For a technologically advanced country as wealthy and capable as this one is, we are an astonishingly violent country. Whenever one of these mass killings happens I keep finding myself forlornly wishing we could have an honest national conversation about why. But we won’t. Already it’s instantly turning into yet another argument about guns and then it’s all just flag waving and static and nobody is listening anymore, except to themselves.

I wish we could have a conversation about violence. And in particular, about male violence. I honestly don’t think the image of the sex driven violence prone human male is accurate. I think it’s a careless stereotype. I think, like the way it can be with certain dogs, you beat it into males one way or another. You annihilate their capacity for sympathy, kill their ability to trust and love, and what is left, that all too human capacity for aggression and hate, well you just let it take root and grow, uninhibited. You beat the heart out of a boy, one way or another, and then you fill the void with hate…and it doesn’t matter who they hate, just that they hate, and that they are afraid not to hate.

From the bully culture in grade schools, to the pulpit thumpers who preach male supremacy over women, to the militaristic warrior culture that reaches from the pentagon to Wall Street, teaching a kind of human law of the jungle, dominate or be dominated, we systematically dehumanize our male citizens. Some days I look at what school kids have to go through, at the casual acceptance by our courts of male domestic violence, at the routine business-as-usual culture of predatory capitalism, at a conservative politics that claims letting working citizens to perish of sickness and disease is the highest kind of social morality, and I wonder that we aren’t even more violent than we already are.

I wish we could have this conversation. But no. We will have another bitter pointless argument about guns, and wash, rinse, repeat, until the next time some walking time bomb goes off and kills. And then we’ll do it all over again. And the bullies will still rule the school hallways, young men will still be fed the idea that their manhood depends on dominating women, predators in business suits will still raid and loot the life savings of working people and be exalted as job creators, preachers will still preach that god hates atheists, liberals and homosexuals and that god made man to rule over women, and politicians will win votes by promising to take food out of the mouths of poor people and be regarded as statesmen in their hometown newspapers. And we will go to bed some nights when the news is horrifying, wondering why oh why can’t Americans look at one another and see a neighbor whose life is worth cherishing too.

I saw the story of that Kansas City Chiefs murder/suicide fly across my Google news page, and reading the coverage I kept thinking, over and over I am not kidding, what about his girlfriend…?

The way that story is being covered, that taken-for-granted focus on the football player and the invisibility of the woman he killed, disgusts me. I read three news stories and I don’t even know the name of the woman he killed. But I know about the man who killed her in detail. Oh, such a tragedy, he was such a tremendous athlete, he had followed his dreams to the NFL…one of the stories I read ended on that note…and so on. But…wait a minute…he killed his lover and his child’s mother. Whatever his dreams were, honor and decency didn’t seem to be a part of them. And what of the woman he killed…what of her dreams?

I’m not saying the people close to this aren’t thinking of her…his team members, his coaches…they probably knew her personally. But…what of the news media? The way they’re reporting this so far as I’ve seen it is pretty disgusting.

That particular kind of crime completely sickens me, and I don’t understand the reflex I see sometimes to feel sorry for the killer too.  How on earth do you lay a hand in anger on the body of the one you have laid down with?  Yes, yes…I know lovers quarrel all the time and that’s just human nature.  And I know what it is to be dumped, and there is nothing in the world that hurts like it. Nothing. But to strike…let alone murder…it just boggles my mind how you cross that threshold.

If love is gone within you, never mind the other, then walk away from it man.  It can’t hurt so much because you’re still in love, if you’re swinging at them too. If you still loved them the hands that once caressed that body simply would not strike that body.  You just couldn’t do it.  So just walk away from it man, because that isn’t a broken heart it’s a wounded ego you’ve got, and if that’s all it takes to make you kill then what did you let yourself become.  Go away and think about that while you’ve still got a soul worth having.

Charles Mudede writes:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has done yeoman’s work on tracking violent groups, notes that “Currently, there are 1,018 known hate groups operating across the country, including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others. And their numbers are growing.” The Center’s data show that hate groups have increased by 69 percent in the last decade. And the so-called “Patriot” groups have increased nearly 800 percent since Obama became president.

If the news media and political leaders were told there were a thousand violence-prone Muslim groups operating in the United States, can you imagine the reaction? Yet, apart from the glancing attention given incidents like the Sikh temple massacre, the national discourse about terrorism focuses almost exclusively on Muslims.

The same goes if they were white and on the radical left.

I remember immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, nearly everyone figured Arab terrorists were responsible. Then it turned out a right wing lunatic did it.  Right wing lunatics have continued to kill people in this country ever since and yet when the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a report on anti-government right wing violence it was denounced by the republicans as a political attack.  As if the republican strategy of tearing the country apart for political advantage hasn’t itself been a political attack on the country they keep claiming to patriotically love.

The United States of America is fantastically more violent then any other industrialized nation and the tragedy is every time a domestic terrorist attack happens any hope of talking about why that is so quickly devolves into an argument about guns.  Guns don’t matter.  What matters is how much hatred there is now between Americans.  What matters is one of the two major American political parties has for decades actively sought to incite that hatred for political gain.  They have courted the racist vote.  They have courted the misogynist vote.  They have courted the votes of religious bigots, xenophobes and homophobes.  And that has had consequences.

But we can’t talk about them.  We can talk about how our enemies hate us, but we can’t talk about how we hate each other.  Because that would be a politically motivated attack on the people who have made tearing the country apart in order to get the bigger half their election strategy for decades.  For some reason that is a wrong thing.

Writing fiction is hard. Writing good believable human dialog is very hard. You have to have an ear for listening. I sat in a jury box once, on a case where the accused was charged with a very horrible series of crimes against an individual. One of the places where the prosecution lost me was when the alleged victim testified their attacker said something to them and it sounded more like bad dialog from a low budget crime movie then anything anyone would actually say in the middle of a violent kidnapping and robbery. I’m not saying I’m the world’s greatest listener, and you can’t always tell when somebody is making things up, but I suspect that for most of us it’s pretty obvious when someone is trying to invent dialog, write a scene as it were, and they’re no damn good at it.

You will die tonight. You will die tonight. You will die tonight. Yeah. Right George. Maybe it’s God’s will that you can’t shut the fuck up like your lawyer probably wants you to if he’s any damn good.

