Anatomy of a Hate Crime (Part Three)

Perhaps no other domestic social issue divides the two major political parties more than hate crimes and hate crime legislation. You'd be hard-pressed to find an issue with such consistent party-divided voting records as the ones that occur regarding hate crime legislation. In 2000, for instance, the U.S. Senate voted on the "Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act of 2000", a hate crime amendment (S. Amdt. 3473) meant to beef up an already existing federal hate crime law sponsored by Senator Ted Kennedy. The amendment vote had 44 of 45 Democrats voting for the measure (only West Virginia's Robert Byrd opposed it) whereas only 13 of 55 Republicans voted for it (one Republican abstained). The amendment fell short by three votes to move it closer toward passage. A second attempt to strengthen hate crime laws was made in 2002. That year the Senate voted on the "Local Law Enforcement Act of 2001", and like the Senate's vote in 2000, the outcome was highly partisan. Only one Democrat (South Dakota's Tom Daschle) voted against it; and, only four Republicans voted for it. Three Republicans abstained and the measure was defeated (this time by six votes).

As the Democrats were in the past with racial desegregation legislation, they appear again to be in a tug-of-war with Republicans over one of today's important civil rights issues: hate crime legislation. For example, President Bush threatened last year to veto a hate crimes bill that might have gone to his desk had it been passed by Congress. That would have been only Bush's third veto as President; but, the measure did not make it to his desk, because it was suffocated when it was connected to an unpopular Iraqi War funding bill. It doesn't take a genius to predict that a federal law both bolstering aid to local law enforcement in their efforts to go after hate crime offenders and including sexual orientation as a protected category will pass once the Democrats have control of both the White House and the Congress. Until then, local law enforcement agencies will struggle to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, and elected Republicans (except freshman Oregon senator Gordon H. Smith and a few others) will likely continue to vote against and to slander hate crime legislation as they have done repeatedly.

In two previous blogs (Anatomy of a Hate Crime, Parts One & Two) I have reported on the national social climate surrounding one recent hate crime allegation out of Champaign, Illinois. It is a case involving an alleged gay bashing of a University of Illinois student, Steven Velasquez, that saw little media coverage; yet, even with scant media attention the internet was abuzz, in places, about the allegation. As I initially blogged getting answers to questions about the Champaign, Illinois hate crime allegation has proved difficult, although I learned the accused, Brett Vanasdlen (sometimes spelled VanAsdlen), was a star college baseball player at Parkland College where he is a freshman. While the legal end to this story is not yet in sight (the next court date is July 1, 2008), Brett Vanasdlen was temporarily kicked off of the baseball team following his arrest in early April, though his coach has said he expects Vanasdlen to be back in uniform by next season. (The Parkland College Cobras are fairing quite well without Vanasdlen, losing just 9 of the 27 games they played since he was removed from the team). If convicted of the hate crime he has been charged with (a fourth degree felony) Vanasdlen could do jail time.

Since initially blogging about the Vanasdlen case, where I have stressed that but for the angle and force of a single punch or shove a hate crime assault could become a hate crime murder, other hate crime head-injury victims have had their lives forever changed, yet punishment has not followed. Hate-based assaults targeting gay men have become so common in Boston, Massachusetts recently that the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office has hired a victim's advocate for sexual minority hate crime victims to help them as their legal cases navigate their way from indictment to trial or plea agreement.

Although Boston-area victims and their families have the needed support from their local D.A.'s office, nearly all other Americans are much less fortunate. Take, for example, the March 2, 2008, race-based hate crime murder of a young black man in Los Angeles, Jamiel Shaw, Jr., 17, a star football player at his high school. Shaw's family has had less than an empathic response from the L.A. D.A.'s office which has thus far refused to file a hate crime charge against the Latino man they believe is responsible for gunning down the teenage athlete solely because of his race. Shaw's parents have been pressing the D.A.'s office to file such a charge and they have been pushing for a law that would allow L.A. police to ask criminal suspects about their immigration status (Shaw's alleged killer is an illegal alien who had previously been jailed and had his immigration status been uncovered while incarcerated, Jamiel Shaw, Jr. would be alive today). Here is an example of how victims of hate crimes are sometimes treated by those whose job it is to prosecute criminals as reported by the Associated Press on May 13:

The rift between the Shaws and the district attorney's office was exposed last week when Jamiel Shaw Sr., 47, and his ex-wife Anita Shaw, 43, met with District Attorney Steve Cooley to complain about Michele Hanisee, the prosecutor on the case. Jamiel Shaw said Hanisee pressured him to stop pushing for the law and threatened to depict their son as a gang member unless they dropped demands that she prosecute the case as a hate crime.

