A Movie Review for National Bullying Prevention Month

Bullying is pervasive in schools and it has horrible consequences [pdf], some of them life-ending. October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Timed to coincide with it, the Southern Poverty Law Center has released its seventh educational film, available free to schools. Bullied: A Student, a School and a Case that Made History, the documentary film by the Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit civil rights organization—which is known for its successful lawsuits against the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups—has many lessons for many people.

The movie tells the story of Jamie Nabozny who was bullied relentlessly by classmates when he attended junior high and high school in Ashland, Wisconsin, a "probable" Sundown town that sits on the shores of Lake Superior.

In the film Jamie’s ordeal is recounted by his mother, by eyewitnesses and by Mr. Nabozny himself (as an adult) as he speaks to a group of teenagers in a school gymnasium. Narrated by Emmy Award-winning actress Jane Lynch, the 38-minute film is a must-see for middle and high school students. Bullied is also required viewing for teachers, for school counselors and for school administrators. Moving back and forth from interviews to re-enactments of actual events, Bullied tells the horrifying "education" of verbal and physical abuse Jamie endured, survived, and ultimately conquered.

If you are an American school student and you're gay or lesbian or transgendered (or perceived to be), or if you're comparatively very short or tall, or comparatively overweight; or, if you’re black in a nearly all-white school in a nearly all-white town; or, if you speak with an accent because you are the only foreign-born student at your school; or, if you're artistically or academically gifted in a school that worships its athletics program; or, if you choose to wear your clothes and your hair differently than most of your peers at school, or if you are in some way disabled, then chances are you know all too well about the endless, psychologically tortuous days at school that Jamie Nabozny had. You’re not alone. And I beg you: don't give up. In addition to teaching that bullying is the opposite of tolerance, not giving up is one of the messages to students Bullied provides (the film is in memory of 11-year-old Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover who, God bless him, could no longer live in the same world as his tormentors). If you are a parent of a school aged child, now is the time to have a disucssion with her or him about bullying; and, now is the time to learn what you can do to make sure your child's school is a place for education, and not a place for her or his victimization.

The first half of Bullied is a heart-wrenching downward spiral account of a young midwestern kid with lots of psychological resiliance who is stripped of much of his fortitude by his classmates: those who bullied him with homophobic slurs and repeated assaults, for sure, but also those who bore witness to his suffering and did nothing. In his attempt to deal with the hell that was his public school education—complete with invalidating, and willfully impotent school administrators—Jamie goes from isolating himself (at school and at his loving home) to taking more drastic measures after school officials failed to stop the escalating attacks on him, and after desperate pleas from Jamie and his parents were callously ignored.

The second half of the film deals with the federal lawsuit that Jamie Nabozny filed against his schools and their administrators, after he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Going on the offensive—and winning his civil suit against the school administrators—must have been empowering and healing for Mr. Nabozny, because the film showing him as an adult reveals an empathic, seemingly well-functioning, psychologically mature and happily-out-of-the-closet man. He won $900,000 in the lawsuit, and the jury took just minutes to decide the case. That is the sobering lesson the film gives to teachers, school counselors, and school administrators who might be tempted to—as Mr. Nabozny's school administrators did—blame the victim and allow known bullying to continue on their watch.

As an aside, it doesn't take much delving to discover that those who are opposed to hate crime statutes also fight vigorously to stop anti-bullying measures in schools. That's probably because these people want to pass their hatred on to future generations. Bullying, you see, when committed by young adults and adults is often considered a hate crime. But even when tormenting someone to death because of their sexuality—or for some other reason—might not be considered a hate crime by the legal system, as in the criminal case against Rutgers University students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, the "sport" of tormenting someone because of some physical or sociopolitical characteristic that they possess, seems to me, is a form of bullying and must be stopped. As the lyrics to a song by Everything But The Girl go, "Little Hitlers, Little Hitlers grow up into big Hitlers, look what they do."

If you are a junior high school teacher or high school teacher, or a school administrator, and if you are serious about preventing bullying, then please get your school a free copy of Bullied and make sure it is shown throughout your school. The film is the perfect primer for a classroom discussion about not only bullying, but also about diveristy and tolerance and the benefits of both. If you are an elementary school teacher, and you are serious about preventing bullying, then please visit this site and also this site for useful online tools to help teach your class this important message: bullying is never OK.

