Transgender Woman Savagely Murdered in Detroit
East Detroit kill site where trans woman Coko Williams was brutally murdered (Detroit Free Press photo)
Detroit, Michigan – A 35-year-old trans woman was found murdered outside a Parkhurst neighborhood home on Tuesday morning. Because of the reputation of the area, and the stigma associating transgender women with sex workers, the killing of Coko Williams is being lost in the struggle of a neighborhood to survive. Ms. Williams was found with her throat slashed and shot to death around 6:25 a.m. Tuesday in an area of East Detroit habituated by male and female prostitutes–one that could be justifiably described as “gritty.” WWJ, the local CBS affiliate, reports that details are still emerging at this hour, but witnesses told police that the killers sped from the crime scene in a gold-colored vehicle. No suspects have been identified at this time.
News coverage, like that done by Fox News 2, has been slanted toward the determination of Parkhurst residents to eliminate prostitution, drug sales, and violence from their area. Ms. Williams’ murder simply serves Fox as an example of the problems residents face. The Examiner presents Ms. Williams as a “man dressed as a woman,” showing the victim’s self-identification as inconsequential in an otherwise sensational story. Both news sources illustrate the massive difficulty transgender people face overcoming the biased stereotypes that demean trans people everywhere, and denigrate the characters of trans victims of violence, such as Ms. Williams.
Coko Williams was well-known and well-liked, according to the Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Program. A friend of Ms. Williams who identified herself as Dada told TWAVP that she had known Ms. Williams for fifteen years. Though she was “a loner,” Ms. Dada said, “She was really a sweet, quiet girl. She was never shady or nasty. She wasn’t that type of girl at all. She was always respectful of herself and to other people. It’s sad for her to go out the way she did.” Her friends told authorities that supported herself as a hair stylist.
Equality Michigan’s Director of Victim Services, Nursrat Ventimiglia, issued an extensive statement to the press, combatting the disinformation surrounding Ms. Williams’ hate crime murder, and calling upon the Detroit Police to apprehend her killers with all possible speed. “It has been widely reported,” Ventimiglia said, “that the area in which this crime occurred is known for sex work. To be clear, it is unknown at this time whether Ms. Williams was engaged in sex work at the time of her killing, however, it is clear that sex workers are often targets of severe violence. Further, transgender women are far too often victims of the most severe violence.”
Ventimiglia then detailed the crisis of transgender violence rocking Detroit and the nation: “Our most recent report through the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, Hate Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2010, documented 27 anti gay, transgender and HIV positive murders, the second highest yearly total ever recorded by the coalition, and transgender women made up 44% of the 27 reported murders in 2010 while representing only 11% of total survivors and victims. Among transgender murder victims, 42% of transgender women killed last year were engaged in sex work at the time of their murder. Equality Michigan and the NCAVP denounce violence against sex workers and seek to raise awareness of the violence faced by gay and transgender sex workers as well as transgender women.”
The investigation is ongoing.
Transgender Woman of Color Slain in D.C.
Deoni Jones, 23, died of a stab wound to the face.
Washington, D.C. The Washington Blade reports that over 200 attended a Tuesday vigil for a slain transgender woman at the bus stop where she died just the week before. Members of the family of the victim, Deoni Jones, appealed to the large crowd to help develop leads for the police, an appeal that appears to have borne fruit.
Ms. Jones, 23, was waiting for a bus at approximately 8:15 p.m. on February 2 when a male stepped forward and stabbed her in the face, a wound the autopsy report says was the fatal blow. The suspect was caught on a surveillance video, and according to breaking news from WJLA.com, Metropolitan Police have arrested 55-year-old Gary Niles Montgomery and charged him as Jones’s alleged murderer. It has not yet been determined whether anti-transgender hate crimes charges will also be filed against Montgomery. He appeared in court for his arraignment on February 11, and is being held without bail. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for February 24.
This horrible attack is the third murder of a transgender woman in Washington, D.C. in a little over a year. The two previous transphobic murders remain unsolved, and the city’s transgender community has called for more comprehensive protection.
