Recently in Hate Crimes Category

I heard a few days ago that Nancy Reagan had fallen and had been hospitalized. I felt bad for her. It occurred to me that when her husband, Ronald Reagan had died, I wrote about his passing. I was angry that so much was being made about a man that very selectively helped people.

But people change with age. Ronald Reagan later, after leaving the presidency, said that he should have done more for people with AIDS. You bet he should have. They were Americans. And, while he was President, Nancy urged him to do more for people with AIDS, probably because her hair dresser came down with AIDS. No, I'm not making this up. Very self serving people. And perhaps the late President Reagan only wanted to help people with AIDS because, being from the entertainment industry, he knew some people with AIDS. But, he didn't use his power to help them until he was out of office. Or, until it was politically safe for him to do so.

So, when he showed up at a rally to show support, he shouldn't have been surprised that an AIDS activist shouted at him (and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the exact quote), "You've done enough already. We don't need your damn help." Those were my sentiments as well.

So now, why do I feel sorry for Nancy Reagan? I suppose for the same reason that Jane Fonda should be forgiven for being photographed in 1972 sitting in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft tank. She stated on 60-minutes concerning the event, "I will go to my grave regretting that. The image of Jane Fonda, Barbarella, Henry Fonda's daughter, just a woman sitting on a enemy aircraft gun, was a betrayal. It was like I was thumbing my nose at the military. And at the country that gave me privilege. It was the largest lapse of judgment that I can even imagine. I don't thumb my nose at this country. I care deeply about American soldiers." Some people will never find forgiveness in their hearts. It's just not what they are made of. But my experience is that age changes your perspectives on life, issues, and people.

People make mistakes and attitudes on issues change over time. It's important to understand that and it's important to put it into a context of time. It used to be "ok" with most people that gay bars were routinely raided by the police. In those days, it was really the only place to go to meet other gay people. Why go to gay bars? Because you felt so damned isolated. Most people saw little wrong with the police ruffing up some gays. And the people who went out and beat up gay people were never prosecuted. And if a gay person was murdered in the process, the police looked the other way many times. Indeed, the defense attorneys for the two boys convicted of the murder of Matthew Sheppard thought at first that their case was very strong because no jury in Wyoming would convict someone who killed a gay person. Why did they feel this way? Because it happened all the time. The same can be said of the plight of African Americans.

But looking back on those times, I believe that most people today find it unacceptable that many gay people (dare I say most?) today live with an element of fear every single day. Most find the practice of gay bashing unacceptable, unless you're Ann Coulter, and feel that it should be prosecuted. They don't quite yet believe that gays deserve federal protection from job discrimination or hate crimes, but at the local and state level, I see more of these crimes being prosecuted all the time. I guess that's why I'm willing to go to Idaho to see my family. But I do realize that outside the largest city of Boise, if people know that I'm gay, the risk I run or being gay bashed rises exponentially. It's a risk for me. I'm too old to lie to people anymore, or to give a damn. If someone has a problem with me, they won't have to try and figure out if I'm gay if they are too stupid to figure it out on their own. I'll simply tell them. I have to if I want to keep my personal pride and integrity.

I didn't used to be this way. I used to be scared when we lived in San Francisco. I remember being harassed many times while we lived in San Francisco. On one occasion, we left our apartment and were walking towards Market Street. Some schmuck started following us. He shouted, "Hey, are you two homosexuals?" We kept walking, but started walking faster. I asked Kent, "Should we stop?" We kept going. Then we heard the man say, "Are you two faggots? I'm talking to you!" By the time he said that, we were passing five other guys who witnessed this. They started talking to the guy to find out what his problem was. We kept walking. But then I heard shouting from a distance as a fight started. Over the years, I've wondered what happened, and I now regret living in that fear. Today, I would go back to the fight and finish it.

I guess the bottom line is, people have to learn to forgive others so that they themselves can move on, and grow. I've grown tired of being angry at people for wrongs they have done against me. Time, and a changing of attitudes will do more to those who oppress us than I could ever do. Time will do for marriage equality for gay couples what it did for slavery for African Americans.

I wish Nancy Reagan all the best and a speedy recovery. Sometimes I think the real lesson of life is letting go of crap that doesn't matter, and simply living.

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I’ll get to stupid people in a minute.... but first a brief update....

We went to the Connecticut Opera Saturday night. We had a great time. We went to the pre-opera dinner, hosted by Max (a very nice, as in really nice, chain here in the Hartford area). Wine flowed freely, with a nice dinner, complete with the conductor visiting and giving a talk on the Hartford connection to the opera we were going to hear that night, Puccini’s Tosca. It turned out to be a very nice product.

