Simply put, I can get news and information of concern to the gay community that I could not before. It isn’t merely that a lot of hate crime news never makes it beyond the local media. It isn’t merely that the mainstream news media often chooses not to even report hate crimes against us. It’s that more often then not you catch them actively downplaying it. In effect, hiding it from view.
Chicago police are investigating the shooting of six men at a party in a house on Chicago’s South Side in what may have been a homophobic hate crime.
Police say two masked men burst into an apartment in the house early Sunday morning, spraying semi-automatic gunfire throughout the living room hitting six men.
Residents in the area say the apartment was rented by two gay men and was the scene of frequent loud parties. One neighbor told the Chicago Sun-Times that the building was known as the "Gay House".
"We always be seeing them, and they always be looking at people," Kevin Carter, 18, told the paper.
"They give you that gay look, like you’re a female or something. That ain’t cute. People be ready to fight. … I knew something was going to happen to that house."
…
A man who said his brother lives in the apartment told the paper that his brother had complained for several months about being harassed by people in the neighborhood for being gay.
That’s from the story at 365Gay.Com. The gunmen didn’t use homophobic slurs, apparently didn’t say anything at all, just opened fire. They wore masks, and there have been as I write this, no arrests.
But 365Gay.Com does not field their own reporters. They mostly get their stories off the wire and serve as a news aggregate. That story was based on the reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times. So I went around looking for the story via Google News to see if there were any other takes on it. This is typical of what I found:
Six people were wounded, two of them critically, when masked gunmen opened fire early Sunday on a South Side party, authorities said.
About 100 people were at the party in the first-floor apartment of a two-story building in the 7900 block of South Woodlawn Avenue in the Grand Crossing neighborhood about 5:30 a.m. when two men–armed with semiautomatic handguns–kicked down the front door and starting shooting, said Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond.
"Because the gunmen who kicked in the door and opened fire were masked, we don’t have a good description," she said.
The men fled into a nearby gangway, Bond said. Detectives were still questioning witnesses and neighbors.
The victims were all men between the ages of 19 and 35, she said. None lived there.
…
Neighbors said residents of the apartment often held loud parties that lasted into the morning and that police had been called there several times recently. Bond confirmed that officers had been called to the apartment several times since October, including some calls for complaints of aggravated battery.
Outside the apartment Sunday, blood still stained the front steps, porch and door. .
"All I want is for my friends to be OK and healthy," said a man in his 20s who spoke from a window but declined to give his name.
A neighbor who lives in the unit above the apartment, who also declined to give her name because the gunmen were still at large, said the party was going full force when she fell asleep about 2:30 a.m. Then, about 5:30 a.m., she heard shots from directly below her and tumbled out of bed.
…
She said the men who live there held raucous parties almost every weekend and many times on other nights of the week. Officers also had gone there several times responding to shouting and physical confrontations, she said.
"It’s not just on Friday or Saturday; the police have been here Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, when normal people have to work," the woman said.
Not a word, not a breath, about the fact that the victims were gay, and that the renters had been complaining about harassment from the neighbors. The only neighbor quoted complained about the parties and the noise they made (the landlord, also quoted in that article, said he’d only had one complaint and that was when they held a party after they moved in and the upstairs neighbor complained). This was from the Chicago Tribune. Yet another reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times had no trouble getting neighbors of the men to state that they thought the attack was motivated by the men’s sexual orientation. But that reporter, Mark Konkol, was apparently the only one at the scene who thought it was noteworthy.
And it was the Tribune’s take on the matter, that it was merely an attack on a loud party (and whoever heard of loud parties happening on New Year’s Eve), that made the wires. The story came up on google news and I went through one after the other, from papers in California to the Jerusalem Post, and none of them breathed a word to me that the victims were gay men, that they’d previously complained of harassment by their neighbors, and that there was the slightest bit of hostility toward them in the neighborhood where they lived. You saw none of that in the media reporting.
I constructed a google search string using that quote from the kid who said that the men were giving people "that gay look, like you’re a female or something". The only stories that popped up were from the online gay news organizations, and that one Chicago Sun-Times article. That was it.
Now…maybe this shooting wasn’t motivated by anti-gay hate. But there is at least a reasonable suspicion that it was. In the days before the Internet, all I’d have seen of this, perhaps, would have been the sanitized version set out by the Tribune, and accepted by most of the rest of the heterosexual news editors around the country, and in my local neck of the woods, who all decided that the gay angle on it wasn’t worth printing. Nobody outside of Chicago would ever have any inkling that there might be a hate crime here. And so the gay community wouldn’t have had any reason to pay attention to it, to how well it was being investigated, to question what was going on in that neighborhood, and whether hate had once again turned into bloodshed.