Transphobic “Bathroom Bill” Introduced in TN Legislature
Nashville, Tennessee – A bill making the use of a bathroom by transgender persons a punishable offense is making its way through the Tennessee Legislation, according to Daily Kos. Transgender people are put in an insidious double-bind by the proposed bill: if passed, it will fine a person for the use of a restroom if the sex on that person’s birth certificate does not match the assigned sex of the toilet, while Tennessee does not allow for the sex assignment on a person’s birth certificate to be changed. The “Bathroom Bill” imposes a monetary fine on offenders – $50 – but the fine is the least of the legislation’s harm to transgender people. As Daily Kos and the Huffington Post point out, this bill would embed structural discrimination against a class of people into state law, much as sodomy laws did before the Lawrence v. Texas ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down across the nation in 2003.
The Volunteer State has entertained some of the most regressive, homophobic laws in the nation, typified by the reprehensible “Don’t Say Gay” and “License to Bully” bills, and as long as the radical, extremist right wing is in power in the state, the cavalcade of bias-driven laws is unlikely to stop. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill bans use of the words “gay” or “homosexual” in a Tennessee public school classroom (while, as Signorile says, “pervert” or “sodomite” are fine!) to prevent teaching or discussion about same-sex issues. The “License to Bully” bill, if passed, would offer protections to students who attack the legitimacy of homosexuality as a normal human variation–in effect offering cover to people who wish to bully LGBTQ students.
In a major national survey issued in October 2011, the first of its kind, transgender people in the United States were shown to be the object of discrimination in every sector of life. The Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Study, “Injustice at Every Turn,” noted that “It is a part of social and legal convention in the United States to discriminate against, ridicule, and abuse transgender and gender non-conforming people within foundational institutions such as the family, schools, the workplace and healthcare settings, every day.” This amounts to a colossal moral failure in American life, and the Tennessee bill is of a piece with this systematic and structural bias-attack on transgender people.
The ACLU decries anti-transgender “bathroom bills,” seeing such laws as fundamentally violating non-discrimination laws. Social advocacy groups within the state, such as the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition (TTPC), are opposing the bill, which was introduced by State Senator Bo Watson (R) to make Tennessee, in the words of Think Progress, “a particularly unfriendly place for transgender people.” The text of the “Bathroom Bill” may be accessed here.
As transgender advocate Ryan Sallans, writes in his popular blogsite, “I’m thinking of all you folks down in Tennessee. When is this sh*t going to stop? I just wish politicians didn’t exist, the world would be a better place. Communities should just sit down and talk, get to know each other, respect their differences and understand we all are just trying to live and make it mean something in a challenging world.” When will the sh*t stop, indeed! (Thanks for links to Dr. Jason Lamoreaux).
Plea Deal for Larry King’s Murderer: The Inside Story
Brandon McInerney pled guilty to the execution-style murder of his gay teen classmate, Larry Fobes King.
Ventura County, California – Prosecutors in the Brandon McInerney murder trail agreed to a plea deal rather than take young gay Larry King’s confessed killer into court a second time, according to EDGE Boston. McInerney, 14 at the time he shot his 15-year-old gay classmate in the back of the skull in his middle school computer class in 2008, will be sentenced today.
The Ventura County District Attorney’s Office agreed to a deal because they couldn’t be sure what would happen if they put McInerney back on trial again.
McInerney’s defense team succeeded in putting King on trial for his own murder, at least enough so that the jury in the first trial could not agree on a verdict, and a mistrial was declared. While legal experts saw the case as a clear-cut instance of pre-meditated murder, the prosecutors for Ventura County could not surmount the sympathy factor for the 14-year-old, and the discomfort factor in the way the press and the defense portrayed King. Instead of the forthright homophobic murder the prosecution sought, a combination of child-nostalgia and anti-transgender and anti-gay bias turned King into a “Franken-Larry,” a devious, dangerous homosexual predator–a portrayal that could not have been further from the truth about the real boy who was in transition from a scared, bullied gay school kid to a youth who could affirm and live out his gender variance.
Media distortion in the King case started as early as the first reports about the murder, with sensational accounts of what young King wore to school, and his responses to McInerney’s bullying. Ramin Satoodeh, reporter for Newsweek, wrote a cover story on King that was devastating–likening the boy to a monstrous little predator, tottering after his love interests in platform heels. McInerney’s defense lawyers countered prosecution evidence of his Neo-Nazi and white supremacist motives by casting King, who was smaller and weaker than McInerney, as the aggressor, and skillfully used the press to drive this point home. The California law making a 14-year-old prosecutable as an adult in heinous cases using firearms (which this case was in both particulars) was also put on trial in the media.
