by Arden Ranger
Hate Crime: "A criminal offense committed
against a person or property which is motivated, in whole or in part, by
the offender’s bias against race, religion, ethnic/national origin group,
or sexual orientation." — U.S. Department of Justice, FBI
Bias Incident: "An incident that is
not punishable by law, but promotes an atmosphere of intolerance and fear."
— US Department of Justice, FBI
"The Pledge of Allegiance says ‘.
. . . with liberty and justice for all’. What part of ‘all’
don’t you understand?" — Rep. Pat Schroeder (D) Colorado
His name was James. In junior high and high
school, he was a member of the chess club, played the French horn in the
concert band, and was an average student and an exceptional friend. No matter
what time of day or night, no matter why or where, James could be counted
on to be there for his friends. After high school, James stayed in his hometown.
He worked a regular job in an industrial town, did volunteer work at the
hospital and was there when his friends needed him. On November 17, 1998,
James was stabbed multiple times by two teens who discovered the one thing
only James’s friends had known: James Ward, the 6’5", gentle man
whose shoulders were broad enough to carry his burdens and those of his friends,
was gay. Three days later, his mother buried her oldest son next to her youngest
son.
"Being right too soon is socially
unacceptable." — Robert A. Heinlein
James’s murder, like so many hate crimes
against gays, didn’t receive the national attention like that of Matthew
Shepard. It is only the most brutal ones that we hear about — the ones
that cause the most sensation in the news. But every year, thousands are
the victims of hate and bias assaults in this country and the numbers continue
to rise. Moreover, it’s not just the sheer numbers that are so alarming.
It is the increased viciousness of the attacks that have many authorities
and gay-rights groups concerned. No more are these attacks limited to name
calling, vandalism and the occasional physical assault. Every year, more
of these attacks end in the death or maiming of the victim, who, in more
than a few cases, is merely perceived as gay by his attackers. Common are
acts of intimidation, harassment, physical force or threat of physical force
directed against the person, family and/or property, police abuse, vandalism,
arson and murder.
Between 1991 and 1992, violence against gays
rose 31%. The total number for 1997, the most current data available from
the FBI Uniform Crime Report, was 1,102. While these numbers may not seem
alarming to some, they are to the FBI, who report that for the first time
since 1995, the number of reporting agencies has dropped. This is to be expected,
since reporting isn’t mandatory. New York, for instance, has 502
jurisdictions, but only 35 of them make reports to the FBI annually. This
leads one to wonder just how many incidents are not represented in the final
report. If we don’t depend on agencies voluntarily reporting, there
are other sources of information. According to the Associated Press newswire
on 4/7/99, anti-gay attacks dropped 4% last year. A report by the National
Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, a volunteer organization with 26 community
offices, showed the numbers dropped from 2,665 in 1997 to 2,552 in 1998.
But before anyone could digest this, they continued to say that the attacks
have been more aggressive and hateful, leading to more hospitalizations.
The number of inpatient hospitalization more than doubled, from 53 to 110.
There was a 71% increase in assaults or attempted assaults with guns. Incidents
involving bats, clubs and other blunt objects rose 41%. Unfortunately, police
response, bias-crimes classifications, arrests and complaint processing,
did not rise.
What does this all mean? It means that the
perpetrators are getting bolder; actions are becoming more premeditated.
As Richard Haymes, executive director of the Project says, "....you have
to make a conscious decision to leave your home with a baseball bat."
But what is the cause of these attacks? What
is the source of all this hate? While the answers may be varied, we will
look at three of what I believe are the largest contributors of the atmosphere
of hate and intolerance that permeates any discussion on sexual orientation.
In less then three years, the number of active
hate sites on the Internet increased from one to over 160. Typing "hate groups"
into the Dogpile search engine yields over 7,000 results. The Internet, our
window to the world, has become a new recruitment opportunity for groups
that perpetrate hate. The worst are listed by Hate Watch, an organization
committed to combating online bigotry, who maintain a list of "The Top Ten
Hate Groups You Love to Hate." Among them:
That leaves the group that in my opinion
is the most vile, GodHatesFags, the people from Westboro Baptist Church in
Topeka who picket funerals of gays and AIDS victims. These are just a sampling
of what you can find on the Net, with a little time. In a statement to Yahoo
News on September 16, 1998, the Internet, according to Joe Roy, Director
of the Intelligence Project and Poverty Law Center in Georgia, "Is the place
where young people of the computer generation can vent their frustrations,
exchange ideas, and download information to feed their hate."