I can well remember a time when violence toward homosexuals just didn’t matter to the police, let alone the press. And we are not out of those woods as much as some would like to believe. Between covering that aspect of it up because you believe they had it coming, and not reporting on it because you just don’t give a good goddamn about the faggots anyway and can’t imagine why any normal person would, anti-gay violence would still be swept under the rug, even today. And even the most committed gay rights activists won’t make their voices heard, if they don’t even know what is happening. Silence equals death. What has made a difference now is the Internet. We are not many small and isolated ghettos anymore. The heterosexual majority can avert their eyes all they want, but now we can see what is happening to us as a people in this country. We can’t make the rest of the world pay attention too, if we ourselves don’t even know what is going on. That is why for so many decades, we believed it when they told us we had it coming. We endured the violence in silence and shame. Those days are over.
In my grade school years I devoured westerns, mostly Louis L’Amour, and science-fiction, mostly hard, mostly Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement style stuff, but also Ray Bradbury’s poetic mindbenders, and E.E. Smith’s space operas and James Blish’s Star Trek novelizations. Once upon a time I adored Larry Niven’s "Known Space" tales. Then I read an interview with him in Future Life magazine (back in the 70s), where he averred in response to a question about gay rights, that giving homosexuals what they wanted would be a good way of breeding them out of the population (I’ve always wondered what Kerry O’Quinn, the publisher, thought when he read that). That was when I began to realize that science fiction folk weren’t necessarily a very broad minded lot.
Year later I’d run into the same set of knuckle dragging prejudices among fantasy world fans and authors. I and a few other readers had an online…er…disagreement…with Richard Pini, co-author of the Elfquest series of comics, about the absence of gay elves in the storyline. Understand that by that time it had been very, Very well established that the Pini’s elves were a thoroughly uninhibited lot (the orgy scene in EQ 17 comes to mind…). It has always struck me as downright bizarre that Richard and Wendy Pini could write a storyline that had as its major plot device, the mating of a female elf with wolves in order to produce a race of elves better adapted to their world, and yet be so goddamned squeamish about the idea of same sex elven lovers.
But people Do learn and grow. A younger Wil Wheaton once mouthed off crap about gays in Star Trek that an older Wil Wheaton would later regret and apologize for. In fact, Wheaton later did volunteer work against a California referendum against same sex marriage because it so outraged him (that, and the fact that he’s a fellow geek, is why he’s on my blog roll).
But you still see an amazing amount of anti-gay crap in science-fiction and fantasy fandom and it’s a big reason why, much as I still like the genres, I keep the scene at arm’s length. I was doing a little research the other day, and came across some reader reviews of Red King, one of the latest in the Star Trek franchise novels. Apparently one or more characters in it (I haven’t read it) are gay. This causes some concern to one reader…
Too much diversity!
Star Trek novels are known for introducing a variety of different species, cultures, and religions, but this series bombards the reader with so many at once that the storyline becomes muddled and one is left begging for a glossary. I hope that the third book, written by a different author, will narrow its focus somewhat.
I don’t take issue with the authors for including a gay character in the books. It makes sense, with that many different species, that someone would be. What I find annoying is that they focus so much time on him and seem to feel the need to have one of the other characters either make a pass at him or give him that "knowing look" in each one of the books. He’s gay, I get it! Get on with the the exploration and adventure!
…and outrage by another.
Gay, Gay, Gay. Enough Already
Gene Roddenberry creator of Star Trek established via interviews and convention appearances that he felt that homosexuality was a desease that would no longer exist in the 23rd century. It is a slap in the face to his vision and his ideas to fill his universe with gay characters when it is so against what Star Trek stood for (social illnesses being done away with). I could tolerate this inclusion in the story if the writers, one of which is gay, hadn’t tried to shovel it down my throught every time I came across one of their gay characters. I can only hope that these characters will be pushed back or their preferences buried in the next installment in the series now that they are no longer being written by the two that penned this book. Not Recommended unless you are into the gay scene
As I said, I haven’t read the book, but I strongly doubt that Paramount would let pornography be published under their own imprint. So probably the only thing on display in that book would have been another character little different from any of the other Trek characters save that they mate to their own sex. As opposed to…I dunno…a wolf or something. Yet that’s all it takes for some folks to start bellyaching about gay being shoved down their throats. Well…let it be said that not everyone agreed…
…dumb a*s! Gene Roddenberry never said that he thought homosexuality is a disease. Get your sh*t right! Stupid people like this are what make Star Trek’s future look so promising. Because people like L. Redman won’t be around. People like him with his type of belief will be long extinct. Dumb Sh*t! If you like Star Trek read the book. It’s good.