In the end, justice for Larry King was not the goal of a chastised district attorney’s office. Assistant DA Mike Frawley said that they “took into consideration the time [McInerney would have to spend] in jail to protect the community.” McInerney’s murder conviction has been stayed, and he will be sentenced to 11 years for voluntary manslaugher, and 10 years for the use of a firearm. With the four years he has already served in jail, McInerney will serve 25 years total. Had the first-degree murder conviction been impose, he would have served 51 years. Now, the confessed murderer of a young gay boy will be out on the street by his 39th birthday, and the dubious “gay panic defense” receives new life in the American legal system.
UN Defends Gay Rights; Calls for the End of Homophobic Violence
(Photo courtesy of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights)
Geneva, Switzerland – A hard-hitting, historic report calling on the nations of the world to defend the rights of gay people has been issued by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights of the United Nations in Geneva. For the first time, the world body has detailed the the murder, bias-motivated violence, torture, police detention, discrimination in jobs, health care and education that LGBT people face on a daily basis because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. The report, which may be accessed here, was released on December 15 in response to the high number of reports of anti-gay human rights abuses flowing into the international body, according to the UN News Service.
In part, the report states, “The criminalization of private consensual homosexual acts violates an individual’s rights to privacy and to non-discrimination and constitutes a breach of international human rights law.” Decrying violence against LGBT persons, the High Commissioner concludes that “Homophobic and transphobic violence has been recorded in all regions . . . Violence against LGBT persons tends to be especially vicious compared to other bias-motivated crimes.” Data show that homophobic hate crimes often include “a high degree of cruelty and brutality.”
The hate crimes statistics in the report are horrific. Lifting up the transgender and gender variant population, the High Commissioner reports, “The Trans Murder Monitoring project, which collects reports of murders of transgender persons in all regions, lists 680 murders in 50 countries during the period from 2008 to 2011.” That said, the effort to collect data on murder and other acts of physical violence against LGBT people is complicated by the practice of nations around the world, either neglecting to collect these statistics, or outright refusing to allow their collection.
While over thirty nations have decriminalized homosexuality in the last two decades, 76 countries still make consensual acts between same-sex persons illegal, and at least five, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen, make homosexual conduct punishable by death.
The High Commissioner, Navi Pillay, calls upon the nations of the world to “Repeal laws used to criminalize individuals on grounds of homosexuality for engaging in consensual same-sex sexual conduct, and harmonize the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual conduct; ensure that other criminal laws are not used to harass or detain people based on their sexuality or gender identity and expression, and abolish the death penalty for offences involving consensual sexual relations.”
Further, High Commissioner Pillay “calls on countries to ensure that no one fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is returned to a territory where their life or freedom is at threat, and that asylum laws recognize that sexual orientation or gender identity is a valid basis for claiming persecution,” according to the UN News Service. Ms. Pillay also recently held press conferences appealing to member nations to abolish homophobic bullying leading to the suicide of young LGBT people.
The report intensifies the call to member nations, issued last year by UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, to “reject discrimination in general, and in particular discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Ricky Martin Criticizes Move to Drop Gay Protections from Puerto Rico Law
Ricky Martin speaks out against change in Puerto Rican penal code (AP photo).
Ricky Martin, Latino Superstar, blasted politicians in his home commonwealth of Puerto Rico for seeking to remove gay people from legal protection from bias-motivated hate crimes, according to Fox News Latino. Martin posted a strong statement on his website blog denouncing the move. In part, he said:
“I am very saddened by the turn the discussion on criminal law has taken in Puerto Rico that proposes to eliminate the aggravating in cases where crimes are committed by prejudice against the victim.” Martin went on to say, “They ought to do their homework and review the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a bit…which says that everyone – all citizens – are equal before the law and have, without distinction, the right to equal protection under the law.”