Depict Jamiel Shaw Jr., as a gang member? Ah, prosecutorial discretion. It reminds one of Ohio artist Jenny Holzer's famous phrase: the abuse of power should come as no surprise. At least Hanisee was booted off as prosecutor after the Shaws' complaints, so perhaps Jamiel's parents will have an ally in the newly-appointed D.A. Although some on the outer fringes of sociopolitical conservatism have attempted to use Shaw's murder for an opportunity to bellow an anti-illegal immigration song (which is really a racist, anti-Latino song) instead of focusing on what the tragedy appears to be by many--yet another hate crime murder of an African-American man in the United States--these same conservatives go silent when immigrants who happen to be white evangelical Christians commit hate crimes against homosexuals. Just as nativists are trying to re-paint Jamiel Shaw Jr.'s senseless hate crime murder into something it isn't for sociopolitical gain, some anti-gay activists and a few white nationalists (such as the like-minded former Ku Klux Klan head, David Duke) are trying to alter the reality of the Vanasdlen-Velasquez hate crime assault case. In doing so the blogsite, DailyKos, (where this blog was initially posted) has been called a "hate site" by one of Brett Vanasdlen's cheerleaders, Peter LaBarbera (never mind that DailyKos is featured on the website blogroll of one of the nation's hardest-working anti-hate organizations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and never mind that that immensely respected anti-hate organization has exposed Peter LaBarbera for the poisonous man that he is).

As I've said in previous blogs, the support for the accused, Brett Vanasdlen, has been loud. However, some of his supporters have gone beyond merely supporting him. They've attacked the concept of hate crimes and the need for hate crime laws (and they like to put the words hate crimes in quotes as if to pretend these crimes do not exist), and in doing so they have used Brett Vanasdlen as a pawn for their cause. With groundless accusations from Ronalee Vanasdlen, Brett's mother, they have accused the Champaign, Illinois police department of "trumping up" a hate crime charge against Brett to meet some sort of hate crime arrest quota. (Seriously, who's heard of such a thing: purposefully increasing hate crime arrests would likely only leave people with the perception that the town is unfriendly and steer people away from it, and no police chief who wants to keep his or her job would dare speak such patently illegal nonsense let alone make it policy). With the assistance of his mother, they've focused on the alleged assailant's religion claiming the Champaign, Illinois hate crime assault case is about religious freedom and not about a case of homophobia-fueled violence as the police allege. Brett's mother calls herself and her son "conservative Christians" and she reported that the Vanasdlens attend an off-label Christian church in Brett's small Illinois hometown of Minooka. A little digging reveals that their church is a Rapture-focused evangelical one that declares its believing members are "holy" and "saints". That's the kind of we're-better-than-you arrogance needed to fertilize a hate crime, and the kind of arrogance that can tarnish all humble Christians with a bad name. Brazenly, a few self-identified Christians have posted accusations that the victim in the case, Steven Velasquez, is trying to forward some type of homosexual agenda.

This latter assertion is cruel and has nothing to do with the type of Christianity that many Americans practice--including many Evangelical Christians such as Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter--the type where bearing false witness against someone is forbidden by God. The cruel accusation is like asserting that when a female rape victim goes to court to testify, she is doing so because she has some feminist axe to grind, and not because she wants to see justice prevail. It's a hideous character-smearing claim made about Steven Velasquez with no basis in fact made all the more grotesque given that the only agenda that is being forwarded in the Vanasdlen-Velasquez case is the one by anti-hate crime activists and anti-gay activists. They have claimed that "the hateful homosexual spin machine" is running at full-tilt activism (and they talk like DailyKos is one cog in that machine), simply because two gay-themed blogsites--Box Turtle Bulletin and 2015place--have mentioned the hate crime allegation (in addition to my diaries). In reality the opposite is true: only the anti-hate crime/anti-gay folks are calling for action. They are demanding that the felony hate crime charge against Brett Vanasdlen be dropped (which, prior to a finding of fact, they have determined is "bogus"), and they have called for their supporters to make telephone calls to the D.A.'s office not to influence the outcome of the legal process, but to kill it. Anti-hate crime activist and notorious anti-Semite, Reverend Ted Pike, has urged his whacky following to call the Champaign, Illinois mayor and police chief to protest Brett Vanasdlen's arrest. Their activism suggests they want more than hate crime legislation overturned; it suggests they want religious-based gay bashings made legal. So much for Brett Vanasdlen's constitutional right to a trial and Steven Velasquez's constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness.