Cross-posted at: DailyKos

Huffington Post goes Right Wing Nutty in Hate Crime Analysis. Yes, HuffPo.

It's irritating as hell when the neo-cons blather about being against hate crime laws. Stupid garbage typically falls out of their mouths (oh, and this is no small point: the people are almost always persons of privilege, people who are demographically not likely to be victims of a hate crime). They'll toss out the tired, incorrect chirping points of those who hate and those who want to stay in power (they're very often the same people). Without regard for America's hateful history, they'll spout phrases like "all crimes are hate crimes" and "you can't tell what a person's motivation is let alone prosecute it" and "hate crime laws are thought crime laws." If you follow the loony hate crime dialogue of The Right in the United States, you know this. But, it's enraging when the Huffington Post gives credence to this crap as it did when it published Diane Dimond's article on July 21st titled, "Hate is the Name of the Game in Crime."

Partly because reducing racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and other forms of prejudice is so close to my heart. Partly because I had just read this awesome diary by fellow Kossack Maimonides. Partly because according to wikipedia (boldface mine):

The Huffington Post is an American liberal news website and aggregated blog founded by Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, featuring various news sources and columnists.

For these reasons, my blood pressure rose while reading a staunchly right wing opinion piece on the current debate regarding hate crime legislation posted on a supposed liberal website. Let me tell you this: The HuffPo's Diane Dimond's opinion about hate crime legislation is not a liberal position, it is a solidly conservative one. Claiming to be liberal but being against including sexual orientation and gender to the federal hate crime statute is akin to saying you are liberal and are also for racially segregated schools. Dimond's avowedly anti-civil rights position is the opposite of being a liberal. Let me count the ways.

Dimond first stupidly asks why we should label as hate crimes the murders of abortion provider Dr. Steven Tiller and the murder of Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen T. Johns when we already have strict laws against murder. It's a ridiculous set-up for the rest of her article. To begin with, doctors who perform abortions are not part of a protected class of persons in any pending hate crime legislation or any American hate crime law. The murder of Dr. Tiller, while fueled by anti-abortion hatred, does not meet the definition of a hate crime, and no person knowledgeable about hate crimes would state otherwise. (Had Dr. Tiller, who was murdered in his church during a worship service, been killed because of anti-Christian hatred, then the perpetrator could have been charged with a hate crime). Current hate crime laws vary from state to state (as outlined in this pdf), but they typically protect persons based on race, color, religion, national origin, and ethnicity. Some state laws include sexual orientation, gender, and disability. None include "abortion doctor" status as a protected class of citizens. You'd expect Arianna Huffington, the Editor-in-Chief at HuffPo, to know this basic fact about hate crime laws before allowing Dimond to publish what she did.

Wingnuts always focus on hate crime murders as a reason to oppose hate crime laws--laws that permit enhanced punishment. So does Dimond and she uses the same wingnutty logic. She asks what difference would it make if the term "hate crime" is attached to a killer's deadly actions. It's a strawman question that requires no critical thinking whatsoever; lack of critical thinking is another common feature of opponents of hate crime laws (which is probably why Democrats vote in bloc [pdf] in support of expanding the federal hate crime law to help aid oppressed minority persons while the GOP overwhelmingly vote against it). The answer to Dimond's rhetorical question is this. Finding someone guilty of a hate crime murder couldn't lead to increased punishment, because life in prison is, well, life in prison. In states with the death penalty, there is no enhanced punishment greater than death. Yawn. OK, but moving beyond the rhetorical question, one must ask: but what about the 99.9% of all hate crimes that aren't homicides? In those cases an enhanced punishment could be handed down to the hate crime convict. Thus, there is no reason to toss aside hate crime laws because enhanced punishment could only be used in 99.9% of cases.

Then Dimond tosses this wingnut doozy:

The first hate crimes legislation in America was passed forty years ago. Yet according to the Southern Poverty Law Center hate groups continue to flourish. The SPLC displays a map of their locations on its web site. There are 84 in California, 66 in Texas, 56 in Florida, 45 in South Carolina, 40 organized hate groups in New Jersey and Georgia, nearly that many in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri. Does anyone truly believe the label "Hate Crime" and the additional jail time it tacks on to a sentence deters criminals?

