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.”
See
Walsh: A step back for gay Utahns
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Documentary on murder of a homosexual
PBS will be airing another hard-hitting P.O.V. series documentary, which on June 30 (10 p.m.). “Beyond Hatred” is the story of a family trying to recover after the 2002 murder of a gay man. Here’s a summary from PBS:
“In September 2002, three skinheads were roaming a park in Rheims, France, looking to “do an Arab,” when they settled for a gay man instead. Twenty-nine-year-old François Chenu fought back fiercely, but he was beaten unconscious and thrown into a river, where he drowned. The acclaimed French vérité film Beyond Hatred is the story of the crime’s aftermath; above all, of the Chenu family’s brave and heartrending struggle to seek justice while trying to make sense of such pointless violence and unbearable loss. With remarkable dignity, they fight to transcend hatred and the inevitable desire for revenge.
Shot in direct-cinema style, with dark tones and long, evocative takes, Beyond Hatred forgoes third-party narration to let those who must deal with the crime’s aftermath tell the story — the lawyers and prosecutors as they seek justice through the courts, those who knew the victim and his murderers, and even the father of one of the perpetrators. Most of all we hear from the Chenus: François’ father, Jean-Paul, and mother, Marie-Cécile, and his two brothers and two sisters, as they try to reconstruct what happened and face the horror of François’ last minutes.
You can watch the trailer here. This documentary goes to show that hate crimes are still alive and well worldwide. I hope you’ll tune in. See Documentary on murder of a homosexual
Waterbury Republican American
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The Robert Wone Stabbing: Anatomy of a Murder Case
A 911 call from a million-dollar townhouse in Dupont Circle on a sweltering summer night three years ago:
“We need an ambulance,” Victor Zaborsky blurted, his delicate voice pitched so high that the operator mistook him for a woman.
“What’s wrong, ma’am?”
“We had someone . . . in our house, evidently,” Zaborsky said, gasping, “and they stabbed somebody.”
Over the next eight minutes, stammering breathlessly on the phone, he would report that while he and his two housemates were asleep, an unseen “intruder” had slipped into the residence and attacked a visiting friend of theirs.
“Are they bleeding?” the operator asked. “See someone bleeding?”
“Yes,” said Zaborsky, then 40, in words that echo today: “Someone is bleeding in our house.”
So began a real-life parlor mystery — an unsolved killing and alleged coverup in the guest room of an elegant home in the heart of Washington’s gay community, with a trio of seemingly unlikely suspects: a self-described “polyamorous family” of three men. The bizarre murder that evening of a young Ivy League lawyer named Robert Wone, still grist for gossip and conjecture on the city’s gay blogosphere, has vexed police and prosecutors since the 911 call just before midnight Aug. 2, 2006.
See The Robert Wone Stabbing: Anatomy of a Murder Case Washington Post * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Sotomayor unlikely to change Court balance
(Washington) In more than 16 years as a federal judge, Sonia Sotomayor has often sided with people claiming discrimination in education and employment. She’s backed police and prosecutors over defendants. She’s upheld assertions of free speech and religion.
Not easily pigeonholed, Sotomayor has also been part of rulings that go the …
Durbin Admits To Beating Gay Man
WHEELING — James Durbin 38, told Judge Arthur Recht that he beat a 40-year old gay man in the streets of Wheeling. The victim tells 7 News that he called him a faggot just before the brutal beating that left the victim hospitalized with more than 20 stitches, a broken nose and swollen, blood filled eyes.
Police officers who responded to the beating were prepared to testify that they saw Durbin beating the man. However, Durbin’s attorney said there would be no need for the testimony because his client admits to beating the victim while he was out on bond for domestic violence charges.
Durbin allegedly bit his father’s shoulder and allegedly punched his stepmother earlier this year. Judge Recht says the beating violated his terms of bond and he ordered Durbin held in the Northern Regional Jail without bond on all of the charges against him.
Ohio County Prosecutor Shawn Turak says that if Durbin is found guilty on all of the charges he could face life in prison. Prosecutors can not charge him with a hate crime under West Virginia law.