So Zimmerman is out of touch. Nobody could have predicted this obviously.  Here’s my two cents: What I have been seeing, admittedly from a distance and in second third and forth hand telling, is a man who is fundamentally stupid in some ways, has anger problems, but is remarkably quick witted.

Consider: if he shot that kid after he had him down on the ground and the kid was crying out for help, and then told the first witness on the scene that he was the one crying for help, that says a lot.  A very disturbing lot.  Stupid people can still be very quick witted like that.  Especially if they’ve had a lot of practice at it.  My hunch is he’s been good up until now at getting away with things.  And this time his lack of internal brakes finally took him into a very bad place and he’s out of his depth and now he’s afraid.

This is what I see…from a distance…second, third and forth hand…take it for what it’s worth: He was never hiding from black anger.  He knew what he did that day.  He knew.  It’s been replaying in an infinite loop over and over again in his thoughts.  What he did.  What could happen to him if people find out.  The public posturing is that he is afraid of black revenge.  No.  He has been in hiding all this time from the law.  It isn’t black anger he’s afraid of.  It’s the Florida gas chamber. Remote as that possibility may be in actuality, because let’s face it, the kid was black and this is Florida, it’s been looming over him ever since he pulled the trigger.  Pulled the trigger on a teenaged boy who was crying desperately for anyone to come help.  He knows what he did that night.

This sudden escape…his attorneys backing out…I’m guessing there is evidence out there that is terrifying him right now and that these lawyers just don’t want their names remembered in what is to come.

[Update...] I’m reading now that Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey may charge Zimmerman as early as today.  This is interesting:

Corey has indicated in recent weeks that she might not need a grand jury to bring charges against Zimmerman.

My hunch here since Zimmerman’s lawyers announced they lost contact with him has been that there is evidence out there that he hoped or trusted the Standford police would simply ignore once he claimed a “stand your ground” defense.  Then the shooting of Trayvon Martin became national news and that evidence is still out there and it is terrifying him.  I think Corey saying she did not need a grand jury to press charges is indicative that she has that evidence. Of course I could be spectacularly wrong about all of this.  Like everyone else in the nation (except Zimmerman and Corey) I know what I know many steps removed from the actual evidence.  But this seems to fit.  Also this from Zimmerman’s former lawyers:

Lawyers Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig on Tuesday expressed concern about Zimmerman’s emotional and physical well-being, saying he has taken actions without consulting them. They also said they do not know where Zimmerman is.

“You can stop looking in Florida,” Uhrig told reporters. “Look much further away than that.”

At a guess…he’s no longer in the country.  His father is a retired judge.  Be interesting to know if Zimmerman’s former lawyers had any talks with the father before they bailed.

[Update...]  I’m reading now that in Florida you can’t charge someone with first degree murder without a grand jury indictment.  So whatever Corey has, or thinks she does, it seems it’s not enough for that.

Thing is…she would know what a high hurtle she is facing because of “stand your ground.”  If it’s not a serious charge with evidence to back it up then it may as well be no charge at all.

[Update...] He’s in custody so I hear, which means he didn’t flee so far after all.  Why is lawyers lost contact with him and one of them said “look much further away” beats me.  But he has a new lawyer who I’m hearing was calling “stand your ground” a license to murder just a few days ago.  But a good lawyer defends their client regardless of personal belief or they don’t take that client on.  Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder, which as I understand it in Florida is you didn’t plan it, but you did it deliberately nonetheless.  I’ve heard nothing so far about the evidence she has.

I’m wondering what the autopsy showed.  I keep hearing that Trayvon Martin was found face down on the grass.  The witnesses say they saw, unclearly, two figures, one on top of the other and then there was a shot.  One witness, who was later “corrected” by the police says she saw Zimmerman on top and then heard two shots.  So did the autopsy show that Martin was shot in the back?  Was the bullet found?  Was it in the ground below Martin or somewhere else?  Did Corey spend all this time knowing the evidence at least supported second degree murder but trying to find evidence to support first degree murder and she decided she could not successfully prove that much?

Details of the horrific events in Norway will continue to unfold no doubt for weeks, if not months to come. So it is well that we all just take a deep breath and wait for solid information to come out. I understand the impulse to think it was radical Islamic terrorism when the news first hit; it was my first reaction too. But I remembered Oklahoma City and held my peace and waited. And now it seems from the facts coming to light, that this was indeed more Oklahoma City then 9/11…

UPDATE 2, Saturday, July 23, 11:06 a.m. EDT: Oddmy Estenstad, an employee of agricultural retailer Felleskjøpet, tells CNN that Utoya shooting suspect Anders Behring Breivik bought six tons of fertilizer from the company in May:

She did not think the order was strange at the time because the suspect has a farm, but after Friday’s explosion in Norway’s capital, Oslo, she called police because she knew the material can be used to make bombs.

“We are very shocked that this man was connected to our company,” said Estenstad. “We are very sad about what happened.”

That sounds vaguely familiar. But bear in mind there is still an investigation going on and we really still don’t know much. This passage from the suspect’s postings to an anti-Muslim website struck me though…

I dare not even think of how many Norwegian children who have been suicide because of these experiences (assault, robbery, rape, psychological terror committed by Muslim youths). There are probably several hundred in the last 15 years.

….Non-Muslim youth in Oslo aged 12-18 are in a particularly vulnerable situation in terms of harassment [from] Muslim youth.

This from a man who (it is said) methodically killed 80 kids at a youth camp, some while they were swimming away for their lives. Always, the monster the bigot sees in others is themselves. And they are right to fear that monster.

This is another edition of what Atrios said…  Actually, Rotwang…

It is very difficult to get someone committed against their will, unless they have committed violent acts. After all, I’m still at large. In states with big public sectors, aid for the mentally ill — assuming they accept assistance — can be very spotty. There are agencies with phone numbers, but try calling and getting some service. (I have.) In Arizona, forget it.

The icing on the cake is that in some places almost everyone has access to firearms. Efforts to deal with guns or magazines or bullets are doomed, like Prohibition or ‘The War on Drugs.’ There are just too many around, and too many people who want them. Better coverage of mental illness would be worthwhile, but it wouldn’t stop homicidal people from reflecting back the hostilities of extremists with prominent platforms. We know who the extremists are.