For some reason, we were thought to be very high-standing patrons of the opera. At least, we sat at the table where the President of the Board of the Connecticut Opera sat. I actually had a great time. He asked how I got into opera, and I shared my childhood experiences of going to the “dam park” (yeah, just below a dam with a big water spill), putting out my blanket on a sunny Saturday afternoon, turning on my radio, and listening to Live From The Met, where I heard the really big voices of yesteryear, in real time no less!

Why did I do this? To escape my life at the time (and no, I didn’t share that with him). It was kind of like this for me...

I’m in a lot of trouble in the Evangelical community these days because there’s a group of oppressed people that I tend to love. And it’s a group of people that everybody’s upset with these days... But let me just say this. I was in high school. And there was a boy in high school who everybody picked on because we found out he was gay. We mocked him, we ridiculed him—you know what high school kids can do when they find out that somebody’s gay. We humiliated him in every way we could think of. On Fridays when the other boys went into the showers following gym, he would never go in—he was afraid. And when we came out with our wet towels, we whipped them at him and stung his little body.

I wasn’t there the day they took Roger and pushed him into the corner of that tile shower, and as he wrapped himself up like a fetus, five guys urinated all over him. He went home, and that night, went to bed, got up at two o’clock in the morning, went down to the garage, and he hung himself. And I knew I wasn’t a Christian. (source)

Except, of course, I didn’t kill myself over it. It was all timing really. Given six more months, since my terrible secret of me being gay was getting out to the good citizens of Emmett, and starting to circulate through the high school, I suppose I wouldn’t be here writing this today. The timing was that I was a graduating senior. I received my diploma and went off to college to escape my fate at their hands, unlike the boy described above. But I have to tell you, the last two weeks of my school year were a bit scary... watching where I was at... staying in a public place... leaving school late after I was sure everyone had left. You know, today, I don’t really feel anything at all about that. Don’t get me wrong. I do everything I can for gay teens in distress, but I’m finding that there are less and less of them all the time.

As gays meld into the broader population, places like West Hollywood and the Castro district in San Francisco will inevitably lose some of their appeal. As more gays come out in more places, the diversity of homosexual politics and lifestyles will come out with them, and the tolerant will multiply.

For some of the pioneers from the edgy, embattled, ecstatic “good old days,” this may be bittersweet. “But isn’t that what everyone wanted 20 years ago?” Gates asks. “Just to be treated like everyone else?” (source)

I think that’s a good thing. I know some people feel that we are losing our identity, and perhaps we are a bit. I don’t know if you’ve visited The Castro lately, but it’s certainly not what it was 25 years ago. But in the greater scheme of things, what is really happening is that we are finally able to become whole people with out “the gay thing” defining us. For me, that has meant that I’ve become less directly involved with “gay rights”, although I still support many gay rights causes and organizations. It has also made me more interested in all the other things that are waiting out there for me, such as hiking, photography, music, and art. I know they were always there for me, but when you are defined by society by your sexuality alone, that becomes your definition, and your worst fear. Today, in America at least, sexual orientation is becoming more and more a non-issue. Indeed, many of the people who in 2004 were so against gay marriage, are now changing their views, largely because people feel they can be themselves and are coming out more.

So.... back to stupid people. This morning I’m on my way to work. I stop at a stop light just before turning off on the road that eventually leads me to the freeway. At the corner are about six people holding signs that read, “I want lower taxes. I’M VOTING REPUBLICAN!”

I wanted to take a photo, but the light was pour, it was raining like hell (so I kind of felt sorry for them), so I just continued on. But on my way to work, I started thinking about the irony of it all. These people want lower taxes so they are voting Republican?

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The White House brushed off the analysis as “speculation.”

The estimate was the most comprehensive and far-reaching one to date. It factored in costs previously not counted and assumed that large number of forces would remain in the regions. (source)

I guess I’d like to know just who they feel will pay for the $2.4 trillion? We will, through taxes because that’s the only way the federal government has to raise money. So maybe they should have voted Democrat in 2004? Just a thought.

And I also wish the Democrats would “grow some” and, as Nancy Reagan once said, “JUST SAY NO!” to the current administration on spending.

After seven days, Maryland jurors smote the Westboro Baptist Church and its leaders Wednesday, awarding a grieving father nearly $11 million after anti-gay protests disturbed his Marine son’s funeral.

The father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sobbed when the verdict was read in U.S. District Court. Members of the Topeka church listened with tight-lipped smiles to the findings that they had invaded Snyder’s privacy with intent to inflict emotional distress.

