Bashing Anti-gay Bashing Legislation

It's amazing to us how a few oppressed minority group members oppress others; über-amazing is when their words and actions work to oppress members of their own oppressed group. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), for example, did a second story in the summer of 2007 of an African-American man, H. K. Edgerton of Asheville, North Carolina, who had been working to preserve antebellum era memories and to bring back codified racism through his (thankfully now defunct) neo-Confederate group, Southern Heritage 411. For those not in the know about neo-Confederacy, it is a hate ideology with—not surprisingly—white supremacist and neo-Nazi ties. In an interview with the SPLC's Intelligence Report eight years ago, Edgerton said, "it was better to be an African in the Southland as a slave than to be free in Africa." According to Edgerton, a life of whippings, rape and dehumanizing servitude would be a preferred life—for him and other blacks—to one of autonomy, safety and respect. However you try to understand his mental gymnastics, the strange truth is that Edgerton is a black man in favor of black slavery.

Edgerton comes to mind when reading the latest from Ann Rostow, an Austin, Texas resident and lesbian columnist/writer for the San Francisco Bay Times, that city's gay, lesbian and transgendered newspaper. No, Rostow's not a black woman trying to bring back slavery, although her town has not one but two chapters of a known neo-Confederate hate group. Instead, in her November 20, 2008, Bay Times article, Rostow—sounding like a lesbian H.K. Edgerton—denigrates the efforts of those in her own community (and, by extension, those in the larger community) who are working to broaden the existing federal hate crime statute to include sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity as protected categories. Either callously unconcerned or oblivious to the fact that some in her community—gay men—are at a high relative risk of being victims of hate crimes, Rostow asserts that the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered communities "cannot afford" to spend resources on strengthening the national hate crime law. Why not? Rostow offers up a platter of bizarre reasons.

First, reciting the tired, illogical line from other hate crime law opponents, Rostow writes:

"Hate crimes are despicable. But legislation won’t end them. Hate crime penalties are rarely enforced or charged where applicable."

Let's digest those first five words: "hate crimes are despicable, but...". You know what's coming when you hear a white person say, "I'm not racist, but..." or a non-Jew begin a sentence with, "I'm not anti-Semitic, but...". With that leadoff giveaway, it's no surprise Rostow continues on with the faulty logic that because hate crime legislation won't end hate crimes from occurring, then pushing to include sexual orientation as a protected category in proposed federal hate crime legislation is a waste of time and money. Using this same logic, we shouldn't have any laws including those banning murder, rape, robbery, or embezzlement, because the laws that we have now certainly have not stopped those crimes from being committed. Hers is a lame, baseless rationale for allowing people to be victimized because of their sexuality and one we've heard and commented on before.

While not the case in some areas of the United States, in Rostow's state of Texas it is true, as she points out, that hate crimes have been very rarely prosecuted as such, even obvious ones. However, that does not mean beefing up federal hate crime legislation should be ignored by anyone. Lack of appropriate prosecution and lack of appropriate punishment for hate crime offenders means that continued civil rights work—in the forms of activism and education—needs to happen so that hate crimes are seen as the society-destroying acts that they are by all areas of law enforcement. As we've shown, there is a trend in the right direction for voluntarily documenting and reporting hate crime incidents among the nation's law enforcement agencies. This has come about in no small part by citizens demanding that the police take these steps. What needs to happen now is for people to put pressure on District Attorneys and judges so that progress made by police will similarly occur in these other areas of law enforcement.