P.S. I would concede that some kind of gun control would make it more difficult for incompetent, crazy people like Nutboy to get guns. As crime control, however, forget it.

P.P.S. An attack of this intensity on a Congress person is an exceedingly rare event, so in that sense it’s futile to diddle with ‘how could this have been prevented.’

Glenn Greenwald Tweets somewhat sarcastically, “Remember the 1960s, when 1000s of people were involuntarily locked up in insane asylums and there were no assassinations? http://is.gd/kAbza”

I remember part of the impetus for getting people out of the asylums was far too many were committed who didn’t really need hospitalization, and the ones who did weren’t getting it as long as they were being held safely out of public view.  In far too many cases they were more dumping grounds then hospitals.

It’s tempting to engage in a little sarcasm myself when I hear my fellow liberals start yapping about gun control now.  Hey fellas…I’ve got a Swell idea on how to lower the temperature of the rhetoric in this country…let’s start making noises about gun control…!

Yes…this will certainly lower the temperature of the dialogue in this country.  But then there’s this…

Joe Wilson ‘You Lie’ Slogan Etched Onto Line Of Assault Rifle Components

Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) health care-era “you lie” interruption of President Obama is now reportedly being commemorated with a place on a new, limited edition line of assault rifle components.

The Columbia Free Times reports that the words are being engraved on a series of lower receivers manufactured for popular AR-15 assault rifles. Lower receivers are one of the primary pieces of the firearms.

“Palmetto State Armory would like to honor our esteemed congressman Joe Wilson with the release of our new ‘You Lie’ AR-15 lower receiver,” the weapon manufacturer’s site writes on the product description. “Only 999 of these will be produced, get yours before they are gone!”

I believe the 2nd amendment guarantees the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms.  I believe that freedom is part and parcel of democracy itself.  And I despair.  Never mind the lunatics who are selling the above back handed incitement to kill a president (I sincerely hope the Secret Service is watching where those rifles are going!).  Never mind the NRA’s grotesquely dogmatic stances on gun regulation and crime.  The biggest reason we can’t have a rational discussion about gun control in this country is the gun control crowd was very successful back in the 70s in convincing people that their ultimate aim was to eliminate private gun ownership in this country.  People quite correctly concluded that even the smallest most perfectly rational regulations on gun sales and ownership was just a first step toward total confiscation.  That wasn’t paranoia…it was often stated quite openly by gun control groups.

That seems to have changed on the democratic side of the isle.  Good.  But it isn’t enough to get us to where we need to be regarding guns.  There’s a lot of things I think we could do, including bans on high capacity clips for instance.  But the first step has to be acknowledging Americans, if they are peaceful and law abiding, do in fact have a basic right to own their own guns, which is to say, the means to defend themselves.

How denying that somehow became a staple of democratic politics completely baffles me sometimes.  I understand and share the liberal democratic impulse to hate war, revere life, nurture love and defend liberty, to work for justice and toward the peaceful society where we are all equals in the eyes of the law.  I am completely disgusted by the the republican lock them up and throw away the key approach to crime.  That we incarcerate a higher percentage of our own citizens then any other industrialized nation should be a matter of shame to all of us.  But if democrats represent the interests of the common everyday working people as opposed to the rich and powerful, then they really need to remind themselves from time to time that the lot of the common people is not greatly improved by rendering them defenseless.

I am not going to stand here and argue that had someone in Gifford’s crowd been armed some or all of the killings may not have happened. I’m certainly not going to argue that a state that can’t at least Try to keep guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people isn’t asking for trouble. The argument I often hear that an armed society is a peaceful one seems grotesque on its face.  You need your gun when the peace has broken down, not when its alive and well.  So the first thing is to nurture the peace.

I was bullied horribly during part of my grade school years, the middle school ones, and it left me with a perfect understanding of how it is that your personal safety and security is ultimately on you and you alone.  You need to prepare yourself for the worst.   But having a fire alarm in your house is a pathetic excuse for playing with matches and gasoline.  What…I had a smoke detector…why is my house on fire…?? The bromide is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  But turn that around.  Guns don’t make a peaceful society either.  People do.  And one way you Don’t make a peaceful society is this:

Or this…

Or this…

And this…

And this…

That last is from an ad that was televised in West Virginia as part of the campaign to enact an anti-same-sex marriage amendment in that state.  It’s a family in the crosshairs of an unseen homosexual sniper.  More specifically, the unseen homosexual sniper is targeting their children.  This is what gets people killed.  This is what makes a society violent.  This is creating the climate of hate that can set off a mentally unstable individual.   But also the perfectly, murderously sane gay basher.  Your gay and lesbian neighbors have been on the receiving end of this hate incited violence now for decades.  What’s changed is now the right is doing it more broadly, and more openly, and with even less compunction.  What we’ve been seeing in this country in recent years, your gay and lesbian neighbors have been seeing for decades.  A climate of hate, meticulously, relentlessly cultivated for political and social ends.

There’s your problem.  Not guns.  Hate.  Last Saturday it was a crazy man.  Tomorrow it might be the chillingly sane.  Timothy McVeigh.  Eric Rudolph.  Scott Roeder.  One political party has been ginning up hate as a way to win elections for decades now.   The problem is when the inevitable violence results the other party responds by calling for more gun control, as if that’s even possible in a nation that hates itself as much as this one is starting to.

I understand that first amendment freedoms are sacred to a democracy.  If we can’t talk to each other we can’t govern ourselves.  Speech, even ugly disagreeable speech, is a right government cannot be allowed to trample on without opening the door to tyranny.  Our ability to speak truth to power depends on that freedom.  My hope is the killings in Arizona can finally, finally, enable us to also speak truth to hate without fear that we could sabotage freedom of speech in the process.  If we don’t confront hate we will loose that too.  Hate will silence the democratic dialogue if we let it, and then we Will loose our precious democracy.

All the gun control in the world won’t matter if we hate each other enough.  And if we love and care about each other as neighbors, as fellow Americans, regardless of race, creed or religion, then guns cannot do us any great harm.  Just there in the background, like the fireman’s hose if you need it, but the point is not to.  How much crime could be eliminated if we actually cared about each other as fellow Americans enough to make our schools strong, and the economy work for everyone?  How many gun accidents could be avoided if we cared about each other enough that we held our neighbor’s safety, and their children’s, as if it were our own?  Yes actually, guns do kill people.  When people hate each other enough.  If you’re worrying about the availability of guns in this country you are worrying about the wrong thing.

