For those of you who have been following it (which is likely only those of you who read the gay news sites), the 72 year old gay man who was beaten with a pipe the other day, by a man on his bus who asked him if he was gay, has died…

Anthos, Capitol’s ‘dome man’, dies after attack

Andrew Anthos died Friday of injuries sustained during an attack last week outside his downtown Detroit apartment building. Family members said he was a victim of an anti-gay hate crime.

Anthos was on a city bus Feb. 13 when a man asked him if he was gay. The man followed Anthos off the bus at the stop in front of his building and beat him with a metal pipe.

Anthos, whose family said he was gay, was taken to a hospital and later fell into a coma.

Local and national gay rights groups condemned the attack. Police told The Detroit News in story published Friday that the department was investigating whether the attack was a hate crime.

Dig it.  His attacker asked him if he was gay and then followed him off the bus and beat the living crap out of him with a pipe so badly it left him paralyzed from the neck down and then he died, but we’re not sure it’s a hate crime.  But…never mind.  Actually, it isn’t a hate crime in Michigan, It can’t be, because sexual orientation isn’t covered in Michigan’s hate crime statutes.  Somewhere, Richard Cohen is nodding approvingly.

This is what Love The Sinner, Hate The Sin, looks like in practice, or as one of Bill Donohue’s nemesis, Shakespear’s Sister, points out…

This shit doesn’t happen in a void. Like the sexualization and objectification of women in the media being psychologically damaging to girls, the constant drumbeat of negative stereotypes and exploitative hatred issued by the GOP and social/religious conservative leaders is dangerous for members of the LGBT community. And the hatemongers’ faux-naïveté at the reality that you can’t continually put a target on someone’s back but expect no one to shoot at it is growing really goddamned old. The hate-the-gays schtick isn’t just infuriating and spiteful and wrong; it’s irresponsible.

But it’s effective.  It keeps winning them elections.  It keeps the cash flowing in.  And it keeps the gays fearful.  A fearful homosexual is a good homosexual.  Not perhaps, as good as a dead one, but it will do.

The reference to "Dome Man" comes from Anthos’ campaign to light the Michigan Statehouse dome in red, white and blue colors one night a year…

Photo by Lansing State Journal file photo

So he loved his country, and he loved his state.  Too bad they couldn’t have loved him back.