Strangely, Rostow asserts this reason for having the GLBT communities abandon efforts to push for a hate crime bill that will protect them: "A hate crime law will be the easiest, and one of the least useful, pieces of federal legislation that" the GLBT communities can advocate for. While it is likely true that once her former-governor vacates the White House in less than two months, a veto of an expanded hate crime amendment—should one make its way to President Obama's desk—will likely not occur. Still, Rostow forgets that the two co-sponsors of last year's failed hate crime bill—Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and Oregon Senator Gordon H. Smith—are in no position to fight for the cause in 2009. Senator Kennedy has been struck with a terminal, cancerous brain tumor, and Senator Smith failed to win re-election last month. It remains to be seen who, if anyone, in Congress will draft an expanded version of the federal hate crime law (and if an updated amendment is to be written during Obama's presidency, we hope that it will include homelessness status as well as sexual orientation, gender and gender-identity). But, even if Rostow is correct—that fighting for passage of a new hate crime amendment would be easy—that is no reason to not fight for it. After all, in early 2008 in California polls showed that Proposition 8 would fail. The response from some in the gay community after those early polls were made public was lack-luster; homophobic forces then mobilized, and Prop 8 narrowly passed. Instead of being useless, we believe that passage of a federal hate crime law that includes sexual orientation would deliver an important message to homophobic America.

Instead of calling on more members from her community to fight for passage of a GLBT-protecting hate crime law, one that should have been passed long ago, Rostow states:

"You know what? A federal hate crime law is not our top priority as a community. And I am not appointing myself Director of the Gay Agenda, I am stating a fact."

Her own irony is lost on her here as Rostow, indeed, anoints herself as the Director of the Gay Agenda; and, she is stating opinion, not fact. Worse, though, is that she forgets a most important lesson in life: safety first. So, in Rostow's mind, what is more important than protecting the safety of every GLBT individual throughout the United States and transforming America by making it perfectly clear in the code of federal law that trolling for a gay victim is very, very wrong? Why that would be legalizing same-sex marriage in just one state (by working to repeal Proposition 8 in California) and working toward the repeal of the military's current closet mandate for homosexual service men and women.

We get it: Rostow's just being an American woman from Texas. Being American means ignoring evil (visit any Christian church in Europe and you'll no doubt see depictions of Satan, but you'd be hard pressed to find many churches in the United States that devote any stained glass to the devil). We Americans don't like looking at evil and hate crimes are acts of evil. Period. It's preferable to thumb through Modern Bride and fantisize about your same-sex wedding than it is to think that if you and your newly wedded spouse chose to visit Shenandoah National Park for a honeymoon stop you could wind up with your throats slit as happened to two lesbians—Julianne Marie Williams and Laura Winans—in 1996. In Rostow's America you could be legally wed to your same-sex partner and have your house burned down with anti-gay slurs scrawled on the home's only brick wall with no chance for added punishment for the perpetrator as happened recently to a young gay man in North Carolina. In Rostow's America as a homosexual you could openly serve in fighting America's immoral war in Iraq—one that began when we invaded a sovereign nation preemptively under false pretenses—and come home to be killed by some of your fellow soldiers or by an Evangelical Christian from another country simply because you are gay or lesbian, again with no added punishment for the perpetrator. During the Vietnam War era, America's youth protested that if they were too young to vote or drink, then they ought to be too young to be conscripted into the military (voting and drinking ages were lowered as a result). We think that today most gay and lesbian people would rightfully want homophobic violence specifically penalized before other, important civil rights are granted. You know, safety first.

We want to be clear here: Rostow paints an either-or agenda for the gay communities. It's either fighting for the repeal of the military's Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy and of California's Proposition 8, or it's fighting for adequate federal hate crime legislation. She makes no room for the GLBT communities to simultaneously fight for a multitude of worthy causes which we believe they can, and should, do. Among the top-ranking of those causes ought to be pushing the federal government to revise its hate crime law to include sexual orientation as a protected category. After all, safety first. However you try to understand her mental gymnastics, the strange truth is that Rostow is a gay woman in favor of having the gay community turn its back on hate crime legislation, legislation that would immediately stigmatize homophobia and penalize acts of domestic terrorism directed at the GLBT communities.