Today is the National Transgender Day Of Remembrance…

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality conducted the largest survey of transgender discrimination. Among its findings were one quarter of transgender people lost a job for being transgender and high rates of housing instability and homelessness. The survey also revealed double the rates of poverty for transgender people compared to the general population. The data indicate that transgender people have higher vulnerability to violence. It also found that more than half of transgender and gender non-conforming people who were bullied, harassed or assaulted in school because of their gender identity have attempted suicide.

Gender non-conforming people… A lot of people fall into that category who might mistakenly assume that violence toward transgendered persons isn’t any of their concern. But the gay man casually holding the hand of the man he loves, the uppity straight woman, the insufficiently masculine and aggressive boy, all are regarded as fair prey by thugs, and for exactly the same reason.

“I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex – but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings. On the contrary, don’t interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary. It is a mistake for various interfering, ignorant, and biased busybodies to try to “counsel” the other children into accepting the abnormal. It is very healthy to be able to draw the line between what is healthy and what is sick.”
-Joseph Berger, NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee

Many people who read that when it first hit the blogstream were appalled.  What kind of man actually advocates bullying a child?  But it is a vanishingly short distance between aggression toward adults perceived as weak, and children who are by nature vulnerable. The mindset of the adult who would excuse the one, is unlikely to shrink from the other, or even understand that it is wrong.

There are two parts to the gay rights struggle.  There is the freedom to love and be loved in return.  There is the freedom from the closet, to live our lives openly, honestly, as the persons we actually are.  No decent society denies these to its own.  Our struggle then, and those of our transgendered neighbors, are one and the same.  Against gender conformity.  Against hatred of difference.  But understand also, that the struggle of transgendered people in the broader sense reminds us that the American dream of liberty and justice for all is still very much an unfinished business.

Via Dan Savage over at SLOG. Tony “why of course bullies don’t go to church” Perkins take note…

Girl Beaten for Having “Boy’s Name”

What’s in a name? A 12-year-old girl at Hernando Middle School in Mississippi was beaten by five fellow students — reportedly because they said her name, Randi, was “a boy name.”"They started talking about me like I was a man,” she told local news station WREG. “That I shouldn’t be in this world. And my name was a boy name.” The four girls and a boy surrounded her after a Fellowship of Christian Students meeting, and, she said, kicked her in the rib and leg, hit her in the face, sat on her, pushed her face into the floor, and threw her onto a cafeteria table.

It was caught on tape apparently. However, officials at Hernando Middle School have tastefully agreed to keep the incident hidden from public view, and keep the police out of it.

A school administrator issued a statement, said WREG, that “fighting is not tolerated and that disciplinary action will be taken to the fullest extent of the law.” No charges were filed, however, because the police were not called. Whether the attack was an isolated incident or part of ongoing bullying remains unknown.

As Savage says, this isn’t simply a disciplinary matter, this was a violent attack on a twelve year old girl whose only crime was having the name Randi. By not calling the police, school administrators are abetting a criminal act. I suppose that because they were part of a Fellowship of Christian Students the school administration felt they must have had noble motives. Perhaps they were just trying to save her soul from eternal damnation for having the name her parents gave her.

The girl in question is said not to be gay herself, and that would be beside the point except for the fact that some parents seem to think that only gay kids are at risk for anti-gay bullying. But bullying is a sickness that pervades an entire school, terrorizing anyone who might even be thought to be fair game, and the message from Perkins and others of his kind is that those who are different, merely by their existence, threaten civilization itself. Out of one side of their mouths they say Love The Sinner. Out of the other its Hate The Sin.

Oh, and that were we to simply let them live their lives in peace marriage will be destroyed, the terrorists will win and civilization itself will crumble and fall.

Here’s how that plays out in the lives of children: Four girls and a boy surrounded a twelve year old girl after a Fellowship of Christian Students meeting, kicked her in the rib, kicked her leg, hit her in the face, sat on her, pushed her face into the floor, and then threw her onto a cafeteria table. Perhaps they then went home and read their bibles. See how much we love you Jesus…look what we did to Randi…

Wash, wash your hands before the multitudes Tony.

Like many people I suppose, I’m following the story of Roman Polanski reluctantly…drawn into it against my better judgment.  It’s an ugly affair but there is far more ugliness in the public chatter surrounding it.  In 1977, the year he was arrested and tried, I had just tentatively begun to come out to my circle of friends and I had my own issues with human sexuality.  I wasn’t all that interested in the sexual trials and tribulations of a 44 year old Hollywood glitterati, other then how it re-enforced my perceptions of the heterosexual double standard.  Had his thirteen year old victim been a boy I had little doubt his film making career would have been over instantly and his name would be poison in the film industry.  But Hollywood seemed perfectly willing to forgive him his use of a thirteen year old girl as sexual junk food.  Probably because it was something practiced among the Hollywood rich and powerful all the time.  His crime it seemed, if any, was that he had allowed it to make headlines.

So now it’s back in the headlines again, and I’m watching the stories fly across my Google News page with the same sense of irritable astonishment.  Hello…look at all the people who were outraged at the way the Catholic church aided and abetted child molesting priests, coming to Polanski’s defense.  I have to wonder in retrospect how much of that outrage was because they took sexual advantage of kids at the same time they’re preaching about sexual purity, or because they were homosexuals and the victims were boys.  How much ink would have been spilled on the scandal had the victims been girls instead?  But this passage from Polanski’s victim, now an adult who just wants to not have to deal with it anymore, struck me…

She spoke with People magazine in 1997. After her mother went to police, "all hell broke loose," Geimer said. The European media compared her to Lolita, the young seductress in fiction.

"The fallout was worse than what had happened that night," she told People. "It was on the evening news every night. Reporters and photographers came to my school and put my picture in a European tabloid with the caption Little Lolita. They were all saying, ‘Poor Roman Polanski, entrapped by a 13-year-old temptress.’ I had a good friend who came from a good Catholic family, and her father wouldn’t let her come to my house anymore."

Against that backdrop, the plea deal was struck.

Afterward, Geimer shut down emotionally and rebelled, she told People on the 20th anniversary of the crime.