First of all, connecting the SPLC's hate group data to hate crimes creates a false correlation between hate crimes and hate groups. Very few hate crime defendants belong to an organized hate group; some hate crime defendants went to college, happily trying to obtain yet another level of privilege (the privilege that comes with higher education). You don't have to belong to the Westboro Baptist Church to gay-bash, Diane, and you don't have to be a member of a neo-Nazi group to attack a Jew. Second, like it or not, in America there is this right called the freedom to associate. People have the right to belong to a hate group. Third, because hate crimes continue to happen long after hate crime laws went into effect is no reason to repeal them. This from the Q & A section of the Trends In Hate website:

...laws can only reduce, but not eliminate, crime. For example, there are strong laws in the United States prohibiting rape and murder. Despite these laws, rapes and murders continue to occur in America daily. From 1996 through 2005, for instance, there was an average of over 45 homicides in the United States daily. Prohibiting murder has not eliminated it. Yet, people unwaveringly understand the continued need for laws criminalizing such society-destroying behavior. As is the case for all criminal codes, one reason for having hate crime laws is deterrence. Hate crime laws serve the purpose of reducing the frequency of bias-motivated crimes, even though the laws can’t eliminate them. Generally speaking a so-called hate crime enhancement allows for the possibility for greater punishment of a perpetrator than would normally occur had the crime not been motivated by hatred. Added punishment serves as a means of deterring to some extent bias-motivated crimes from taking place in America. This benefits society because, as we’ve described, hate crimes terrorize communities. Additionally, because hate crime perpetrators premeditatively select their victims, increasing the punishment for a hate crime perpetrator makes sense. Why? Because hate crime laws by their definition take into account the motive for the crime; and, perpetrator motivation (or lack thereof) has long played a role in American law for establishing culpability and exacting appropriate punishment. For instance, killing someone is agreed to be more heinous when premeditation occurred as compared to the negligent, unplanned killing of another. This is why planned (first-degree) murders carry harsher punishments than unintentional killings of persons by, say, drunk drivers.

Another reason for hate crime laws to exist is to provide an added measure of protection to groups of people who are made more vulnerable in society because of the prejudices of others. In examining the history of the United States, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans have all been targeted—because of their race or ethnicity—for unfair treatment, discrimination, and worse: violence. This does not mean that only persons of color are made more vulnerable by the prejudice-based criminal acts of others. Anyone can harbor anti-ethnic or racist beliefs and act them out criminally, not just whites. This is why hate crime laws include protected categories (e.g., race) that include everyone, not just one particular group of persons (e.g., people of color). So, for example, hate crime laws in the United States provide protection to Protestants and Muslims, and not merely to those who historically have been discriminated against or otherwise have been targeted in the United States because of their religious affiliation, such as Jews or Catholics. Which groups within a protected category are more vulnerable than others in our society have changed in some respects over time; and, they will likely continue to change as society changes. So hate crime laws which protect everyone are defensible on practical as well as constitutional grounds.

That pretty much rebuts this neo-con talking point that Diane spat out in her article:

Declaring there is hate in a person's heart when they act in a criminal fashion seems to be a shaky proposition to me. We should stick to punishing people for what they do -- not what we believe they were thinking at the time of the crime.

So, Diane, you're saying the premeditated murderer should receive the same punishment as the person who, through recklessness, killed someone in a motor vehicle accident? The logic in your argument means that James Byrd's killers should receive the same punishment as the over-stressed parent who kills his or her infant by inadvertently leaving said infant in a hot minivan after a trip to the grocery store.

Dimond's and Huffington's lack of fact-checking aside (hey, they have deadlines to meet and it's only journalism so it's no big deal), what about the fundamental question: why should a murder, or any crime, ever be labeled and prosecuted as a hate crime? A Black man gets hooked up to a Texas pickup truck and dragged to his death by a clan of white guys simply because the victim was black, why should that motive matter? A gay man gets lashed to a fencepost in Wyoming and is murdered because of his sexual orientation; again, why would the hate motive matter? Dimond actually provides the answer in her own article, but is too dense to see it. She concluded her anti-hate crime legislation screed by stating:

Hate is the name of the game when it comes to crime. We don't need a fancy label on it. We need to figure out how to make it socially unacceptable.