While H.K. Edgerton fails to see he is on the same side as the oppressor when it comes to resegregating the South, we hope that Ann Rostow learns soon that when it comes to gay hate crime legislation she is on the same side as some notable homophobes, such as the Reverend Ted Pike and Peter LaBarbera.

The Week in Hate: November 9 - 15, 2008

Please read the other hate-related news stories at our This Date In Hate calendar.

Sunday November 9, 2008: In rural Sun, Louisiana (St. Tammany Parish), Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, allegedly shot and killed Cynthia C. Lynch, 43, of Tulsa, Oklahoma who was recruited via the Internet to participate in a Ku Klux Klan ceremony. Her murder took place after an argument erupted when she attempted to leave the ceremony after changing her mind about joining the Klan. Ms. Lynch was to have participated in the ceremony and then return to Oklahoma to recruit Klan members. Foster, who lives in Washington Parish and who is the leader of a local Klan chapter called Dixie Brotherhood, was charged with second-degree murder, and seven other Klan members, all from Washington Parish, were charged with trying to help conceal the murder. These Klan members were charged with obstruction of justice in the case: Random Hines, 27; Danielle Jones, 23; Frank Stafford, 21; Alicia Watkins, 23; Timothy Michael Watkins, 30; Andrew Yates, 20; and, Shane Foster, 20, the son of Chuck Foster. The victim's body was found dumped on a roadside the day after her murder. Ms. Lynch's murder underscores the violent nature of America's oldest domestic terrorist organization.

Monday November 10, 2008: The Greenville, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP demanded a "strong response and punishment" for the four North Carolina State University students who spray-painted "Let's shoot that N----r in the head", and, "Hang Obama by a noose" in the school's Free Expression Tunnel on election night. Other than the NAACP, no one is taking any action against the students: the Secret Service has deemed there was no threat to the President-elect; campus police have said no crime occurred (even though communicating a threat to kill someone is not protected free speech and the use of a racial slur would qualify the threats as a hate crime), and school administration is keeping secret the identities of the four students who admitted painting the threats. With the presidential election votes still being counted in Missouri, the nation, with the aid of North Carolina State University police and administration, has just lowered the bar for the safety of a nationally elected official by allowing someone to publicly call for the murder of our president-elect.

Monday November 10, 2008: Although expanded hate crime legislation failed last year in the United States, on this date the Hungarian Parliament passed two measures designed to curb hate crimes and hate speech. One law allows victims to civilly sue perpetrators for engaging in degrading or intimidating behavior directed toward a person or a group of people based on the victims' nationality, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation. The other law prohibits hate speech directed at someone based on their nationality, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation, speech that is designed to "incite hatred of a group of people."

Wednesday November 12, 2008: Alexander Edward Ou, 20, of Rochester, Minnesota, who was charged out of the Olmsted District Court with gross misdemeanor fourth-degree assault motivated by bias (a hate crime) for allegedly assaulting a 48-year-old man early on June 6th because of the man's race, was scheduled for an evidentiary hearing. Alexander's brother, Anthony Shieha Ou, 17, was been charged out of the Olmsted District Juvenile Court with the same crime.

Wednesday November 12, 2008: In Poplarville, Mississippi, former Nicholls State University student, Dyron Hart, 19, of Poplarville, is alleged to have sent, via Facebook, black students at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama, a message stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them, following Barack Obama’s presidential victory on November 5, 2008. Hart, who is himself African-American but who was posing as a white man when he sent the emails and who was a Nicholls State University football hopeful, was arrested by FBI agents on November 12, 2008. If convicted, the 6-foot-3-inch tall, 350-pound man, could receive up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release if convicted.

Thursday November 13, 2008: On the campus of North Carolina State University over 500 people attended a rally to demonstrate opposition to the life-threatening and racist graffiti written by four known, but unidentified N.C. State students. The four spray-painted "Let's shoot that N----r in the head", and, "Hang Obama by a noose" in the school's Free Expression Tunnel on election night.