The laws of our "home of the free" do not
always make life easier for those who are openly homosexual. Less than half
of our nation’s states have hate-crime legislation, as shown on the
map on the ABC News top story page, 2/19/99. Even after the horrible murder
of Matthew Shepard, Wyoming and Oklahoma voted down hate-crime legislation
that would have included sexual orientation. According to the PFLAG web page,
several states (Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Maryland)
have Sodomy laws specifically limited to homosexual activity. Fourteen states
have broader laws that also cover heterosexual contact. Recently, Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Montana threw out laws that prohibited homosexual contact behind
closed doors. It’s a start.
". . . . it strikes me as fairly pointless
to oppose a measure that would merely permit some gay guy to obtain proof
that his partner is someone he plans to spend his life with. Western civilization
should be able to survive that. After all, it’s not the gays who threaten
family and society with their domestic partnerships.
“It’s the straights."
— Dan Lynch, "Domestic
Partnerships, the Real Problem", Times Union, 2-26-95
When the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was
signed into law by President Clinton, many in the homosexual community felt
betrayed. In spite of that, the majority of the community still supports
Clinton for his support of gay rights and his appointment of many homosexuals
to White House positions. DOMA defines marriage as the union between one
man and one woman, spouse as a person of the opposite sex and states that
states have the right to not acknowledge a marriage legal in another state
if it is contrary to their laws. DOMA will likely be overturned eventually
because of the Constitutions "good faith and credit" clause. The Hon. Henry
A. Waxman called DOMA "mean-spirited,” "A Republican wedge issue,”
"a shameless attempt to divide the American public,” "official bigotry"
and the "scapegoating of a segment of our society to fan the flames of
intolerance and prejudice.” Supporters of the Act say that it was necessary
to save the sanctity of marriage as an honorable institution. Really? Bob
Barr, the chief sponsor of DOMA, was caught licking whipped cream off the
chests of two women who were not his wives. He’s been married three
times on top of that. Bob Dole, the former Senate Majority leader, so believed
in the sacredness of the vows between man and wife that he dumped his first
wife who had nursed him through near deadly WWII wounds. Wes Cooley is so
honorable that he is accused of concealing his wedding date so his new wife
could keep collecting her veteran’s benefits. Bob Dornan has been the
subject of four divorce actions from his wife claiming spousal abuse. Newt
Gingrich, House Speaker, told his first wife he was leaving her as she lay
dying in a hospital and has admitted to several adulterous affairs in the
back seats of cars. These people claim that same-sex marriages will destroy
their marriages.
But it is the Religious Right that seems
to be the most vocal, the most visible and the most persistent in their
persecution of homosexuality that seems to be the biggest contributor. It
isn’t only the "quiet" condemnation from the likes of Jerry Falwell
that creates the cloud of intolerance. Although, much of the condemnation
from the more mainstream pulpits mirrors the utterances of the extreme Right
— or, as my friend Laymon refers to them, "The Religious Reich." The
only real difference is that one is more politically correct than the other.
One uses "homosexual" where the other uses "fag." It is extremists, like
Fred W. Phelps at the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who have
set themselves up as the Almighty’s judge, jury and executioner —
though not directly. The church’s Internet site, www.godhatesfags.com,
contains what he maintains are biblical quotes that support his position,
excerpts from legitimate publications such as Newsweek and the completely
tasteless "Matthew Shepard has been in Hell for _____ days. Matthew’s
message from Hell." The link contains of picture of Matthew, surrounded by
flames, with a screaming voice saying, "Listen to Phelps!" Also on the
church’s pages is a list of demonstrations attended and planned, as
well as the sayings planned for their signs. Included are:
For the Shepard Funeral and Laramie Courthouse:
Imagine mourning the loss of your son while
listening to those chants and seeing those signs.