"I was this sweet 13-year-old girl, and then all of a sudden I turned into this pissed-off 14-year-old,’ Geimer said. I was mad at my attorney; I was mad at my mom. I never blamed her for what happened, but I was mad that she had called the police and that we had to go through this ordeal. Now I realize she went through hell trying to handle things as best she could."

Geimer dropped out of school, got pregnant at 18 and married at 19. She divorced and moved with her family to Hawaii. She later married a carpenter, with whom she had two more children.

This reminded me of something I’d read a couple years ago in a New York Times story about a gay kid and the family who loved and accepted him just as he was…

Cindy and Dan O’Connor were very worried about Zach. Though bright, he was doing poorly at school. At home, he would pick fights, slam doors, explode for no reason. They wondered how their two children could be so different; Matt, a year and a half younger, was easygoing and happy. Zach was miserable.

The Times story is as heartwarming as the tale of Roman Polanski is grotesque.  Zach’s parents loved their gay kid, and tried their level best to make sure he knew it, even as the kid struggled with terrible fears and doubts about himself.  But both stories contain this little nugget of fact: both kids turned from sweet little dears into sullen, angry, and self destructive shells of their former selves almost in an instant.  And it wasn’t simply a case of raging adolescent hormones that did it.  They had both been sexually abused.  Geimer directly and physically.  O’Connor, though his parents tried their absolute best to protect him from it, by the culture of anti-gay hate he was growing up in.

The misery Zach caused was minor compared with the misery he felt. He says he knew he was different by kindergarten, but he had no name for it, so he would stay to himself. He tried sports, but, he says, “It didn’t work out well.” He couldn’t remember the rules. In fifth grade, when boys at recess were talking about girls they had crushes on, Zach did not have someone to name.

By sixth grade, he knew what “gay” meant, but didn’t associate it with himself. That year, he says: “I had a crush on one particular eighth-grade boy, a very straight jock. I knew whatever I was feeling I shouldn’t talk about it.” He considered himself a broken version of a human being. “I did think about suicide,” he says.

Though I never hated myself for being gay, I know something of the misery that kid was going through.  I wrote about it Here…

That was so me.  And looking back on it after mom retired, I never really appreciated how bad I was.  Then when mom passed away, I inherited her diaries.  And I saw it all then.  It was very painful reading…

Bruce came home in a very bad mood.  Stomped into the bedroom…  So I called up J*** & went over to her place for the rest of the evening.  He had my stomach just tied up in knots…Oh how I wish he would turn back to the Lord & become like the little boy I once knew, kind, thoughtful, & love for all…

But I wasn’t her little boy anymore, let alone bloody likely to walk back into a church where I would be demonized as an abomination in the sight of God.  I was a young man with a young man’s needs and doubts and heartbreaks, all the more confusing and difficult to deal with not so much because I was gay, as that I couldn’t talk to the one person in my life who by all rights should have known me better then anyone, and who might have been able to give me some guidance, but mostly just love, when I needed it most.  And love she Did give me…but it had, or so I felt, strings attached.  Strings I was terrified to break.

She absolutely positively didn’t want me to come out to her. Every time I even went near the subject of my sexual orientation she would get cold and angry herself and throw up a wall. So I just accepted the fact that we could never talk about it, and I always had to keep that part of me inside when I was in the house.  So when my first love left me, and then my second try went very bad on me, and then my third, and I was a miserable desolate wreak inside, I had to keep it inside.  I grew increasingly sullen and angry. 

Even my friends back then, who were mostly straight, saw it.  It was a time before the Internet, and easy access to information about the greater gay community beyond my doorstep.  I only knew of a few seedy bars downtown, where I really didn’t want to be.  To get my weekly copy of the Washington D.C. gay paper, The Blade, or the Advocate, I had to venture down to this really squalid adult bookstore in nearby Wheaton.  Gay kids nowadays will, thankfully, never know how alone and isolated it felt to be gay back then.  Most of my friends were straight kids I knew from my high school days, and I really couldn’t talk much to them either, as counter-cultural tolerant as they were (though some of them not so much really).  But none of them could have given me what mom might have been able to, had we both lived in a different world.

If only I’d had a chance to open up to her about what was going on in my life, if only I’d had her to talk to then, I might have been a lot less angry, a lot less miserable. My temper was always flaring. I would storm into my room and sulk for hours. I knew I was having "anger management" issues back then, but in retrospect I never thought I was as bad as I was, until I read her diaries.

It isn’t just Roman Polanski’s apologists who are hypocrites here.  The deeper, uglier hypocrisy hangs around all the sexual moralists now venting at Polanski’s apologists, who themselves see nothing wrong with sexually brutalizing children.  From clergy thumping their pulpits that god considers homosexuality an abomination, to right wing pundits and politicians raging against the homosexual menace, to the hostile hate filled mobs that pack school board meetings to rage against anti-bullying rules that protect gay kids, to the child abusers in every ex-gay ministry that teach gay kids to fear their bodies and hate themselves, the only difference in kind between them all and Roman Polanski is that Polanski, as near as I can determine, never said he boozed up and raped that girl because he loved her and wanted to bring her closer to God.

It’s not just gay kids who suffer at the hands of these human hating thugs.  Read this blog post about the criminalization of teenage sexuality and try not to cry.  As Ed Brayton writes on Dispatches From The Culture Wars…

The age at which the most people are convicted of "sexual assault" is fourteen. Fourteen. And no doubt some of those were actual sexual assaults. But the vast majority of them were not. The vast majority of them were kids convicted of statutory rape. And they are then, in most states, considered sex offenders for the rest of their lives. A taste of why this essay is so important, first on how easy it is to become one of those statistics:

It takes so little for this happen to a child. A girl in school has oral sex with a boy in school. She becomes a sex offender for the rest of her life. Streaking a school event, as a practical joke, becomes a sex crime in the new America. Two kids "moon" a passerby and are incarcerated in jail as sex offenders, where they may well learn a lesson or two about rape. A teenager, who takes a sexy of photo of him, or herself, is paraded around the community as a "child pornographer" for the rest of his or her life…

If you think this was an unintended result of the past couple decades of right wing hysteria over child sexual abuse, you are not paying attention.  This is exactly what they wanted to accomplish.  Not the persecution of child molesters, but of children.  Because they must hate their bodies.  Because they must hate themselves, all of them, gay and straight alike.  They must hate themselves.  And most of all, they must fear joy. 