Yes, Diane and Arianna, America does need to figure out how to make hatred socially unacceptable. Thanks for that insightful, "progressive" tidbit. And thanks for the non-progressive obfuscation of the real issues here: race-based, ethnicity-based, religion-based, sexual-orientation based, and gender-based violence and intimidation, all of which are rooted in America's history, are community-destroying acts of domestic terrorism. Set a person of color's home on fire and lace your arson with spray-painted racial slurs, you are letting the entire community know that any person of color could be the next target. You're making all person's of color in that community anxious. You're terrorizing them. You're also letting the whites know they're safe. You do get that Diane, right? You do get that there is white privilege in white-on-color race-based hate crimes (and those types of hate crimes account for a high percentage of all hate crimes according to FBI statistics). You do know that in 2007 84% of all hate crimes were committed by white people, right?

Speaking of white privilege, it is unsurprising that Diane Dimond, who is white, fails to let her readers know that her anti-hate crime legislation stance would have the impact of cementing her white privilege in society. By not maximally stigmatizing (i.e., making socially unacceptable) hate crimes--which is done by labeling them "hate crimes" in code of law, in the media, and in the courtroom, and via enhanced punishment to the convicted hate crime perpetrator--as a white person Diane gets to continue to enjoy her significantly lower-than-you'd-expect risk for being a hate crime victim. Just how low is her risk? According to the graphs shown here, it's pretty much in the gutter. If Diane Dimond is heterosexual (me thinks she is), her risk of being a victim of a sexual-orientation hate crime is also in the gutter. But, you didn't read about that heterosexual privilege in her HuffPost article. You also didn't hear Dimond say that by eliminating hate crime laws, there would be no need to tabulate hate crimes as is now federal law. This is what the wingnuts want--the repeal of the federal act that shows hate crimes actually exist. Without that law, the neo-cons could continue to set Black churches and synagogues on fire, continue to beat Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans, and continue to bash the shit out of GLBT people while denying that America has a race, anti-Semitism or homophobia problem. Nice job HuffPo. The Right will play you like a fiddle (to quote Keith Olbermann).

Thanks too Dimond for repeating the right wing and completely false claim that all crimes are hate crimes ("hate is the name of the game when it comes to crime").

Here, I think, is a sufficient response to the all-crimes-are-hate-crimes lie. Again from Trends In Hate:

The notion that all crimes are hate crimes is a preposterous, indefensible claim made by some who oppose hate crime laws and pending hate crime legislation.

We’ve even seen it said that if hate crimes exist, then crimes not deemed to be hate crimes must be ‘love crimes.’ It’s difficult to fathom that people can be so simplistic and illogical. It is patently false that all crimes are hate crimes. In fact, it is not even true that all violent crimes are hate crimes. The vast majority are not. Where greed or financial desperation are the motives for crimes—as is the case of almost all burglaries, armed robberies, and muggings—there is no hatred toward the victims. Criminals just want their victims’ money. Even when a strong emotion drives a crime—such as a so-called crime of passion—that emotion is generally not hatred. It’s typically something shorter-lived like jealousy or rage. Additionally, when someone kills someone—because of some strong negative emotional state such as rage—generally it is not because they hate some socio-demographic feature of the victim, such as the victim’s race or ethnicity. Typically, it is because the killer became enraged at the victim based on some aspect of their relationship. This is why from 1996 through 2006, the FBI tallied 184,604 homicides in the United States, but only 118 hate crime homicides. Even considering that some hate crime murders were not tallied as such, it is clear the nation’s crime data shows us that very few crimes are hate crimes.

As you can see when perusing through this calendar of recent American history, hate crimes happen every day (except, it appears, on Christmas day). Yet, only a miniscule percentage of all reported crimes are hate crimes. Transforming the quoted figures above, only .06% of all American homicides were hate crime homicides during an eleven-year timeframe. OK, so much for the all-crimes-are-hate-crimes rationale for wanting to keep excluding gender, sexual orientation, and disability from the current federal hate crime amendment.