What has also occurred since Brett Vanasdlen's first pre-trial hearing (held on May 6th) is that Brett's mother, Ronalee, injected herself smack into the middle of her son's hate crime story by proclaiming "We're being persecuted" (although she was not at the alleged crime scene and, as such, she has been charged with no wrongdoing). I can find no comments about the mother of four that even remotely sound persecutory--by the press or by any bloggers. Ronalee Vanasdlen has not said who, when, or specifically how she has been persecuted vis-à-vis her son's arrest (she also said the arrest of her son has been an ordeal for her and her family, and I don't doubt it, as I'm sure the incident has been for Steven Velasquez, the man who was rendered unconscious and taken to the hospital on the night Brett Vanasdlen was arrested). Ronalee Vanasdlen's "we're being persecuted" line just sounds tabloidish, narcissistically sad in a lime-light-grabbing kind of way, not to mention desperate, and it clouds the fact that her son is innocent of a crime until proven guilty in court. Yes, her false claims of persecution, and her false claims that the Champaign, Illinois police department has a hate crime quota policy erases whatever credibility one might afford Brett in his latest (post-defense-attorney-hiring) remarks about the case (remarks that, according to even his supporters, are markedly different from what he told the police at the time he was busted in early April). I, for one, grow highly suspicious when a criminal defendant starts changing his story, and that suspicion turns to a loud peal of laughter when arrest-quota conspiracy theories get introduced.

Ronalee Vanasdlen has further claimed her son was so blithely unconcerned about his arrest that, she claims, he failed to make supposedly important statements to the police. Oops. She also said Brett "never dreamed that something like this could happen to him." Well, really, how could he: he was raised to believe that he is "holy" and a "saint". Brett Vanasdlen's mother also asserts that her son is "so naïve it’s scary" and thus he could not grasp the gravity of his being arrested. Really? What's not to get about a set of handcuffs being placed on you, taking a ride to the police station in the backseat of a patrol car by men in blue uniforms, and the Miranda Warning being given to you prior to the mug-shot and the fingerprinting? That level of cluelessness--if the statement by his mother about his naivety is true--makes one wonder whether Brett Vanasdlen didn't leave Purdue University after just one semester because he couldn't conquer the strenuous academic load required there (his advocates say he scaled down to an in-state, lesser school--one that requires not even a GED for admission--to have more "playing time" on the baseball team). Regardless of the reason for his transfer to Parkland College this past semester, here's the thing about Brett Vanasdlen and naivety: Brett Vanasdlen is not so naïve as to have failed to learn anti-gay slurs (learned where mom?) and he is not so naïve as to have failed to direct said homophobic slurs at a gay man walking down the street (that part of the hate crime allegation is not in dispute by either side in the Vanasdlen-Velasquez case). If you're trying to find Jesus' do-unto-others teaching in those acts, forget it, they aren't there.

Additionally, Ronalee Vanasdlen also has complained how much money her son's privately retained attorney will likely cost. She fails to grasp that moaning about attorney's fees sounds like an upper-middle-class person bitching about their upper-middle-class privilege (how many Americans have the luxury of being able to actually afford to retain a criminal defense attorney?); it falls on deaf ears the way complaints about the high cost of a vintage bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon hits the ears of working-class Joes when made by rich, long-time diners at Spago's or the French Laundry. If worse comes to worse, Ronalee Vanasdlen--who lives on her enormous Vanasdlen family compound--could use some of her rental income from one of her two resort condominiums to help her son foot his legal bills. From her Naples Bay Resort condominium alone, she rakes in between $3,800 and $6,500 per month. In addition, Ronalee Vanasdlen's Dominican Republic property nets her between $2,800 to $4,200 a month, so even if her son's legal bills go as high as she says ($20-$30K), that only totals a few months of her rental income. Also, boo-hooing about attorney's fees posted at hate-fomenting websites that ask for donations comes close to cyber-begging for your hateful sociopolitical cause. Any thinking member of her evangelical church must be worried that Ronalee Vanasdlen's obsession with hanging onto every possible almighty dollar has got to be lessening her chances of her resurrection when the Rapture happens.

If Ronalee Vanasdlen's views about hate crime laws weren't so similar to those shared by a still-bigoted ex-Klansman (David Duke), and the likes of someone discredited by a large body of psychologists for his homophobic propaganda peddled as respectable social science (Peter LaBarbera), and if she weren't using anti-gay/anti-hate crime hate mongers (like Ted Pike and the far right news agency World Daily Net) to blame a host of people, institutions and laws for her son's legal situation, one might feel some pity for the woman whose eldest son is possibly facing jail time next year instead of his sophomore year in college. Instead, Ronalee Vanasdlen comes off as sympathetic as the character of Hillary Swank's mother in Clint Eastwood's film Million Dollar Baby and as classy as Brandine Spuckler.

The reality is that Brett Vanasdlen is a grown man expected to be responsible for his own actions including decisions about his finances (he supports his education at Parkland College via an athletic scholarship after all). If he had chosen, he could have a public defender represent him instead of a pricey private attorney (of course, he also might have chosen to not hurl an anti-gay slur at Steven Velasquez). It's hard not to conclude Brett's mother should have taken the advice of her son's attorney and kept mum on the whole incident. The sum total of Ronalee Vanasdlen's politically- and personally-motivated baseless complaints and her alignment with homophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic hate-mongers, coupled with her assertion that her son, Brett Vanasdlen, is "so naïve it's scary", now makes one wonder how far away the apple and the tree are here.