This isn’t rocket science.  Our children are our future.  The way we treat them is the judgment we pronounce every day upon the human race.  When you see someone treating them like crap you have to wonder if that’s not because they think the human race is crap and doesn’t deserve to survive.  And many do.  If you think child molesting louts like Polanski are the bottom of the human gutter you haven’t looked down into it very far and I can’t say I blame you.  Nietzsche was right about gazing for too long into an abyss…

To Polanski’s defenders I can only say this: No means No.  That simply should not even be an arguable thing.  I understand the reflex to push back against American sexual hypocrisy.  But: No means No.  Furthermore, if you are a grown adult and the person whose pants you’re trying to get into is a kid, Yes means No too.  They may come onto you.  They may think they get it.  But they don’t.  Not the way you do.  Your job is to set an example, to show them what it is to be the grownup they ache to become.  How often do you bellyache about corporate greed and political avarice?   How often do you rail against the coarseness of American culture, the casual off-handed brutality of a might-makes-right morality?  Did you ever blast the cigarette companies for pushing their health damaging addictive wares onto kids?  You take sexual advantage of a kid, and for sure that kid will grow up with an understanding that taking advantage of someone weaker and more vulnerable then them for your own greedy pleasures isn’t so wrong after all.  Is that what you want? 

You need to be the kind of person you want that kid to grow up to be.  You need to live the kind of life you want the world of tomorrow to become.  Yes, sex is wonderful.  Sex is one of this life’s perfect joys.  But only where No means No and grownups don’t take advantage of naive youngsters, itching to grow up quickly.  If you want kids to grow up strong and proud and beautiful and unafraid of their sexual selves, then adults who take advantage of them must be held accountable.  For the sake of all those strong, proud, beautiful kids and the tomorrow they represent.

As for the voices from the kook pews now crying hypocrite at Polanski’s defenders: If sex, as your kind is so fond of saying, is for making babies, then hating human sexuality is also a way of hating the future, hating the human race.  You warp a kid emotionally to the point they are incapable of having a healthy sexual relationship with anyone, and you are damaging not only that kid, but everyone that kid takes into their arms, and whatever children they might bear.  I am perfectly aware that this is fine with you. 

You teach them abstinence not to keep them healthy and strong but because you know perfectly well that teenage girls will get pregnant, that kids who don’t know how to protect themselves from STDs will get horribly sick and you believe that motherhood, sickness and death are just punishments for enjoying sex for its own sake, just punishments for living life for its own sake.  Didn’t the bible say that Eve’s punishment for disobeying god was to bear the pain of childbirth?  Children should be afraid of joy as you are.  They should loath their human bodies as you do.  They should hate their flesh and blood life and this good earth and all of human existence as much as you will until the day you die.  Your problem with Roman Polanski is that he took pleasure in sex, not that he raped a young girl.  Women are supposed to submit to the authority of men aren’t they?  Were Polanski a moral man he would have broken that kid’s heart without taking any physical pleasure from it.

The next time a case of child sexual abuse hits the headlines, please kindly shut the fuck up, because you are no better then that criminal is.  Wait…let me amend that.  You are worse.

So I’m reading this morning that one of god’s little right hands shot a doctor to death…in his church…during services…

Kan. abortion doc killed in church; suspect held

WICHITA, Kan. – Dr. George Tiller, who remained one of the nation’s few providers of late-term abortions through decades of protests and attacks, was shot and killed Sunday in a church where he was serving as an usher and his wife was in the choir.

The gunman fled, but a 51-year-old suspect was arrested some 170 miles away in suburban Kansas City three hours after the shooting, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Tom Stolz said.

Andrew Sullivan writes that Bill O’Reilly painted a bull’s eye on the doctor during one of his shows. John Aravosis reminds us that President Obama caved recently to right wing demands to bottle up or tone down a report on domestic terrorism.  At some point, this naton is going to have to confront its right wing hate mongers and their willing tools.  Either that, or let them cow us all into the facist theocracy of their dreams.  In the meantime, I am on vacation and I have a new mantra…

…I will not become a misanthrope…I will not become a misanthrope…I will not become a misanthrope…

The Consumerist has a post up warning about a new rash of ATM Card Skimming devices being installed into the wild.  Apparently the devices are getting smaller and easier for just about anyone to use.  Placed over the real ATM card reader slot, they are often used in conjunction with fake mirrors or brochure holders that have hidden cameras in them to record your fingers entering your PIN number…

Pay a little extra attention next time you use an ATM.  That would also include gasoline pump card readers too I imagine.   Photos of what the devices look like on The Consumerist website.

First time I left Disney World and walked back into the real one it was to headlines screaming at me that over 170 people had been killed in coordinated terrorist attacks in India.  This time:

Binghamton Rampage Leaves 14 Dead, Police Don’t Know Motive

By 10:33 a.m., the shooting was over and 14 people — including the gunman — lay dead, the chief said.

At least four people were listed in critical condition. Earlier, sources said as many as 26 people were wounded.

3 Pittsburgh officers killed; suspect taken after standoff

An ambush that resulted in the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh policemen was precipitated by an emergency call from the gunman’s mother over a dog urinating in the house.

…later identified as Richard "Pop" Poplawski, 22. A dishonorably charged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a "Zionist nation" revoking his right to own guns.

Breakup ignited dad’s deadly rage in Graham

He jumped in a car with oldest daughter Maxine, 16, who tracked her mother through a cellphone global-positioning system.

They homed in on a convenience store 20 miles away in Auburn, north of the Muckleshoot Casino. James confronted his wife, who was with another man. He wanted her home. She said she wasn’t coming back.

He stormed home, consulted relatives and calmed down. Maxine went to bed about 11 p.m. with her four younger siblings. She sent a classmate a text message from her cellphone: "I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed."

Within hours, James Harrison, 34, grabbed a rifle and shot each child multiple times. Four were found in bed. One of the girls died in the bathroom after a violent struggle.

Armed with a second rifle, he returned to Auburn on Saturday morning, perhaps in hopes of finding his wife. Perhaps to kill again. Instead, sitting inside his running SUV, he turned the rifle on himself. His body was discovered about 8 a.m. by children playing in the area.