The federal jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for privacy loss and $2 million for distress. (source)

I grew up in a time when you did things for people. Instead of going to the mall (actually, we didn’t have malls in those days, we simply had little stores that specialized in clothing or whatever), we helped people out. If a neighbor was in trouble, we would offer our support, and our support was more than just words. Our support came in the form of helping that neighbor through deeds. If a funeral procession went by, you stopped and put your right hand over your heart and faced the funeral procession as they passed, out of respect for the family and the deceased. It was the proper and decent thing to do. And today, I still do that.

Today, our culture has changed a great deal, and not all in a good way. Yes, there have been some positive changes, such as more tolerance for despised minority groups. Somewhere in our fight for free speech, which we’ve had for a very long time, some of us it would seem have lost sight that there are times when it’s simply better to keep your mouth shut. Being able to say something does not mean that you should say it. But now days, more often than not it seems, people don’t give two cents about the other individuals feelings. Feelings are so politically correct after all, and politically correct seems to be going out of fashion.

I understand all of that, but whatever happened to just simple, every day, common decency? I’m glad that Fred Phelps disgusting group of thugs got hit big time with this settlement. He boasted afterwards, “Oh, it will take about five minutes to get that thing reversed.” Perhaps, but I would hope that Phelps, and a lot of the rest of us, would come away with two points from all of this...

1) Just because you can say something doesn’t mean that you should say it, out of consideration for others.
2) You do have free speech. But, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences to that free speech.

Nothing is free. If you want to say certain things, there could be actions taken against you. This is what has happened to the Westboro Baptist Church. Their actions caught up with them. So, my hope is that the appeal will fail, and they will be liable to pay these costs, which they are financially unable to do. I’m told that their combined net worth is around one million dollars. I don’t return their hate by saying this. I simply hope it will stick because without money, there’s not a hell of a lot they can do.

And while I’m on the subject of decency, I suppose it’s worth a mention that this group has done the same thing for many years at the funerals of gay men who died of AIDS, and of course, they picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard. America never cared about this activity until the group started targeting something more near and dear to the hearts of America; their straight sons who died in war were now being picketed at their funerals. How dare they? Pick on the gays, but not us. My un-Christian attitude on this is, “What goes around comes around”, but that’s not me. I’m more along the lines of, “Now you know how we felt.”

This is worth mention because this is precisely why the Phelps clan decided to stop picketing the funerals of gay men, and started targeting a larger and more sensational audience, dead soldiers. And it’s interesting to note the change that has taken place in the verbiage of the signs of this church.

From this....

To this....

They want the press coverage, and this is one way to get that. They have a right to their opinions and they have a right to express those opinions, but in my opinion, we have to find a way for them to have their freedom of speech, however vile we may think their message is, without them inflicting emotional damage on others. Picketing funerals crosses the line of decency. The emotional toll these people inflicted upon these families is what this settlement was about. The only difference is, they used words instead of a hammer. Had they used a hammer to do the same damage, they would have been prosecuted

Do we want any and all free speech at the expense of decency and a respect for what families are going through when they are simply trying to get through the hell of laying their son to rest? Somewhere, something went terribly wrong.

Slowly but unmistakably, gay culture is ending. You see it beyond the poignant transformation of P-town: on the streets of the big cities, on university campuses, in the suburbs where gay couples have settled, and in the entrails of the Internet. In fact, it is beginning to dawn on many that the very concept of gay culture may one day disappear altogether. By that, I do not mean that homosexual men and lesbians will not exist--or that they won’t create a community of sorts and a culture that sets them in some ways apart. I mean simply that what encompasses gay culture itself will expand into such a diverse set of subcultures that “gayness” alone will cease to tell you very much about any individual. The distinction between gay and straight culture will become so blurred, so fractured, and so intermingled that it may become more helpful not to examine them separately at all. (source)

Isn’t this what we want? Gay culture existed simply because society labeled us as “gay” or “queer”, along with many other names, to separate us. And we in turn, separated and splintered off from the rest of society. In many parts of the country, this is still very much the case. But in some parts of the country, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, it’s much less so. I no longer feel a need to be anything other than myself. I’m no longer gay. I’m a person who is many things, and one of those things that’s not very high on my list, is being gay. The reason it’s not high on my list is precisely because it’s not very high on the list of my state. Connecticut has said that gay citizens are equal (aside from denying us marriage). We are protected in our jobs, and against hate crimes. So I don’t have to spend time worrying about all of that stuff. I can feel more a part of society. Surely most gay people would think this is a good thing. I remember when I was gay first, and I also remember that life sucked when I had to do that because my world was very small. I had to watch what I said to people, especially about my personal life. Now, either I don’t feel the need to do that anymore, or I’ve become so comfortable in my skin that I just don’t care anymore what people think. I think it’s more the latter.