Martin’s opposition to the change in Puerto Rico’s hate crimes law comes at a time when the numbers of anti-gay and transgender hate crimes are reaching epidemic proportions. His voice will help amplify the protests of local LGBT and Dominican activists who are fighting the passage of the amendment in the legislature. In March 2010, Martin came out openly as a gay man, ending years of speculation by the public. On his website, he said, “I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.” After years of declining to comment on his sexual orientation, Martin said, “These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within, and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn’t even know existed.” Now the father of two young sons , Matteo and Valentino, who were born of a surrogate mother in 2008, Martin took citizenship in Spain in 2011, where he intends to marry his lover. Though he could be married in certain states in the U.S., he has said he wishes to marry in Spain to acknowledge the work of LGBT rights advocates and Prime Minister Zapatero there.
One of the motivators Martin says moved him to come out publicly as a gay man was the gruesome murder of Jorge Steven López Mercado in 2009. The gay teen was abducted, dismembered, beheaded, and his remains were left burning along a rural road in central Puerto Rico. The savagery of the killing awoke the consciences of many on the Island besides Martin, though the numbers of violent attacks against LGBT Puerto Ricans has continued to rise. López Mercado’s murderer has been convicted, and is serving a 99-year sentence.
Hillary Clinton to the World: “Gay Rights are Human Rights”
Graphic from beingliberal.org on Facebook
Geneva, Switzerland – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared to the leaders of the world that LGBT rights must be a priority for the world community. As reported by the BBC, Secretary Clinton said in a speech to international diplomats at the Palais des Nations on International Human Rights Day, “Being gay is not a Western invention, it is a human reality.” In a powerful declaration of the full humanity of LGBT people, she refused to excuse discrimination against gay people because of religious beliefs or social mores: “Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority,” Clinton said to the U.N. audience, “being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” Clinton reflects the policy power of the United States government, making it clear that, despite difficulties with allies who discriminate willfully against LGBT people, the Obama Administration will combat discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexual people, and transgender people using foreign aid and diplomacy to promote change.
On violence against queer people around the world, Secretary Clinton acknowledged that there was still much to be done at home in the United States, where LGBT people were unindicted felons in 14 states as late as 2003 (when the Supreme Court in a 6-3 ruling struck down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas), and many face attacks and all manner of bullying even today. Still, Clinton argued, “It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives.” The effect of these words on the continuing physical violence against LGBT people in the U.S. and throughout the world remains to be seen, but the results could be inestimable, according to Unfinished Lives Project Director, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle. “Today, Secretary Clinton served notice on all who perpetrate violence to terrorize LGBTQ people anywhere in the world that harm against this marginalized population will not be tolerated by civilized people. Cloaking anti-LGBT bigotry in religious or moral special rights is coming to a close,” Sprinkle, an ordained gay Baptist minister, said. “We are reaching the tipping point in the culture wars in this country, and the scales are falling in favor of security and justice for members of the gender variant and sexual minority. United States foreign and domestic policy has entered into a new era of advocacy for LGBTQ people on a par with racial/ethnic minority people, religious minorities, and women.”
Known for her advocacy for women and children, this speech indicates that the rights of LGBT people, always part of Mrs. Clinton’s public agenda, now has moved to a front-and-center priority for the most prominent woman in American politics. The speech was sweeping in scope, announcing that, in words redolent of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, gay rights are “inalienable.”
In the moving conclusion to her remarks, Secretary Clinton spoke directly to all gay people who find themselves persecuted and in fear of harm (and, by indirection, to their persecutors, as well): “And finally, to LGBT men and women worldwide, let me say this: Wherever you live and whatever the circumstances of your life, whether you are connected to a network of support or feel isolated and vulnerable, please know that you are not alone. People around the globe are working hard to support you and to bring an end to the injustices and dangers you face. That is certainly true for my country. And you have an ally in the United States of America and you have millions of friends among the American people.”
The full text of Secretary Clinton’s speech may be found on the State Department website by clicking here. A link to the full text of the speech, and video of Secretary Clinton delivering it, may be accessed on Huffington Post here.
Gay Hate Crimes in Puerto Rico? Not Any More?
Police view the corpse of murdered gay Puerto Rican, Ezequiel Crespo Hernández, in April 2011 (EDGE photo).
