where he hung onto life supported by a ventilator and other heroic measures. Nine days of struggle later, on Tuesday, September 28, Seth died. Classmates from Jacobsen Middle School said to KGET-TV that though the school administration had an anti-bullying program in place, nobody at the school offered Seth any real guidance or protection from the bullying they knew he was going through. Tehachapi police investigators interviewed students suspected of teasing and bullying the 13-year-old for being gay, but now say that nothing they did to Seth constituted a crime. They will not be charged in his death, though the intensity of their torment was likely the factor most responsible for Seth’s desperate attempt to kill himself. Police Chief Jeff Kermode told KGET, “Several of the kids that we talked to broke down into tears. They had never expected an outcome such as this.” A memorial service for Seth was held at the First Baptist Church of Tehecapi on Friday afternoon. Towelroad reports that suicide prevention counselor Daryl Thiesen does not believe that acts of contrition and sorrow by the kids responsible for bullying Seth, or an outpouring of grief from the school and community now, will break through what Thiesen calls the “culture of silence” surrounding anti-gay bullying in the schools. Students who know about bullying incidents, or teens who are the victims of school bullying, are driven into silence about it out of peer pressure and the fear of being labeled “snitches” or “tattlers.” From all reports, Seth was a sweet-natured youth who loved life and just wanted to be allowed to live it. Deeply ingrained homophobia in the school and the town influenced those prone to bullying to harass this ordinary, loving, so-so-very-young kid to death. It is good that friends and neighbors are rallying to support Seth’s family now. What must be done to prevent further senseless loss of life among our young is an all-out effort to teach tolerance, acceptance, and anti-violence in our schools, churches, and families.
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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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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~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project
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October 12, 2010 Posted by unfinishedlives | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Bullying in schools, Colorado, gay men, gay teens, Gender Variant Youth, harassment, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBT teen suicide prevention, LGBTQ suicide, Matthew Shepard, Matthew Shepard Act, Matthew Shepard Foundation, Media Issues, Remembrances, Sakia Gunn Film Project, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, transgender persons, transphobia, Wyoming | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Bullying in schools, Colorado, gay men, gay teens, Gender Variant Youth, harassment, Hate Crimes, hate crimes legislation, Law and Order, Lesbians, LGBTQ suicide, LGBTQ suicide prevention, LGBTQ teen suicide, Matthew Shepard, Matthew Shepard Act, Matthew Shepard Foundation, Media Issues, Remembrances, Sakia Gunn Film Project, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, transphobia, Wyoming | 1 Comment