Now, there is only one issue that I deal with. I’ve moved on from the marriage issue. I’ve had to at least try to let it go. But you see, the problem is, marriage is still the area in society where we are still queer. And, it’s the one place that society uses to keep us separated. Marriage is doing to us today what the gay ghetto did to us yesterday. The only difference is that one was geography and one is a state of mind. And it’s powerful.

A dear friend of mine recently got married. I very much wanted to be there for her. I simply could not bring myself to do that. I wish her all the happiness in the world, but I can not give my blessing to something that has become so utterly painful for me to endure. I’ve boycotted other weddings as well, and, I’m not alone.

DEAR ABBY: I am being married this summer to my fiancée of five years, “Beth.” I had always assumed that my brother, “Mike,” who is also my best friend, would be my best man. Mike is gay.

When I asked him, I was stunned at his response. Mike said he loves me and Beth, but refuses to be part of a ceremony celebrating something for which he is discriminated against emotionally, financially and socially. He refuses even to attend.

Now that I have been forced to confront this issue, I realize my brother is right. Beth thinks he should “get over it,” and he needs to accept that it’s just “the way things are in the world.”

As hurt as I am, I can’t hold against my brother his refusal to participate in what he refers to as a “reminder that he is considered a second-class citizen without the same civil rights” as I have.

How can I handle this without turning it into something that could overshadow what is supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life? -- DISAPPOINTED IN WESTLAKE, OHIO

That’s exactly how I feel every damn time I get a wedding announcement in the mail. First, it’s a reminder that I am considered a second-class citizen with every word on the announcement. Then, I go through the feeling of, “How dare they send something so absolutely thoughtless to me?” Then, I go through the guilt of not being there for them.

I understand that they are happy and want to include us in the celebration. But I honestly would rather not be invited at all, without any explanation, than to get this reminder of where I stand in society. Believe me, I know. I don’t need the expensive little printed announcement telling me. I get it already.

I wish my friends all the happiness in the world. I wish I could share those thoughts and feelings with them without the wall of crap that society has put between us. I honestly don’t think I’ll get over feeling this way. I don’t dwell on it, until I’m sent a reminder. I work hard and do my job. I love my photography. I stay as positive in life as I can. I’ve had to leave this issue behind so I can be happy.

Every action has a reaction. I suppose that is one way of looking at it. My reaction is revulsion of getting a wedding announcement in the mail. It’s that same feeling you get in the pit of your stomach after being told that you are being fired because your gay. There wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it then. Today, it’s the same thing with marriage. We are discriminated against emotionally, financially and socially, and we are supposed to be ok with that and “get over it”? It doesn’t work that way. Not for me. For me, marriage, something that was once thought to be a celebration of joy, has been turned into little more than a political football, which incidentally, fails 50% of the time.

Except in this football game, there are no winners. Just losers.

The “gay culture” hasn’t quite ended yet. There’s still marriage, and most of the states can still fire you for being gay. And as long as some of us are willing to “be patient” and let some queers (transgendered folks) continue to be discriminated against, yeah, we’ll still have a gay ghetto...

Being transgender is not the same as being lesbian or gay. This fact, coupled with the reality that a portion of the diverse transgender community identifies as heterosexual rather than queer, begs the question of why we should consider ourselves to be one community and postpone our rights to protect people who are not lesbian or gay. I believe that we are one community because the majority of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have consciously come together to work as one community. The reality is that the larger society views all of us who deviate from the heterosexual norm where biological females partner with biological males as “queers.” Moreover, there is for each of us a relationship between our sexual orientation and the ways that we feel compelled to express ourselves and our gender identities.

So, while a sexual orientation only ENDA would prevent me from being fired (or not hired) because my partner is another woman, I could still be denied a job as a lawyer because I never wear make-up, always wear “mannish” business suits and am (apparently) a little butch. In San Francisco, maybe this is not such an issue—but what if I lived in Tallahassee?

At this stage in our history, anti-discrimination legislation that intentionally excludes protection based upon gender identity and expression is bad civil rights strategy that undermines progress on the ground and is not worth the moral compromise and divisiveness that it brings. (source)

For the same reason I can’t go to a wedding and put on a happy face, I also can not go along with discrimination against another segment of society that could be stopped with the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. If transgendered people are excluded from ENDA, I’ll have nothing to do with it. And the people in our community who say stupid things like “we need to take baby steps...”, need to realize that it’s real easy to forget those on the other side of the fence who don’t have those rights after we’ve been granted those rights (assuming ENDA passes this time around).

I will not take baby steps on this for the same reason I will no longer attend weddings. If transgendered people are excluded from ENDA, then ENDA should die. There is nothing to compromise here, except of course, our principles.

I don’t even know what to do with this. This was a comment left on my blog tonight. I’m thinking of calling the police. Am I over reacting?