See Durbin Admits To Beating Gay Man State Journal * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Missing e-mails at issue in Wone murder
Attorneys representing three gay men charged with obstruction of justice in connection with the murder of Washington attorney Robert Wone accused prosecutors in court Friday of failing to preserve evidence from Wone’s BlackBerry cell phone that could have helped prove their clients’ innocence.
The lead prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner, disputed the significance of the lost e-mails. He said the government has solid evidence showing that defendants Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward obstructed justice by engaging in evidence tampering to hide the facts surrounding Wone’s August 2006 murder.
But Bernard Grimm, Price’s attorney, told reporters after Friday’s status hearing before D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederic Weisberg that the government theory about the timing of the murder is “now under question.” He said the questions surfaced as a result of the government’s disclosure April 17 that Wone sent at least two e-mails from his BlackBerry at a time when prosecutors believed Wone dead. See Missing e-mails at issue in Wone murder * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Activists, family hope good can come from Zapata’s death
A Colorado jury’s conviction of the man who murdered a transgender woman is a bittersweet moment for activists and the victim’s family, who are hoping while mourning that some good can come from the tragedy.
On April 22, Allen Andrade of Thorton, Colo., was convicted of first-degree murder and a hate crime for killing Angie Zapata, who was transgender, by beating her to death with a fire extinguisher in her Greeley, Colo., apartment.
Defense attorneys argued that Andrade, 32, killed Zapata, 18, while in a sort of “trans-panic” mindset after they agreed to meet for sex and he discovered she was transgender. But prosecutors argued that the murder was premeditated and Andrade murdered Zapata because he hated LGBT people. See Activists, family hope good can come from Zapata’s death
Case marks first time hate crimes law used in trans killing * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Bigoted GOP Rep blames ABC News For Calling Matt’s Death a “Hoax”
For the second night in a row, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann has blasted North Carolina Congresswoman Virginia Foxx as the Worst Person in the World.
Last night she won for saying on the floor of the house:
“We know that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay,” Foxx said during debate. “The bill was named for him, the hate-crimes bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”
Shepard died several days after he was found tied to a remote fence in Wyoming, severely beaten and robbed of $20. Prosecutors said he was lured from a bar by two men, including one whose defense attorney said reacted violently after Shepard made a sexual advance.
Tonight Keith told Foxx to “apologize sincerely” To MAtt’s Mom – who was sitting in the gallery of the house when Fox spoke – or resign her seat in the US House of Representatives.
Who knew such bigotry as Foxx’s was alive and well in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina?
Check out the video here.
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WATCH GOP Rep: Story of Matthew Shepard’s Murder A “Hoax”
As the House of Representatives debates an expansion of hate crimes legislation, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) has taken the rhetoric to a new level, claiming that those who say Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming for being gay are perpetrating a “hoax” on the American people.
“I also would like to point out that there was a bill — the hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. This — the bill was named for him, hate crimes bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills,” said Foxx.
A Foxx spokesman didn’t immediately return a call. The Matthew Shepard “hoax” notion is a popular meme on right-wing blogs.
The Matthew Shepard Foundation is dedicated to reducing hate crimes.
The New York Times reported in 1998: “According to the local police and prosecutors, the two men lured Mr. Shepard out of a bar by saying they were gay. Then, the Laramie police say, the pair kidnapped Mr. Shepard, pistol-whipped him with a .357 Magnum, and left him tied to a ranch fence for 18 hours until a passing bicyclist spotted Mr. Shepard, who was unconscious.”
“She should be ashamed,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), himself a victim of a hate crime during the struggle for civil rights. “That is unreal, unbelievable. The law enforcement people and almost every reasonable person I know believes he was murdered because he was gay.”
WATCH GOP Rep: Story of Matthew Shepard’s Murder A “Hoax”
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Tenn. gay-friendly church shooter hoped attack would spur more
(Knoxville, Tennessee) An unemployed truck driver seething over liberalism told police he opened fire in a church last year because it harbored gays and multiracial families and he hoped others would follow his example.
Prosecutors opened their case file Thursday on Jim David Adkisson, 58, who pleaded guilty a month ago …