Gene Roddenberry did announce shortly before his death, that Star Trek: The Next Generation would begin featuring gay characters on a regular basis. But after he died, that promise was quickly trashcanned by Paramount. In fact to this day the Trek universe has no regular gay characters in it. I don’t think it’s because the executives at Paramount share the views of the reader above, who said that homosexuality is a disease that will be cured by the 24th century, but it might as well be. Roddenberry understood that stories about the future, are really stories about who we are now. And who we are now is Brokeback Mountain couldn’t win best picture, because John Wayne was rolling over in his grave.
“Just to get Star Trek on TV was an astounding move,” George Takei–the openly gay actor who starred as Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu–says in an interview with AfterElton. “The program execs were baffled. They did not know what to do with it! Now, we are in the 21st century, and this is speculation, but I really think that if Gene were still with us today, he would have been equally bold for our times today and addressed the issue of equality for gays, lesbians, transgenders and bisexuals.”
So, why hasn’t Star Trek entered this final frontier?
Many blame Rick Berman, Star Trek’s longtime executive producer. While Berman has never publicly said he has no plans in the long-term for gay characters on the show, many fans have read cryptic messages into some things he has mentioned over the years. In a 2002 interview with USAToday.com, Berman addresses the subject matter.
“That was really the wishful thinking of some people who were constantly at us,” Berman states. “But we don’t see heterosexual couples holding hands on the show, so it would be somewhat dishonest of us to see two gay men or lesbians holding hands.”
But in Star Trek: Insurrection, Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) are seen holding hands at the end of the movie. Indeed, Star Trek has often shown characters kissing and embracing. And fans have desired more than just handholding, hoping instead for a well-rounded character with as many virtues and flaws as their heterosexual counterparts.
In an exclusive interview with AfterElton, Andy Mangels–Trek’s only openly gay writer, having written over a dozen Star Trek themed novels–says he believes blame lies with Berman. “I have never met Rick Berman, and he has never expressed any specific attitudes directly to me. That said, not one single actor, staff member, or Paramount employee has ever once defended him from charges of homophobia, and many have accused him of it.
"Berman was ultimately responsible for killing almost every pitch for gay characters, and in interviews, was mealy-mouthed and waffling about the need for GLB T representation. At the very least, he was gutless and didn’t care about GLBT representation. From the information and evidence I’ve seen, heard, and read, I believe that Berman is the reason we never saw gays on Star Trek I shed no tears that he’s gone, except that he did his best to ruin the franchise on his way out.”
This is the kind of thing I was taught about homosexuals nearly all through grade school. They taught me that homosexuals usually kill the people they have sex with. They taught me that homosexuals prey on young boys, but will sometimes lure an unsuspecting heterosexual man into the woods too. They told me that homosexuals almost never have sex with another homosexual because they know how dangerous it is. This was in the 1960s, in the school system of a well do do suburb of Washington D.C.
That film brings back memories all right. That is what I grew up knowing about homosexuals. I suppose a lot of people from my generation were taught those things. I suppose a lot of people from my generation still believe them. The only thing that saved me from a lifetime of fear of my sexual nature and self loathing was that it was so extreme I just knew it was not me, and the conclusion I drew throughout most of my school years, even while I was severely stressing out over a certain male classmate, was that I was not a homosexual. I just couldn’t be. I wasn’t anything like what they were telling me homosexuals were. Therefore I was not a homosexual.
They’re not teaching boys to be careful around strangers in that film. They’re teaching them to fear and loath homosexuals. They’re teaching the gay boys to fear and loath themselves. And they are taking from the gay boys, all the awe and wonder and joy of that first high school romance, and for many of us of my generation, the possibility of love altogether. What they took from us is incalculable, and unforgivable.
Logo (the gay cable channel that seldom has anything on it I want to watch) has its viewers’ picks for the top 50 LGBT films, and Pam’s House Blend is running a top 3 thread in response. Every time one of these Pick Your Favorite GLBT Films things comes up it only serves to remind me how little same sex Romance there is out there. But I think I can actually pick a top three…
Stipulating that I have not seen Brokeback Mountain…which seems to be on everyones favorites list nowadays (and it seems, rightfully so…) These three have all the right ingredients, the stuff of every heterosexual romance you’ve ever seen or read, but finally gay couples get a chance to play too.