I was unsurprised to learn someone with an affinity for a white racist website like VDARE would take such interest in Dimond's anti-hate crime legislation viewpoint as to send her a link to the VDARE hate site after praising her for her article. That's exactly what happened. She cross-posted her HuffPo screed on her own website and received this "progressive" comment:

Thanks for this. I discussed in [link to the VDARE hate site removed]

Do you stand by your assertion that Vigilant Eagle is monitoring web sites. Has this appeared anywhere in the MSM? Pretty big story, if documentable.

VDARE is a white racist hate site, by the way, and Dimond apparently has made a fan there.

When you hold the exact same position on expanding the federal hate crime law to include gender, sexual orientation and disability that Senator Jim DeMint holds, you lose a lot of progressive cred. In fact, you come off like a white, heterosexual privileged jackass, just like DeMint who recently said this during the recent hate crime amendment debate in the Senate (one the GOP lost):

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said it was "patently offensive" that violence against one class of victims would be considered worse than violence against others.

Channeling DeMint, Dimond asks this in her article, which is the oft-asked question by many dyed-in-the-wool conservatives:

why should an attack on a homosexual or a minority be worth more punishment than a similar attack on a regular Joe?

The answer: to even the playing field. That is, to reduce the huge gap in the risk for becoming a hate crime victim in the first place. Or put more bluntly, to reduce white, Protestant, heterosexual privilege. That is, to reduce hate by reducing hate-based crimes.

But, of course, these people don't want to lose their societal privilege (or they are too damn dumb to see that they have it).

Diane Dimond offers this beauty of a solution (bracketed material mine):

If someone attacks a gay person let's prosecute them for assault [but not as a hate crime] and demand the judge give the harshest sentence possible.

My God this is embarrassing. OK, so she doesn't get that most judges are, demographically speaking, at a really low risk for being a hate crime victim (sexual-orientation based or otherwise) and therefore might be just as cluelessly privileged as she is. Some judges, like Boston Municipal Court Judge Thomas C. Horgan, actually reduce the sentences of hate crime perpetrators (how's that for progressive social justice?!). Is Dimond even aware of this gay-bashing case or any other gay-based hate crime other than the Matthew Shepard murder? Does she even give a shit? Also, Dimond fails to realize that judges are often appointed not elected, so the public can't just oust someone from the bench because of lenient sentences given to hate criminals. "Demands" would fall on deaf ears. Having a more diverse judiciary would help insure that more hate crime victims get the justice they deserve, a justice that in the long-run benefits all. I'm just thankful Dimond doesn't go on to argue that a white person charged with a race-based hate crime assault should be judged by a jury of his peers--other white racists.

Here's an idea for Diane Dimond to chew on: how about making racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, etc., socially unacceptable by having comprehensive state and federal laws that add extra penalties for hate crimes. There's nothing that says "socially unacceptable" better than attaching a nice, harsh punishment to a hate crime, and to providing local law enforcement with the means to investigate hate crimes. That is, of course, the rationale for having hate crime statutes, not an argument against them. We could even go a step further in our efforts to reduce hatred and have states enact so-called hate crime registry boards. Like a convicted pedophile, the convicted hate criminal would have to register with the state board and notify them of his/her housing location which would be passed along to those in the neighborhood. As a society we've decided that people have a right to know if a convicted sex offender moves into their neighborhood (I received a letter last week, in fact, from my local police department notifying my household of a sex offender who moved into my neighborhood). Don't people also have the right to know if a hate crime convict moves into their neighborhood? Or would that upset the status quo too much? Would people lose too much of their societal privilege?

Arianna Huffington you pay Diane Dimond. You hired her and you sign her checks. As Editor-in-Chief of HuffPo you also signed off on her neo-con words to appear on your site. For this, you also bear responsibility for her words. If, after reading this diary, you conclude you don't owe progressives who tirelessly fight historical oppression an apology for publishing Dimond's right wing article on your website, then as I sit and wonder if you will send Diane Dimond off on assignment to cover the next Council of Conservative Citizens convention, at least edit your wiki page to reflect that The Huffington Post is no longer liberal, because we all know that Dimond's opinions mirror those found at WorldNetDaily.

PS Diane, it's 2009, and the proper word is "gay" not "homosexual" (unless you're posting your screeds on internet hate sites, then you can use the antiquated "H" word, though you may find your homophobia so well received at those hate sites that you might choose to use more colorful words to describe GLBT folks).

This blog was originally posted at DailyKos.

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.