COPS: NYC GAY BASHINGS COULD BE LINKED

The NYC Anti-Violence Project has issued a community alert now that the New York City Police Department’s Hate Crimes Bureau thinks several recent anti-gay attacks on the Upper East Side might have come at the hands of the same assailants.

In addition to Joseph Holladay, brutally beaten and robbed, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly now states, “There was an incident in Carl Shurz Park that we believe he [sic] may be associated with two other events—one that happened Saturday morning, the other happened Sunday morning. All of these events happened on the Upper East Side, the 19th precinct.

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Towleroad

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NY Visitor from Boston victim of attack, slurs during Gay Pride weekend

A man visiting a friend on the upper East Side was robbed and pistol-whipped during Gay Pride weekend by a group of hoodlums yelling anti-gay slurs, the victim and cops said Sunday.

Joseph Holladay, 36, said he was set upon by at least three men on E. 85th St. about 4 a.m. Saturday.

“Out of nowhere, I’m being attacked,” he said from his bed at New York Presbyterian-Hospital Weill Cornell, a nasty gush visible on his forehead.

One of the robbers called out, “What are you looking at?” and used an anti-gay epithet, the Boston man added.

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New York Daily News

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Walsh: A step back for gay Utahns

Reading the headlines, the news isn’t good for gay Utahns.

Former Equality Utah Director Mike Thompson has moved to San Francisco, taking his organizing skills from Holladay to the Haight. He says it’s personal, not professional.

Then, Pride Week opened with what looks like a hate crime.

Christopher Vonnegut Allen was arrested after allegedly beating his gay neighbors — a man and a woman — bloody in Ogden. One victim needed surgery. You may not have heard of it. Prosecutors charged Allen with only one count of burglary.

And this week, two nice Mormon ladies from Santa Cruz decided to give their unwilling church one more chance to reconcile with its gay members and the LGBT community outside the flock.

While the rest of the country moves forward — New Hampshire, New York, Iowa, for goodness sake — this place seems perpetually stuck.

It probably helps that Thompson missed the headlines. Still, he’s optimistic.

“You can’t have a defeatist attitude,” he says. “You’ve got to press against it in order to even hope for a change.”

He points to Salt Lake City’s nondiscrimination ordinance and domestic partners registry, an anti-bullying law, polls that show Utahns supported the Common Ground Initiative (even if lawmakers didn’t).

“Maybe they’re not significant in some people’s minds, but there are measurables there,” he says. “People are having conversations. Change is going to come sooner or later.”

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