Friday November 14, 2008: In Syracuse, New York, Moses Cannon, 20, of Syracuse, was shot and killed while sitting in a car with his 18-year-old brother, Mark, allegedly by Dwight R. DeLee, 20, also from Syracuse, because DeLee did not like that Moses was openly gay. Police have charged DeLee, who allegedly left a party where anti-gay slurs were being directed at the Cannon brothers to get the murder weapon, with second-degree murder. Mark Cannon was slightly injured in the lethal anti-gay attack of his brother.

The 2008 Presidential Election Unleashes Rage

Politics is ugly. This presidential season, it got uglier. Some Americans responded to the first seriously viable black presidential candidate with hate speech; others responded by taking hate-fueled action, or at least by making plans to do so. In West Hollywood, California, ChadMichael Morrisette hung in effigy the likeness of vice-presidential hopeful, Sarah Palin. A life-size doll of presidential candidate John McCain sitting in a chimney surrounded by paper flames was perched nearby. The real GOP presidential candidate was booed by some of his own supporters when he announced at a campaign trail stop that Barack Obama is someone "you do not have to be scared of", a statement apparently the Arizona senator felt he had to make to quell media buzz about McCain-Palin rally attendees shouting "Kill him" and "terrorist" (referring to Obama), about GOP supporters making Barack Obama monkey dolls, about news reports of "Obama for President" signs being stolen from the lawns of his supporters or vandalized with racial slurs, and about vehicles sporting "Obama '08" bumper stickers being vandalized with racist graffiti. Unlike the issue of how to turn our failing economy around, Jesse Jackson's oft-quoted remark that in the United States "race matters" was hardly debatable this national election season.

From the beginning of his bid for the White House, during the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama's ground game team had been subjected to overtly hostile—and racist—remarks from the public. They would never vote for a n----r, some registered voters told Obama volunteers. Barack Obama, who is Christian and a member of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, was repeatedly and erroneously called a Muslim by some detractors, and the 28 million DVD distribution two months before the election by at least 70 newspapers in swing states (such as the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio) of the hate-filled propaganda piece titled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West no doubt fueled Islamophobia and Obamophobia. Additionally, hate-filled emails found their way into the inboxes of Obama supporters; in at least one case, the FBI was contacted. One Republican blogger posted a poster of Barack Obama next to a noose with the headline that read: "Asphyxiation/The Fucking Solution." Evangelical minister Steve Foss, along with Homer Owen, spammed folks with a dire warning about how evil Barack Obama is. (Owen is an Evangelical guy who hawks born-again intolerance—and lip balm and soap—at his strange website, all in the name of Christ, of course). Although Foss said God was speaking to him about Obama and that it was God who was warning him about an Obama victory—Foss thereby disowning himself from his own hatred and throwing God under the bus at the same time—we predict that in four more years another right-wing Evangelical Christian will read tea leaves, hear God's voice, or stumble across something in the Bible that states, to them, that the next Democratic presidential candidate is—like Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and now Barack Obama—someone akin to the anti-Christ. As revelations from God go, pitching a Democratic presidential candidate as demonic is a pretty tired and overworked one.

Receiving less media attention, but occurring against the same history-making presidential election backdrop, was the Duval County Florida School Board's 5-2 vote along racial lines to retain the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School, this despite the facts that (a) Nathan Bedford Forrest (to quote Brenda Priestly Jackson, one of the two black board members who voted for a school name-change) "was a terrorist and racist" (Forrest was a member of the Ku Klux Klan) and (b) the majority of today's Nathan Bedford Forrest High School students are black.

Then there were the hate-crime incidents. In Denver in late August, four white men were arrested for plotting to assassinate Barack Obama when he was to give his party nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. Next, within weeks of the election two white supremacists—Daniel Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tennessee and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Arkansas—were held without bond in Tennessee after authorities alleged that the pair had planned to rob a Tennesse gun store which was to supply the men with the means to carry out a killing spree against African-Americans. According to law enforcement officials, the two white supremacists also planned to assassinate Barack Obama while wearing white tuxedos and black top hats. On election day in South Ogden, Utah, an African-American family hung the American flag from their home after returning from the polling station where they had worked; within a half an hour, their flag had been set ablaze.