Welcome back to Realityland Bruce…

Oh…and the Iowa Supreme Court Unanimously decided that not letting same sex couples marry was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection.  I should be happy about that and I am, but I dread reading the news accounts because inevitably they have to give the gutter a chance to spit on gay people, happy couples, and all their hopes and dreams.  But more and more I’m seeing words like these, finally…

There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to imagine, however inaccurately, that gay sex was in and of itself a self-destructive pathology, something no happy, healthy person would willingly engage in. That time is past. The evidence of stable, loving relationships between well-adjusted, successful people is all around us. Indeed, this abundant evidence–and not the tides of the sexual revolution, which peaked more than three decades ago and have since receded–is the reason that gay rights, and in particular the question of gay marriage, have moved so quickly in recent years.

That time is past…  Yes, for the people willing to let reality speak for itself.  I am of a generation of Americans who were taught all kinds of horrible, filthy lies about gay people, and not simply in school, but in church, in the movies, in magazines and newspapers, and on TV.  Where we were not dangerous sexual psychopaths we were contemptible faggots.  When I was 17, and just beginning to grasp that I was gay myself, I got the message about how people felt about homosexuals from just about every direction I looked…

Mad #145, Sept ‘71, from "Greeting Cards For The
Sexual Revolution" – "To A Gay Liberationist"

At the beginning of James Burke’s PBS series The Day The Universe Changed, he tells a story of some students of philosophy, bragging to the teacher about how ignorant people were to think that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun orbited around the earth rather then the other way around.  How ignorant, said the students, when all they had to do was just look up and observe the sun rising as the earth turned.  Yes, said the teacher, but I wonder how it would have looked to them had the sun actually been orbiting the earth?  The point being that it would have looked the same.  Sometimes what we see is what our knowledge tells us we’re seeing.  And for generation upon generation, people have been taught to see gay people as monsters…sick, perverted, disgusting, pathological monsters.

Which was how we saw ourselves for so very long.  That time is past.  And years of living openly and proudly are having their effect on anyone open to the evidence.  But there’s one more movement to go in this civil rights dance…

Gay Bashing Suspect: ’The Faggot Deserved It’

A 62-year-old man assaulted in an alleged hate crime in a Vancouver gay bar remains in hospital care.

In the wake of the attack, the local GLBT community has mounted protests against the attack, as well as a string of earlier incidents that may also have been anti-gay hate crimes.

On March 17, Xtra.ca reported that a witness described how the suspect, 35-year-old Shawn Woodward, declared, "He’s a faggot. He deserved it" after allegedly striking Richie Dowrey in the face, knocking him down.

The suspect also reportedly declared, "I’m not a fag. The faggot touched me. He deserved it."

The alleged bashing took place at a gay bar, The Fountainhead Pub, in Vancouver’s West End.

Said the witness, Dowrey’s friend Lindsay Wincherauk, "[Dowrey] fell like a board to the ground so hard that a hollow thud could be heard throughout the bar."

Dowrey reportedly suffered severe brain damage.

Said Wincherauk, "There’s a chance if he survives he won’t walk again."

The sun doesn’t just suddenly rise on a day when we are an equal and respected part of our communities.  What happens is gradually, step by step, the chains that hate put on our lives slowly loose their power over us, and we walk free.  But we are not free yet.  The simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of couples simply holding hands as they walk together, is still enough to get us beaten to death.  What happens is that as we walk out of the shadow of hate our heterosexual neighbors begin to see us, finally, as the people we really are.  What happens is that hate, greedy, envious, hungry, follows us out of the shadows also, and into the light, where it can be seen by everyone too…

Community responds to gay bashing near campus

The two men charged in the gay bashing of two University of Cincinnati students near the Main Campus will each reappear before a judge within the next week.

Ethan Kirkwood, 20, of Meadow Creek Drive in Anderson Township, and Matthew Kafagolis, 20, of Ramundo Court in Anderson Township, were arrested on two counts of felonious assault and released on bond. Since the arrest, the charges have been dropped to two counts of misdemeanor assault, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Web site. The charges were lowered on March 20 and March 19, respectively.

The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor assault charge is less than one year in jail.

…The two men are being charged with allegedly assaulting two men – both are UC students – after the men found out one of the victims was gay, around 4 a.m., Friday, March 6, in the 2500 block of Clifton Avenue.

The gay man was knocked to the ground, kicked and punched after the assailants found out he was gay, according to court records. The other victim was attempting to defend his friend when he was also beaten.

That our neighbors see us for the fellow human beings we are is good, but it is not the end of it.  They must also see the hate for what it is too.  That will be the end of it, finally.  But it is going to destroy more lives before this thing is over.

Via Pam’s House Blend…  The Gay Panic Defense raises it’s head once again …

First it appeared that this young man, Scott A. Libby of Raymond, ME, died as the result of a horrific  accident:

February 20, 2009 9:14 AM

BETHEL, Maine (AP) – Officials are investigating a fatal accident in western Maine in which a freight train crashed into a car that was parked on the tracks.

Ed Foley of the St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad said the westbound train came upon a car that was parked on the tracks at least 200 feet away from the nearest road in Bethel at about 2:35 a.m. Friday.

Bethel Police Chief Alan Carr identified the victim as 25-year-old Scott Libby of Raymond. He said Libby apparently turned onto the tracks and then turned off his lights.

Carr said the train was traveling the posted speed of 25 mph and hit the car with all its force from behind.

But little by little, more details have been emerging. What’s now being revealed shows a far too familiar story of robbery after alledgedly sexual advancements were made, but with a few twists.

In a nutshell: Libby had told his parents that he was going to see a man to get paid back for a loan he’d given in exchange for some of the man’s property as security.  The man, Agostino Sampson, was living in a hostel near the tracks where Libby’s car was hit.  As police medical examiners determined that Libby had been killed before the car was hit, they questioned Sampson and his story began to fall apart.  Now it appears he beat Libby over the head with a cast iron pan handle, and as that seems not to have been enough, strangled him with a belt.

Surprise, surprise…Sampson is claiming Libby made a sexual advance…

A man found dead in his car on railroad tracks in Bethel last month may have been beaten with a cast-iron pan and strangled with a belt before a train hit his vehicle, according to a police affidavit.

Police believe Scott A. Libby, 25, of Raymond was beaten and strangled to death after making sexual advances to a former employee.

