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.