Such acts were not isolated to states where John McCain posted election-night victories either. In Springfield, Massachusetts, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ was suspiciously burned to the ground just hours after Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park. Just hours before that, on Staten Island, a black Muslim teen was beaten while walking home by four white men apparently enraged that a black man had won the presidential election. Although they yelled no racial slurs—a hallmark sign of a race-based hate crime—the four angry white men yelled "Obama" as they descended upon their African-born victim with a baseball bat, and police ruled the unprovoked attack was, indeed, a hate crime. Meanwhile, at North Carolina State University on election night four students there spray-painted violent, racist messages about Barack Obama: one read, "Let's shoot that N----r in the head" and the other said, "Hang Obama by a noose." True to slave-state tradition, the administration has protected the students. According to WRAL Channel 5, the CBS television affiliate in Raleigh, the school's administration has not released the names of the students, and it said the four students will not be charged with a hate crime. For its part, the NAACP has called for N.C. State to expel the four. What would also be appropriate would be for the case to be turned over to the FBI for criminal investigation and prosecution. Since the identities of the racist spray-painters have been cloaked by the school's administration, we're guessing that the incident must be leaving N.C. State's black students with questions about their own safety on campus.

Hate crime incidents were also not limited to election night. On November 5, 2008, in Poplarville, Mississippi, former Nicholls State University student, Dyron Hart, 19, of Poplarville, is alleged to have sent, via Facebook, black students at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Alabama, a message stating he planned to kill 3,000 people, including them. The 6-foot-3-inch tall, 350-pound Hart, who is himself African-American but who was posing as a white man when he sent the emails and who was a Nicholls State University football hopeful in the spring of 2008, was arrested by FBI agents. He is said to have confessed to sending the emails in order to get a "reaction." Two days after the election in Hardwick Township, New Jersey, in Warren County, an African-American man discovered that someone had burned a six-foot tall cross on his yard. He discovered the cross, which was near his pro-Obama banner that had also been deliberately charred, when taking his eight-year-old daughter to school.

Hate crime incidents this presidential election season were also not limited to targeting blacks. The unleashed racism brought about by an African-American man's run for the White House also unleased other forms of hatred. In La Qunita, California, Robert Sylk, the only Jewish candidate running for the City Council, had one of his political lawn signs stolen and vandalized—with a swastika. Then there was the California gay hate-crime assault: a man wearing a political button against "Proposition 8", which denies gay/lesbian couples the right to become legally married in that state, was attacked by a man who first directed a gay slur at his victim. Poignently, the attacker allegedly used a pro-Proposition 8 lawn sign as a weapon with which he is said to have beaten his victim. In Irvine, California, a City Council candidate who is Muslim, Todd Gallinger, received a death threat on October 7, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Some say that John McCain and Sarah Palin fueled their base's race-based emotions by attempting to characterize Barack Obama as someone who "pals around with terrorists" (to quote Ms. Palin) and someone who does not think like "we" do. London Telegraph journalist Tim Shipman reported that Ms. Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's character "provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling 'terrorist' and 'kill him' until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric." Mr. Shipman also wrote: "Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign." One thing is clear, the McCain-Palin attacks failed them: pre- and post-election polls showed that members of the public—Republicans and Democrats—did not care for the GOP's negative campaign stating that it went too far.

All of this election hatred is illuminating and it leads to two conclusions. One is that racism (and other forms of hatred) isn't killed off easily, even with a bi-racial (and self-identified African-American) president-elect. The other is that for the nation to continue to make civil rights gains—that is, for tolerance to trump intolerance—hate crimes must be dealt with swiftly and decisively by every level of the criminal justice system.