Libby’s body was found sprawled across the front seat of his 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt after it was hit by a slow-moving train on Feb. 20, police said.

The car was covered with blood inside and out and the bloodstained handle of a cast-iron pan was found in it, police said.

Libby and Samson had known each other for about seven years, and Samson had worked last summer for Libby, who had a landscaping business in Raymond.

Libby met Samson at the Bethel Hostel late on Feb. 19 to collect $400 he had loaned Samson more than a year ago and to return a watch and silver bracelet held as collateral, Maine State Police Detective Herbert Leighton wrote in an affidavit filed in Oxford County Superior Court.

Although Samson initially told police that the transfer of money and jewelry had been completed without incident, he later said Libby "made sexual advances toward him, placing his hand onto/in the area of his groin," Leighton wrote.

"Agostino said he punched Libby in the face two times, causing Libby’s nose to bleed," but Libby still persisted in his sexual advances and offered to pay him money."

The detective noted that the autopsy showed no injuries to Libby’s nose.

Dr. Marguerite Dewitt, deputy chief medical examiner for the state, said Libby died of "asphyxia due to strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head."

The blood on the pan handle matched Libby’s, according to the detective, and the handle was consistent with two pans that were recently missing from the hostel, the affidavit said.

A woven leather belt that appeared to be damaged was seized from Samson’s room at the hostel, Leighton said. Red-brown stained business cards belonging to Libby and "several apparent bloodstain patterns" were found about a quarter-mile south of the hostel on Westwood Road, a private way that abuts the hostel.

Leighton also noted that when Libby’s body was found, his pants pockets were turned inside out and there was no money on him.

Police photographed contusions on Samson’s hands, which Samson said he received after a box fell on his hand at work; he later said the injuries were a result of punching a refrigerator at work.

Emphasis in the Pam’s House Blend article.  You know what else I think is non-existent here?  The sexual advance.  The only word we have for that, is the word of Libby’s killer.

That’s the way it often is with the Gay Panic Defense.  The only evidence that a sexual advance was made is the testimony of the murderer, which police seem eager to accept at face value, whenever the victim is gay.  But in this particular case there is no evidence of that…at least not in the news stories.  Sampson however, seems well aware of the effect of telling the police that he, and not the man he beat with a cast iron pan and then strangled with a belt, was the victim.  He grabbed my dick and kept on trying to grab my dick even after I punched in twice in the nose…

Here’s what I think happened, based on the newspaper accounts:  Libby went to collect the $400 he was owed by Sampson, a man living in a hostel near the railroad tracks…a man clearly without a lot of money to his name.  Libby arrived at the meeting with Sampson’s jewelry, but Sampson either did not have Libby’s money, or was determined to get it back from him after Libby gave him his property back.  Sampson arranged for them to meet outside the hostel in Libby’s car.  Perhaps he told Libby that if his neighbors in the hostel saw them holding $400 and his jewelry they might rob them.

He armed himself with a cast iron pan handle that he’d somehow managed to cut off one of the hostel pans.  There are two pans missing and my hunch is he botched it the first time.  On the second try he managed to make himself a nice little cast iron blackjack he could stuff into his pocket and Libby wouldn’t see until it was too late.  When Libby gave him back his property Sampson beat him unconscious with his makeshift blackjack, and then he strangled Libby with his belt just to make sure.  Then he drives Libby’s car onto the railroad tracks with him still in it and walks away, figuring the next train to come along will take care of the evidence of murder and make it seem like an accident.  Now he has the money, and his jewelry, and probably whatever else Libby had on him.  Libby was found later, with his pants pockets turned inside out.

Then the police came knocking at his hostel door.  First he tells them nothing happened.  Then he tells them there was an argument, and yes he may have hit Libby a couple times over the head, but there might have been another guy in Libby’s car and maybe he did something to Libby afterwards. 

The police aren’t buying it.  But then Sampson reaches for his trump card.  The trump card the lawyers for Matthew Shepard’s killers, and ABC News, gave him.  The trump card the lawyer for Lawrence King’s killer, and Lawrence’s own father, gave him.  The trump card the lawyer for Timothy Bailey-Woodson gave him.  The trump card lawyers for murderer Raymond Carlisle, Amber Ladner and Cynthia Umstead, gave him.  The trump card every judge, every lawyer, every jury who ever excused bloodshed on account of the victim’s sexual orientation gave him.  He claimed Libby made a sexual advance. 

If that’s not a get out of jail free card, it’s almost certain to be a reduced sentence card.  Whatever crime he might have been convicted of had he not claimed to have been sexually assaulted, he will now almost certainly avoid, provided he sticks to it.  In Spain recently, a nation with legal same-sex marriage, a jury excused the brutal slaying of a gay couple by a man who stabbed them multiple times, robbed them, then tried to burn their house down to hide the evidence, on the killer’s sole testimony that they had propositioned him.  They let him go.

This is what decades of pulpit thumping about the homosexual threat has brought us.  In the 1975 film version of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, a corrupt policeman tells detective Philip Marlow that his client need not worry too much about being prosecuted for killing a man "…as long as he wasn’t white."  But you can claim anyone is gay if you need an excuse for killing them.

More line items, in the war on gay people…

Spring break off to violent start after gay men are beaten in Seaside

Two 22-year-old men who left a campfire to walk along the beach in Seaside were beaten unconscious in what appears to have been a hate crime, according to police.

 

Another Gay Bashing

The man disembarked the bus moments later, followed by Idris and an associate. Police say Idris again approached him, telling the man that homosexuality violates his religion. 

 

Protesters Decry Cinncinnati Gay Bashing

Kafagolis and Kirkwood reportedly inveighed against the victim, screaming anti-gay epithets as they punched and kicked him, knocking him to the ground.

 

Gay couple claims attack in Newark was bias related

…they were returning to their car parked near Raymond Boulevard and Broad Street from the Prudential Center at approximately 11 p.m. when a group of 15 to 20 teenage girls and boys approached them from the opposite direction and then punched and kicked them as they yelled an anti-gay slur.

 

Judge Throws Out Confession In Transgender Slaying

Andrade allegedly told his girlfriend that he "snapped" and that "gay things need to die."

 

UC Police Report Possible Anti-Gay Attack

Police say one of the victims knew one of the suspects, who attacked both of them when he found out one of them is gay.