Latter Days – Excruciatingly hard to watch in spots (like the excommunication scenes), but this is the kind of true hearted same sex romance I have long waited to see on film. L.A. party boy discovers a group of young Mormon missionaries has moved into the apartment across from his, and takes a bet that he can seduce one of them. Of course they fall in love. It could easily have belly flopped into the trite pool, but like all good romances, the lovers drive each other to reach beyond themselves. The Mormon boy challenges the party boy’s superficiality and the party boy coaxes the Mormon boy out of his suffocating shell.
You I Love – A sexy sweet rollercoaster of a love story. Young successful, trendy Moscow urbanite with young successful and trendy girlfriend falls head over heels in love with young Russian male from deep in the Asian side of the country. I almost threw a chair through the TV set when I thought the film was going to end with the lover’s being separated…but they didn’t do that to me. Some have suggested that the film cops out by having the lovers taking refuge in a bisexual triangle at the end (with the urbanite’s girlfriend). Given the vehement social prejudices on display in the film (and in real life in Moscow lately), I can forgive the filmmakers for this. You do not doubt for a moment the love the two guys have for each other throughout this film and it is very touching.
Lan Yu – Successful single businessman, preoccupied with business and cynical about love, has a tryst with a younger man that turns into a longtime on again – off again affair. Businessman showers younger man with gifts, including an expensive house to live in, but keeps him at arm’s length because he doesn’t believe in love. Then businessman is then caught up in the shady dealings of his company, arrested and put on trial. Younger man sells all the gifts the businessman bought for him to pay bribes to corrupt local officials and get his lover out of jail. Businessman learns that love is really more important then business after all. If they’d only ended it there this film would be my all time favorite. But then they had to go and gratuitously kill the younger lover off at the very end of the film in a random construction accident, leaving the businessman alone and grieving. I suppose this was supposed to drive home the lesson about not wasting your chances for love, but they didn’t have to do that to make the point.
Now for three guilty pleasures…
Gravitation and Earthian – Neither of these anime were nearly as good as the manga they were based on, but…damn! Beautiful long haired (and I mean Long Haired) guys. Oh yes…
Harry and Son – Robbie Benson in a pair of cut-offs. And the story is pretty good too…
Happy Together – My anti-romance, for when I’m in a cynical mood. Lovers who cannot stand each other, yet cannot keep their hands off each other, end up stranded in Buenos Aires, doing menial work to make ends meet while taking the occasional roll in the sack that they just can’t seem to avoid. Something about the idea that Buenos Aries is the place where all failed romances end up appeals to me.
So I’m eating a quick dinner and watching, against my better judgment, the TV news broadcasts…and I get fed up and I flip around the satellite channels…and there’s Logo, that gay channel that very seldom has anything on it that I want to watch…and somehow the listings on the TV guide are severely truncated. The Complete Tales of the City is listed merely as Tales… Round Trip Ticket is listed as Trip. There’s a listing for Latter…that I suspect is for Latter Days, one of the few same sex romances I’ve ever watched worthy of being called a romance. So I navigate over to that timeslot and click for the program listing. Here’s what I got:
Latter Days – Romance – Steve Sandvoss, Wes Ramsey. A young Mormon missionary has a homosexual relationship after moving from Idaho to Los Angles.
Well that about sums it up, doesn’t it? And in that spirit, I would like to offer to the program guide editors of DirectTV my own set of quick movie summaries:
Casablanca: An American expatriate has a heterosexual affair with the opposite sex lover of a wanted resistance fighter.
Sleepless in Seattle: A man’s son from a prior heterosexual relationship calls a radio talk show in the hope of finding his father a new heterosexual partner.
Love Story: Heterosexuality means never having to say you’re sorry.
Wuthering Heights: Members of two wealthy families on the English moors engage in furtive heterosexual relationships and ruin each other’s lives.
Ghost: The murdered heterosexual lover of a woman comes back to haunt her.
An Affair to Remember: A woman has an affair with a person of the opposite sex.
Romeo & Juliet: Teenagers have a heterosexual relationship against the wishes of their parents.
Notting Hill: A bookshop owner desires a heterosexual relationship with a famous star who buys a book in his shop.