I talked to the police about it. They wanted to see the comment. I printed out the comment, with the IP address and the email address. I also did an IP trace on it and found out that it is a Comcast IP. I called Comcast and talked with their Internet Department. They would not act on it and suggested I call my "local authorities". So, I did. I turned over to them this morning a screen print of the comment that you see above, without the email address blotted out, the IP trace, which has a location in Potomac, Maryland, and the map showing the exact location of the IP.

I talked with a police sargent who stated that because it is from another state, there is very little they can do about it. He wanted to keep the printout and asked that if I get anymore from this individual, that I report it immediately. He thought it was just someone trying to rile me, and didn't think it would occur again. But then again, you never know. Troubling.

Anthony Niedwiecki and Waymon Hudson reported that while they were waiting for their baggage, someone read a passage from the Bible over the PA system, Leviticus 20:13, which calls for the death of gay people.

“We have received a lot of very hateful messages directed towards us,” Niedwiecki said. “Any names that you can think of have been thrown at us.”

Airport officials said 23-year-old Jethro Monestine confessed and said it was meant as a prank.

“I want to apologize to the couple that were around when the message played,” Monestine said. “I also want to apologize to anyone that was hurt because I didn’t mean what I did.”

“To me, if this was a prank, it wouldn’t involve a death threat,” Hudson said. (source)

I would probably have freaked out also if a passage from the Old Testament calling for the death of homosexuals was playing over the PA system at the airport. I guess you just never know what to expect anymore in the world. I just thought this story was amazing.

Other sources
Miami Herald

BARTOW, Fla. -- Authorities are investigating the killing of a central Florida man as a hate crime after interviews with people who knew him revealed he was gay, officials said.

William David Brown Jr., 20, and Joseph Bearden, 21, were being held without bond in the Polk County Jail Saturday after being charged with first degree murder in connection to Ryan Keith Skipper’s death, authorities said.

They are also charged with the armed robbery of Skipper’s car and computer. If convicted of murder, the two men would be eligible for the death penalty under Florida law. [...]

He had been stabbed about 20 times, she said.

A witness came forward and said Skipper was killed because he made an advance toward Brown, Wood said. (source)

It seems a bit outdated in this day and age I suppose to suggest that a murder would not be prosecuted because the victim was gay. Yet, I know that in some parts of the country, it is still the practice to turn a blind eye to crimes against gays, even if that crime ends with murder.

It used to be a well known defense to accuse the gay victim of making an unwanted sexual advance on the person who committed the crime, therefore in some twisted way, asking for the punishment that was to come. This legally came to be known as the “homosexual panic” defense. The straight man who was the victim of a homosexual advance was so overcome with fear and rage, that he was simply unable to control himself. This was used in the defense of the killers of Matthew Shepard as well. In that case, it was thrown out because Wyoming had no statute on the books to allow that kind of defense.

So to say that Ryan Keith Skipper was killed because he made an advance toward William David Brown is just gearing up for the “homosexual panic” defense to be used once again. To jurors who are sympathetic to this defense, it can be powerful. After all, the only witnesses to the crime are the two killers and the victim, and the victim is dead. So, it can come down to a character assessment of what the victim would do or not do. Those who knew him may come forth as state that it was not in his character to make such advances. Sometimes that works. And other times, the killers can get off with community service and probation. This has actually happened!

But I see the days of the “homosexual panic” defense numbered. Everything is connected for us. We come out more, and more people know us. That makes it more difficult for people to look at us and deny us benefits for being gay, deny us justice in a court room, deny us service to our country in the military, and get away with murdering us. We are starting to be seen as citizens, and we are demanding that we have all the rights and privileges of citizenship.

I’ve relaxed a great deal in the past couple of months. I’ve let a lot of personal issues of inequality go, for a lot of reasons. First, it’s not good for you and can effect your health. Second, it can color every other thing in your life - good and bad. But the really big reason for me is this....

We have a limited number of years on this earth. Now, I can let morons and homophobes win by letting them make my short time on this earth miserable, or I can win by living a wonderful, full, and happy life. I HAVE THAT CHOICE, and so do you! I choose to be happy. I will from time to time point out people and places to watch out for, but the days of giving certain people and things the ability to effect my emotional well being are over for me. I made that choice, and you can too.

Think about it.

The ability to forgive others for their misdeeds in life is ultimately a discovery of yourself and your character.

We all have situations in life that we wished, in hindsight, we had handled differently. But there is no going back in time. The best we can do is to move forward and try to learn from life’s sometimes harsh lessons. If we can do that, we will grow as people. If we are unable to do that, we only deceive ourselves and, in one way or another, either lie it away, or try to dilute the offense by summing it up as one “youthful indiscretion” after another. Which course you decide defines your character.