San Juan, Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico’s lawmakers are poised to remove LGBT people from hate crimes protection status with the stroke of a pen. Although at least 18 LGBT Puerto Ricans have been murdered in hate crimes since 2009, Edge Boston reports that the territory’s Senate passed a bill last month removing LGBT people from protected categories under the hate crimes law that has been on the books since 2004. The exclusion effort now goes on to the House of Representatives for a vote this week in a special legislative session called by Gov. Luis Fortuño.
Outraged by the increasing number of anti-gay hate crimes, local LGBT activists demanded investigations in June. The Advocate reports that the grisly murder and dismemberment of Jorge Steven López Mercado, a gay teen, ignited the protests that officials were not investigating anti-gay violence under the territory’s hate crimes law. Recently, the strangulation of gay Ezequiel Crespo Hernández, 22, on a public beach in Camuy, and a gas station assault on transgender woman Francheska González so brutal that it punctured her breast implant, intensified the call for justice to be done. Three more LGBT Puerto Ricans, Alejandro Torres Torres, Karlota Gómez Sánchez and Ramón “Moncho” Salgado, were also found dead within a three-day period in June. “It seems they have declared open hunting season against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual people,” Pedro Julio Serrano, founder of the gay rights group Puerto Rico for Everyone, said to the Associated Press. In response to rising criticism, Puerto Rico’s Attorney General directed an investigation into the application of the hate crimes law. Opponents of the LGBT community responded by quietly acting to remove queer folk from the penal code’s protection.
The penal code revision is drawing criticism from legislators and activists alike. The Advocate says Representative Héctor Ferrer and Sen. Eduardo Bhatia are among the most outspoken critics of the change. Ferrer, speaking at a press conference on Sunday, said, “To eliminate these groups as protected categories is to invite the commission of hate crimes in Puerto Rico. It is a setback in the country’s public policy.” Bhatia added his voice, saying, “In an advanced society, this is dangerous for society.” After the proposed amendment removing LGBTs from hate crimes protection, the only categories of persons who would be protected by the law in Puerto Rico would be political affiliation, age, and disability.
Activist Serrano told EDGE, “Basically they took out the communities hardest hit by hate crimes in Puerto Rico out of the hate crimes statute,” Serrano told EDGE, referring the LGBT community and Dominicans who come to the island for work. “It’s an outrage and now we’re calling upon the House to restore this to where it should be.” Protests and marches against the provision are planned this week throughout island. Serrano, referring to adversaries of the LGBT community, added, “They’re trying to do it under the radar and that’s how it went for a while. Under our watch, we’re not going to let this happen.”
Gay Baptist Preacher Calls on Churches to Repent of Anti-Gay Attitudes
Rev. Dr. Stephen Sprinkle speaking to a rally at the University of Toledo (Toledo Blade Photo).
Toledo, Ohio – An ordained gay Baptist minister has called upon churches to change their anti-gay attitudes and language. Dallas Baptist preacher and theologian, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, speaking to a packed house at the University of Toledo last month, said that the notion Christianity and the Bible are considered irreconcilably anti-gay by many in contemporary churches is simply wrong. Citing Dr. Peter Gomes, the late chaplain of Harvard, Sprinkle said that the biblical teachings on hospitality to those who have been deliberately excluded by society, “the poor, the discriminated against, people of color, women, homosexuals, and all persons beyond the conventional definition of Western civilization,” is far more significant than the few misinterpreted Bible texts used to condemn LGBTQ people. Sprinkle went on to note that Christianity arose in the cosmopolitan world of the Greeks and the Romans, who in the main were tolerant of same-gender-loving people for much of the classical age. When taken as a whole, the early churches exhibited very little concern about what we today call “homosexuality.” “Homosexuality,” Sprinkle said, “is not mentioned in the Top Ten [Commandments], and is not in the message of any of the Prophets.”
The Republic reports that Sprinkle was invited to speak at a rally sponsored by Equality Toledo in response to the so-called “billboard wars” over LGBTQ acceptance in the Toledo church community. A progressive United Methodist congregation put up a large billboard on a well-traveled street in April proclaiming that “Gays Are a Gift From God.” An evangelical mega church responded by buying up space on nine huge billboards around the city rebutting the Methodist claim with the slogan “Gays Are NOT a Gift From God.” Sprinkle, a professor at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, and Theologian in Residence at Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ, the largest LGBTQ predominant congregation in the world located in Dallas, is a widely-sought speaker and teacher. His most recent book, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims (Resource Publications, 2011), is an anthology of stories of people murdered for their sexual orientation and gender identity, most of whom were killed by people who claimed justification from the Bible and church teachings. He is the founder of the Unfinished Lives Project, and the web master of http://unfinishedlivesblog.com, a blog seeking to remember the victims of hate crimes violence in the United States.