When I compared the King James Version of
the Bible verses Phelps claimed condemned homosexuals as "filthy, lawless,
liars, murderers, and sinners before the Lord who doom all nations," I was
not surprised to find that the verses Phelps called upon condemned general
wickedness, murderers, thieves, but say nothing about anything resembling
homosexuality to a reasonable person.
More interesting to me was the flagrant
fabrication of Phelp’s sources of information for his "Facts and Statistics
about Fags." Many of the citations bear no resemblance to or contain any
such information as is attributed to them by the Reverend Phelps. If it
hadn’t stunned me so to read these "facts," I would have found them
amusing. The only information that was linked to the site was from other
organizations and sites that supported, even tenuously, Phelps’s statements.
It is statements like "Homosexuals account for half the murders in large
cities." And "30,000 sexually abused children in Los Angeles were victims
of homosexuals." that cause hate, fear and distrust among populations that,
having no other source of information, believe.
Many believe that homosexual males are the
majority of child molesters, despite study after study that finds the average
child molester to be white, middle age, heterosexual and usually married.
It usually follows that the same people who hold this belief to be true also
believe that homosexuals "recruit." The followers of Phelps choose not to
listen to the APA claim that homosexuality isn’t a disease or the latest
claims by the medical community that it may not be a choice that’s made,
but a genetic predisposition. Instead, these organizations have found a place
on Phelps’s hit list.
Recently, while working on this paper, I
tried to access Phelps’s site, only to receive the notification that
it was not available. "Yahoo!" I said, "Finally AOL is going to block something
truly offensive and not just restrict my access to porn." But no, it was
not to be. A few days later, I pulled it up and found a warning page had
been added. After a little investigating, I discovered that several of the
net filtering programs, like Net-Nanny and, Cyber-Sitter had listed
Phelps’s site as offensive and their software blocked it. Phelps tried
to take them to court, but the judge sided with the software companies, so
Phelps had to add the warning page.
Many churches let gays and lesbians give
their tithes and worship, yet refuse to bless their unions. Homosexuals are
repelled by the implicit dishonesty of a church that welcomes them only if
they keep their mouths shut. Their communal self-esteem demands more of the
institutional church.
"Why, with all the persecution, hate, and
threats to my person would I choose to gay?" Laymon Rupe asked in an interview
with me April 26, 1999. "I have what I call the Red Shirt Analogy. Imagine
that you live in a society that ruled that on, say, Thursday, anyone wearing
a red shirt could be shot on sight, no questions asked. There would be no
punishment for the offender. Who in their right mind, knowing that was the
law of the land, would wear a red shirt on Thursday? You wouldn’t even
risk wearing a red t-shirt under your clothes, cause you’d know that
anyone getting close enough to see it could kill you. Hell, I wouldn’t
even own a red shirt. That’s what it’s like to be gay. To be me."
According to the FBI Crime Statistics for
1997, over 59% of the perpetrators were white males, as in the murders of
Matthew Shepard, James Ward and Billy Jack Gaither. According to news reports
from ABC, Newsweek and the El Dorado News-Times, none of the
defendants ever stands up and says, "I did it because he was gay." No, the
usual defense, as in the aforementioned three cases is, "He hit on me. I
felt threatened. I defended myself, justifiable homicide!" Intimidation is
the most frequently reported hate crime offense. Murders, forcible rape,
aggravated assault, simple assault and intimidation are the crimes against
an individual tracked by the FBI. Forcible rape is less common than murder.
The numbers don’t say it all. For every
statistic, there is a person targeted for no other reason then their sexual
orientation. For every statistic, there is one or more perpetrators who thinks
what they are doing is sanctioned, if not by law, then by the very absence
of a law protecting the victim, or because they believe they are doing
"God’s Work." For every statistic, there are friends and family who
have to come to terms with the fact that someone hated their son, daughter,
cousin, father, mother, sister, brother or valued friend for something they
had no control over, hated them enough to pick up a weapon and kill them.