Which brings me to the following writings that I came across recently.

I have never once seen a happy homosexual. This is not to say there aren’t any; I simply haven’t seen one in my lifetime. Maybe they are all in the closet. All the homosexuals I’ve seen are sickly and decrepit, their eyes devoid of life.

Why is the pop music of today so bad? Because it is communist to the very core. It’s turning the children of America into sissies and preying on the minds of every American, making them weaker and weaker. And how about this humanoid (I’d hesitate to say person, and I would never use the word MAN) Boy George. It wears girl’s clothes and puts on makeup. When I hear it sing, ’Do you really want to hurt me, do you really want to make me cry,’ I say to myself, YES, I want to punch your lights out, pal, and break your ribs.’

When I first arrived at Bowdoin in the fall of 1980 the leftists were in complete control. To be sure the freedom lovers outnumbered the statists but they had been cowed into submission by the liberals.

I say let’s get those pinkos out of the music business and replace them with some tough conservatives.

The individual who composed those writings is none other than Cranston, Rhode Island Mayor Stephen P. Laffey (pictured left). The writings were anonymously submitted to The Providence Journal. Laffey confirmed being the author, but states that whoever sent the material to The Journal was desperately trying to smear him in the days leading up to the September 12th primary in an attempt to win the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. He lost to incumbent Senator Lincoln D. Chafee, a more moderate Republican, who supports full marriage rights for gay partners. Laffey opposes marriage equality for gays, but supports civil unions.

My first reaction to his writings was anger, immediately followed by a nasty-gram to the Mayor. You see, the Mayor himself does not have an official email address. I checked. I went to leave my message with his secretary, who does have an email address. I suppose with all the bad publicity with him being an apparent in-the-closet gay basher and all, they were getting hate mail left and right and decided to pull the email address. Or perhaps, I’m just being overly dramatic and he never had one to begin with. At any rate, after I composed it, I deleted it without sending it. Why, you ask?

You see, I’ve done the same thing in my life that Mayor Laffey has. In college, I’ve said things to people that I’m not proud of. If I could face those people today, I would say that I’m sorry. And yes, I’d actually mean it. If I could take back some insensitive remarks that I once made to an acquaintance of mine, I would. We were over for dinner, and I told a joke that used Polish People as the brunt of the joke. As it turns out, the person I told the joke to was of Polish heritage. It was an embarrassment for me and was awkward. I never apologized at the time, because I didn’t know what to say. I was in my twenty’s and didn’t handle it as gracefully as I would like to think I would handle it today. In fact, today, it wouldn’t happen. Over the years, I’ve tried to think how that must have made him feel inside. I made a joke, and he laughed at the joke. But isn’t that the same as someone cracking a gay joke in front of me without knowing I’m gay? I laugh to put on a good face. And when I leave, I take a piece of pain with me. I could have called the person on the crude joke, but I took the high ground and gracefully laughed at the joke, at my expense. Just as my friend did. But it’s hard for me to think that I didn’t in some way hurt him inside.

Then college student Laffey talked about breaking the ribs of a gay man (too close to home for me), and then said years later that they thought it was “funny”. And that is what sent me over the top and caused me to compose a rather scathing email to his secretary, that was deleted. A few others had similar takes to mine.

“My immediate reaction to Laffey’s comments, even though they were made long ago, is the same queasy feeling I got when I heard Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks,” said Dennis Byrnes, who lives in Cranston. “This is his core he was speaking from, his value system. He is a rabid bigot and it’s about time he was exposed. He even stoops to using his family’s misfortunes for his own political gain in his TV advertising. What more do rational people need to see about this man to know he is one twisted guy?”

“He should seek reconciliation with the gay community,” said Brummer. “From what I can see from the attack campaign he is running on Chafee, it is pretty evident that his beat people up mentality has not left him. Rather than showing us why he would be a good candidate, he uses passive violence in his campaign ads to show us why Chafee isn’t. I think that says his animosity toward other people hasn’t changed. He should apologize to the gay community and he should denounce violence against us.”

“Laffey’s disingenuous attempt to minimize the articles as ‘sophomoric political satire’ insults the intelligence of Rhode Island voters,” said Karen Izzo, the head of one of the state’s PFLAG chapters. (source)

And this from another angry writer on Laffey’s past writings...

Explaining his writings, Laffey said this weekend, “We were just having fun. We thought it was funny.”

Funny. Hmm. You know, I’d buy that, except I just don’t see any joke. Not even a bad joke. Not even a cruel joke. It’s just a hateful, bigoted comment. Where’s the humor in that?

