Galveston prosecutors took the exceedingly rare step this week of filing hate crime enhancements when they charged three men with felony assault for an attack at one of the city’s gay bars.

This marks only the second time the Galveston County District Attorney’s Office has pursued such enhancements, based on the staff’s recollections, said prosecutor Jennifer Ott.

As a result, brothers Lawrence Henry Lewis III, 20, and Lawrneil Henry Lewis, 18, and their cousin, Alejandro Sam Gray, 17 could face an elevated punishment of five to 99 years or life in prison if a jury convicts them of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and agrees they committed a hate crime.

The trio is accused of hurling large rocks or pieces of concrete at patrons inside Robert’s Lafitte in the 2500 block of Avenue Q around 8 p.m. Sunday, injuring two men, including one who tried to chase them.

Marc Bosaw, 57, needed 12 staples to close a laceration to the back of his head, while James Troy Nickelson, 39, was struck in the jaw.

One of the three suspects later told police their intent was to target homosexuals, said Galveston Police Department Lt. D.J. Alvarez. The trio also hurled homophobic insults, authorities said.

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Kowing there are at least 13,000 people across the world who support them has been a tremendous boost to Jane Currie and Anji Dimitriou.

The Oshawa lesbian couple was brutally assaulted in front of their children on Nov 3 in an attack that left them battered and bloodied. The couple chose to fight back, but not through press releases and phone calls, the traditional weapons of established activist organizations. Three days after the assault Currie and Dimitriou started a Facebook group.

“One of our friends phoned and said, ‘You should call the newspapers,’” says Currie. “We said, ‘We’re not sure about that.’ Then Anji said, ‘Holy shit. We should start a Facebook group.’ Not only is it unbelievably worldwide, it’s free.”

Currie says when they checked the group a couple of days later there were 87 members.

“We were on there yesterday [Nov 28] and there were 13,000 people,” she says. “Roughly every three minutes a new member joins. We’ve got emails from Norway, Spain, Australia, France, Scotland, Ireland. They’ve seen it [bashings] happen, if not had it happen to themselves.

“We were just trying to get the message out that it’s not an isolated incident, that it happens all the time. It completely snowballed from there.”

Among the snowball’s effects was that rather than having to chase media attention the media, including Xtra, ended up coming to them.

“One girl who was checking out Facebook, her sister was a reporter for the Durham News, which is owned by the Toronto Star,” says Currie. “It was the gay sister of this reporter who was saying, ‘That could have been my sister.’ CNN in New York came across it on Facebook.”

Facebook also played a crucial role in organizing another staple of traditional activism: the rally. The Nov 14 Oshawa rally drew several hundred people out on a windy, rainy night to support Currie and Dimitriou. The event was organized by the Durham chapter of Pflag, but Currie says much of the crowd learned of it through Facebook. See How Facebook and Web 2.0 are changing the nature of gay activism
Xtra.ca, Canada