Posted on SLOG…

Gay Bars Receive Threatening Letters

Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Jan 6 at 4:41 PM

Eleven gay bars in Seattle received letters today addressed to the "Owner/Manager" from someone claiming to be in the possession of ricin, a deadly poison. "Your establishment has been targeted," the letter begins. "I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients."

"I felt sick when I read it," said Carla, the owner/manager of Re-bar. "It’s so vile. It’s just hatred. It made me worry for all the other bars, and for my bartenders, and our clientele."

According to the CDC’s website, someone who has ingested "a significant amount" will develop vomiting and diarrhea within the first 6-12 hours; other symptoms of ricin poisoning include hallucinations, seizures, and blood in the urine. There is no antidote for ricin but ricin exposure is not invariably fatal.

"I just had the police come pick [the letter] up," said Keith Christensen, the manager of The Eagle, when reached by phone. Christensen had already heard about the letter from other bar owners and managers, and so he didn’t open it. "It’s probably nothing," Christensen added, "but the economy is really screwing all the bars right now, and the last thing we need is something ramping up the not-go-out mode people seem to be in right now. It’s really freaky that someone would do something like this at a time like this."

Christensen says he’s posted signs at the Eagle advising patrons not to leave their drinks unattended.

"The police have already come and gone," said Roland, the manager at Madison Pub. "They collected the letter and that’s about it. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about it." Roland admitted to being unnerved by the letter at first.

"But after the initial ‘what?’, it’s like whatever."

A letter also arrived in the Stranger‘s offices, addressed to the attention of "Obituaries." The letter’s author said the paper should "be prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals all of whom were patrons of the following establishments on a Saturday in January." The listed bars are: The Elite, Neighbours, Wild Rose, The Cuff, Purr, The Eagle, R Place, Re-bar, CC’s, Madison Pub, and the Crescent. "I could take this moment to launch into a diatribe about my indignation towards the gay community," the letter concludes, "however, I think the deaths will speak for themselves."

Alison, Luying, and Tippett, local promoters and DJs who do nights at various bars around town, came up with the idea of organizing a pub crawl for this Friday night to show support for the bars that were threatened.

Carla at Re-bar added that, as distressing as the letter was, she was pleased with the response from the community.

"Everyone is calling each other, everyone’s got each other’s backs."

I hope this isn’t surprising anyone.  Pope Ratzinger said the other day that fighting for the human race against the gay agenda was akin to saving the rain forests.  And this is a constant, steady refrain from the pulpits:  Homosexuals threaten the very existence of the human race.  The solution to the homosexual problem, is there must be no homosexuals.  They say it over and over again.  And in the next breath of course, insist they don’t mean anyone should take their words as calling for violence. Wink, Wink.  But they have already lost the war.  Hate has defeated them.  Our struggle is to insure it does not defeat us too.  First and foremost, that is a fight we wage within ourselves, every day. 

We need to understand this, and accept it as the condition of the struggle we find ourselves in.  Someone or some ones spray painted swasticas on a catholic church in San Francisco the other day and it was all over Google News the next as evidence of how hateful and violent the gays are becoming in the wake of Proposition 8.  Well if that’s as violent as we are becoming, then we are doing pretty good all things considered…

Gay man’s killer could serve as little as eight months in prison

Sean William Kennedy, 20, was attacked in the early morning of May 17, 2007 outside the former Brew’s Bar in Greenville, South Carolina. His assailant, Stephen Andrew Moller, pulled up in a car, threw one punch after reportedly yelling anti-gay slurs, and fled. Kennedy died about 17 hours later from the brain injury he sustained, and friends and family believe he was targeted at least in part due to his sexual orientation.

Since South Carolina has no hate crime statute, no enhancement was available for Moller’s June 2008 sentence of five years in prison on a reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter. The judge reduced the sentence to three years with credit for seven months’ time served and ordered Moller to seek help to manage anger and substance abuse.

…

While Moller’s attorney said after the sentencing that he was unaware Kennedy was gay at the time of the assault, a text message received from a friend shortly after the incident stated: "You tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand."

Nobody on the side of love this culture war has any business embracing the ways and means of hate.  Because the minute you  do that, you are defeated.  Ours is a moral crusade in the best sense of the words moral and crusade.  Violence, vandalism, terror and fear…these are the weapons of the other side.  We are an army of lovers.  Ours is a struggle to reclaim the right to love and be loved.  With what hands do we caress the one we love after we have taken up the club?  With what eyes do we look into theirs when we have reveled in the pain of others?  It is impossible.  The heart must triumph over the Pit, or the human race has no tomorrow.  That is our struggle.  That is our glory.  We can do this.  But only so long as we remember what it is to love.  Every time you look into a stranger’s face, and see them for the person they are, and not just the color of their skin, or their religion, their culture or their sex or sexual orientation, you defeat hate.

Take pride in knowing that despite the fact that the haters have been calling us every kind of monsters they could imagine for generations now, these days people are shocked when gay people spray paint a church.  Yes…that is out of character for us.  That is not who we are.  We aren’t monsters and we aren’t weaklings.  We are decent.  It is the other side, that keeps confusing decency with weakness.

So someone in the gutter is threatening gay people with death.  So what’s new?  The fight goes on and we will win so long as we can love wholeheartedly no matter what they do to us.  And the ages to come will know that it was the gay minority who fought for humanity’s future, in an age when hate served poison not in bars, but from the pulpits.

Next time you are in a bar or a club, keep an eye on your neighbor’s drink.  Next time you see anger threaten to turn a friend’s heart to hate, tell them they are loved.  We have to watch out for one another.  That is what you do during times of war.