Please, I’d like one of Stephen Laffey’s supporters to come on here and explain what exactly about the passage above is funny. Come on and tell me where the joke is.

The fact that Stephen Laffey still believes that comments like these are “fun” and “funny” shows that the problem isn’t just in the past. This isn’t matter of College Republican hijinks. It’s about a Republican candidate for high political office who thinks that it’s fun to insult people.

Stephen Laffey still has the obsession with hateful cruelty that he had back when he was in college. Maybe that attitude makes him a popular candidate with Republican voters, but it makes him unfit to be a United States Senator. (source)

So, we have Mayor Stephen Laffey who, years ago, said some pretty unsympathetic things towards gay people. Today, he dismisses those writings as an attempt to smear him during the campaign. He further dismisses them by stating that those statements do not represent his views, “No. Not now, nor then, or ever . . .”.

Then why write them? Why dismiss them as nothing more than “sophomoric political satire”?

Laffey further states, “Do I regret writing some of these things? Sure. But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.” Some of the things?

Would it also be “funny” if Mayor Laffey were on the receiving end of a gay bashing? That is the part of me that wants to say, “That would be a lesson to him of what we actually go through.” But that of course, is not the answer. The truth is, he hasn’t said anything worse than many other Republicans and Right-Wing hate mongers. Does that make it right? No. But that’s reality.

This is my big problem with Mayor Laffey. He dismisses his past actions and doesn’t make himself accountable for them. He excuses them away because he was young and dumb at the time, with phrases like “sophomoric political satire”, and, “But at the time, we were just having fun. We thought it was funny.” The difference between me and him is the realization that I understand that behind every single joke that is made at the expense of someone else, is TRUTH. He doesn’t understand that and is willing to dismiss it. This is the test of his character. The truth is, there was some truth to these writings being his beliefs. If that wasn’t the case, they never would have been written. The truth is that whenever you make a joke that disguises hatred in a more palatable form, the fact remains, there is hatred behind that joke. You can talk this away all day long, but it doesn’t change that fact.

If he were genuinely sorry about his past deeds, he does have at his disposal the means to make this right. If I were him, I would personally organize a meeting with the GLBT community, look them in the eye, and tell them, “I was wrong, and I am so sorry for the hurt that I have caused this community. I am also ashamed of my past remarks and what I have put my friends and loved ones through.” If he did that (and he meant it), all would be forgiven, and he could move on, because that act would speak volumes to the content of his character. To my knowledge, Mayor Laffey has not done this. But he can let us know (or not) if he has. I’m sending his secretary a link to this writing, just in case he would like to add anything that I’ve left out.

We all make mistakes. I’m willing to rectify mine, wherever I can. I embrace my mistakes, however painful that may be, and try to learn from them. That is how we grow. Why make another mistake by sending him an angry email, when his words have already done so much?

The ability to forgive others for their misdeeds in life is ultimately a discovery of yourself and your character. That’s true. I can forgive Mayor Laffey for his past deeds, but only after he asks for that forgiveness. It’s his call. It’s a test of his character.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that Mayor Laffey’s older brother was a gay man who abused drugs and later died from AIDS. Mayor Laffey should certainly know better. With a gay brother who was dealing with AIDS, he doesn’t even have the excuse of being ignorant to gay issues.

Sources used
Laffey penned anti-gay columns in college
Republican Laffey Says Anti-Gay Slurs Were Just a Joke
GLBT community responds to Senate candidate’s anti-gay past

Geez.... I gotta stop reading this fringe stuff. This is a piece of crap that I read while out in the blogosphere.

The Gay Lobby has been exploiting the tragic death of Matthew Shepherd ever since it occurred that night in Laramie in 1998.

Somehow, the powers that be at Valley High don’t have a problem violating their own profanity and vulgarity policy(page 34). Yes you can bet that my son wouldn’t be allowed to wear his True Story of Jack Schitt T-shirt to school at Valley but if you are “providing a teaching opportunity for diversity and acceptance,” of the Gay Agenda and of course teaching a valuable lesson about “hate crimes” like the one the Gay Lobby’s unintended martyr fell victim to, profanity and vulgarity are perfectly okay.

The truth is that Matthew Shepherd’s death was a brutal killing at the hands of a couple of vile shreds of human debris -- it wasn’t a “hate crime” because there is no such thing. Muddled and confused liberal thinking that presuppose that one person’s death is worth more than another’s because of certain arbitrary characteristics and the circumstances under which they were killed are what gave rise to “hate crime” legislation. Ever hear about the death of a heterosexual white male being branded a “hate crime”? Didn’t think so. But because white male Matthew Shepherd preferred his sex anally with a male, his death is supposed to be worth more than another white male that prefers vaginal sex with a woman. (source)

Let me dissect this a bit, but only a bit. I have to weigh how much energy I want to spend on this.