McInerney Pleads Guilty to 2nd-Degree Murder for Executing Larry King
Brandon McInerney executed his gay classmate in February 2008.
Ventura County, California – The teen killer of a gay classmate has pleaded guilty second-degree murder. Brandon McInerney, 17, 14-years-old at the time he pulled the trigger, shot gay 15-year-old Larry King in the back of the head execution-style at E.O Green Middle School in Oxnard, California in February 2008 before the eyes of his first-period classmates. The facts of the case are undisputed. Rising behind his victim, McInerney pumped two rounds into the back of Larry King’s skull, fulfilling a threat he made to a girlfriend at school the day before. McInerney will receive a 21-year sentence for a crime that many say bears all the hallmarks of a pre-meditated, first-degree hate crime murder.
In September of this year, a mistrial was declared after two months of testimony, due to the inability of the jury to come to a decision about the guilt of young McInerney. Prosecutors had argued for first-degree murder, based on the established pre-meditation and the heinous nature of the crime. Under California law, a 14-year-old may be tried as an adult, and McInerney, who confessed to the murder seemed to fit the statute’s requirements. Prosecutors claimed that because of McInerney’s antipathy toward King’s sexual orientation and gender expression, and because of white supremacist loyalties the killer clearly embraced, the murder was a clear-cut case of anti-LGBT hate crime. Defense turned the tables on the prosecution, putting the dead victim on trial instead of their client. They resurrected the infamous “gay panic/trans panic” defense, drumming their contention into the jurors’ minds that King was the prime aggressor, pressing his flamboyant sexuality toward McInerney until he “snapped.” Enough of the jury bought the ploy that the jury hung. Had the first-degree charge been upheld, the defendant would have received 53 years for his crime.
The Advocate reports that formal sentencing will take place for McInerney on December 19. Twenty-one years in prison is a long time for McInerney to consider that every day he lives is another he stole from a gay classmate because of his discomfort with a person who was different. For the LGBTQ community, the specter of the “gay panic defense,” like a hungry ghost, lingers on, given new energy by this plea deal.
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
Contact Us
Communicate with the Unfinished Lives project team:
info@unfinishedlivesblog.com
Thank you for your response. ✨
Schedule a Presentation
Dr. Sprinkle will gladly present his acclaimed presentation to your organization. To arrange an Unfinished Lives presentation for your organization or group, please contact us.
Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
-
Where are our readers?
Publisher: Steve Sprinkle (Project Director)
Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
Follow Unfinished Lives on Facebook
Box Turtle Bulletin- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- HRC Back Story
- Know About The Gender Identity Movement
- Why Is There A Need For Human Rights?
- Kinds Of Human Rights
- Human Rights Purposes And Violations
- Human Rights For Every Human Incident
- 8 Reasons Human Rights Are Important
- Everything About Human Rights
- Human Rights Issues Education & Law
- We Need To Stand Up For Our Rights And Those Of Others
- Coca-Cola Receives Perfect Score On Human Rights
- The Advocate: Daily News
- Daily newsletter 1/14
- Progressive Democratic women take the lead in reviving ‘abolish ICE’ messaging
- Maryland woman arrested for assaulting gay man in grocery store faces hate crime charges
- Rep. Robin Kelly files articles of impeachment against Kristi Noem
- Renee Good's family will be represented by the same lawyer as George Floyd's
- Previously celebrated transgender activist sentenced to federal prison for D.C. nonprofit fraud
- Virginia ICE agents nab gay Panamanian immigrant at routine check-in, man’s U.S. citizen husband says
- Missouri Supreme Court upholds ban on Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care
- In the car with the Minneapolis community patrols working to disrupt ICE operations
- Can queer and trans folks trust AI?
- Dallas Voice: Instant Tea
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Unfinished Lives 