“The Gay Lobby has been exploiting the tragic death of Matthew Shepherd ever since it occured that night in Laramie in 1998.”

Actually, we (the “Gay Lobby” as you like to put it - why do they always say that - like there are a bunch of gay people down in the lobby or something, or that there actually is such a thing as a lobby with a gay sexual orientation?) finally had had enough of years and years and years of gay bashing that had gone unreported. What happened to Matthew was very common place. These crimes against “queers” were dismissed 98% of the time by people and law enforcement authorities. Matthew’s death was a second Stonewall of sorts; we finally hit the breaking point of hate crimes. There is a big difference in “exploiting” an issue, and taking a stick and drawing a line in the sand saying, “IT STOPS HERE!” Did hate crimes against gays stop with Matthew? Of course not. But what spawned out of that action was an entire network targeting hate crimes. Much of this awareness has also happened with such initiatives as The Larmie Project (which is the point of Mr. Bowers’ disgust), many websites discussing what happened to Matthew, and of course, the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

“But because white male Matthew Shepherd preferred his sex anally with a male, his death is supposed to be worth more than another white male that prefers vaginal sex with a woman.”

A bit hateful, aren’t we Mr. Bowers? Perhaps Steve Bowers should consider joining the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas; you know, the people who run the godhatesfags.com website (I refuse to link to them), used to protest at gay funerals but got tired of that (no press) and started protesting at military funerals because “America is tolerant of homosexuality” (more press)? I’m sure he would fit right in.

And by the way, Matthew’s last name is spelled “Shepard”, not “Shepherd”. Mr. Bowers, you owe him that much to get it right. I won’t even make the point that many straight couples prefer anal sex to “regular” sex. Don’t believe me? Do a little bit of scholarly research and find your own stats on this. Well, ok, I made the point. And why is it even a point that Matthew Shepard was a white male?

“The truth is that Matthew Shepherd’s death was a brutal killing at the hands of a couple of vile shreds of human debris -- it wasn’t a ‘hate crime’ because there is no such thing. Muddled and confused liberal thinking that presuppose that one person’s death is worth more than another’s because of certain arbitrary characteristics and the circumstances under which they were killed are what gave rise to ‘hate crime’ legislation. Ever hear about the death of a heterosexual white male being branded a ‘hate crime’?”

No, I’ve never heard of the death of a heterosexual white male being branded as a “hate crime”. You know why? BECAUSE GAYS DON’T GO AROUND BEATING THE LIFE OUT OF STRAIGHT WHITE MALES WHO HATE US. Maybe we should. I don’t know. Hate is a funny thing. It’s like a sword; it can cut both ways.

“Certainly the story of a 13-year-old anally-raped to death by a couple of sadistic bastards merits at least as much, if not more, attention by people concerned about ‘hate crimes’ than the ‘hate crime’ celebrated with a play intended to shame people into buying into the Gay Agenda. But we all know that it’s not about ‘hate crime’ at all -- it’s about the advancement of the Gay Agenda.”

This is the only valid point Mr. Bowers makes in his entire diatribe. I remember that story. A 13 year old child was raped by two men who were gay. This was several years ago. In my opinion Bowers is right, they were “sadistic bastards” that deserved whatever the law dished out to them. But, was that a “hate crime”? Steve Bowers is right that the story should have received the press it deserved. I heard about it, but it wasn’t out there in our faces like the story of what happened to Matthew, and it should have been.

Hate crimes can happen towards anyone of a given group. They are not about the gay community. The old adage that “all crimes are hate crimes” is crap. What was the impetus of the crime? The impetus of a hate crime is just that; hate. Was the crime motivated by hatred towards the target of the crime? Did the two men target the boy out of hatred, or opportunity? They certainly did despicable violence to him. They were certainly depraved animals with no sense of decency.

Hate crime laws target that impetus - the reason they happen in the first place. And if a group of gay men did go around beating the hell out of straight males - white or black - that too would be a hate crime, because they were targeted because they belonged to a group (white straight males) that the gays hated. This is the point so many people miss.

Is it right to return hate for hate? There was a time that I would have said no. But now, with more of the world doing this, the issue if becoming one of debate. A lot of people have been trying to answer this question for a very long time. It’s a process I believe. Israel seems to have little problem returning hate for hate. Israel has changed. I remember a time when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel that the last resort was war. They’ve had more experience at this sort of thing than me, so perhaps they are right?

As Herman Melville put it, “From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

But then what? What do we do after we hate? What do we do with that? Where do we go from there?

In my limited experience on this planet, hate is a pathway to nowhere. There’s nothing you can do with it except, hate more.