Never Been Kissed: A young reporter has heterosexual feelings for a teacher she has been ordered to write a negative article about.
Runaway Bride: A woman leaves many heterosexual lovers waiting at the altar.
Mystic Pizza: Three women pursue heterosexual relationships while making pizza.
Gone With the Wind: A southern man has a heterosexual relationship with a southern woman.
That ought to keep them glued to their TV screens.
Getting Away From The Traditional Family, Prostitution, Adultery, Murder and Violence, Is A Dangerous Thing
Brokeback Mountain has been released onto DVD and I’ll probably pick up a copy sometime this weekend. I might skip through it when I get it back home but I doubt I’ll sit through the whole thing for quite a while. As I’ve said before, I am not really up to watching tragic and doomed love affairs these days. But after Hollywood’s giving it the pie in the face last month, I figured the least I could do was my part to help DVD sales.
While scanning google for articles about the DVD, I came across a little tidbit in the Deseret News, which all the more interesting because that paper is owned outright by the Mormon church. It’s about Larry Miller, the Utah creep who canceled the showing of Brokeback at his theater right at the last minute, while ticket holders were in line, allegedly after he was told what the movie was about. And I say, allegedly…
Miller says he knew he’d catch some flak for pulling the film about homosexual cowboys from his theaters, but did so because he’s very worried about the break-up of the traditional American family.
In his words, he wanted to draw a line in the sand by not showing the film.
Miller said, "Getting away from the traditional families, which I look at as the fundamental building block of our society, is a very dangerous thing."
Miller, of course, has every right to his opinion. And every right to choose what movies to show in his theaters. And we should be grateful to him for standing up for "traditional families."
Just like he does with the TV station he owns, KJZZ. Let’s look at a few things airing on Ch. 14 next week:
• "Friends," which is replete with extramarital sex, plots about porn and even homosexuality.
• "Cheers," which revolves around an unrepentant womanizer.
• Various forms of extramarital sex and vulgar shenanigans on such sitcoms as "Just Shoot Me," "Becker" and "The Parkers."
• "ER" — sex and a decidedly pro-gay agenda.
And here are a few of the movies KJZZ will be airing:
• "The List," about a high-priced prostitute.
• "Her Best Friend’s Husband," about a woman who has an affair with her best friend’s husband.
• "Primary Suspect," about a man who kills his wife.
Miller’s TV station it turns out, also carries Montel Williams, Tyra Banks, and Maury. Swell family values fare that. But it gets even more ironic:
Oh, and don’t forget next week’s eight airings of "Will & Grace," which not only features healthy, happy gay guys but is replete with the most off-color humor you’ll find in a network sitcom.
Will and Grace. Miller’s TV station shows Will and Grace, and he balks at showing Brokeback Mountain in his movie theater? No. I think not. Pierce goes on to complain about what Miller does show…
This week alone Miller’s theaters are showing R-rated "Basic Instinct 2," "Slither," "Inside Man," "Find Me Guilty" and "V for Vendetta."
Not bad. But wait…it gets even better…
And one of the biggest stories the Jazz generated this season was about how the wife of one of the players granted him the right to one extramarital sexual encounter per year.
"The Jazz" would be that Utah NBA basketball team that Miller owns. I guess more then one extra-marital affair a year might count as a dangerous thing for the Traditional American Family. Mind you…this criticism comes from a newspaper that almost certainly welcomed Miller’s canceling showings of Brokeback Mountain, and would have probably liked it very well thank you if the film never saw the light of day anywhere in the United States, let alone Utah. But Miller is no more a true believe then George Bush. What Miller, like Bush, knows is when to throw a little human flesh to the mob, and from whose skin.
Here’s what I think: Miller knew damn well what the subject matter of Brokeback Mountain was, and to him it was just another booking until someone(s) in the powerful Mormon church had a chat with him and told him they’d like it very much thank you if he just pulled it from the venue. R rated fun and games for sexually ignorant and repressed heterosexuals in Utah is one thing, but a film that so graphically shows how ignorance and prejudice have utterly destroyed the emotional lives of gay and lesbian people in America is more then the market will bear. Particularly when that market is so deeply implicated in that destruction. Miller can show Will and Grace and the religious right may bellyache about it, but Will and Grace is lite TV entertainment that manages to have its cake and eat it too, re-enforcing many gay stereotypes along the way while laughing along with them like it’s all an in-joke. Brokeback on the other hand, is desolate landscape with a finger pointed right back at hate. That simply cannot be tolerated.
On the surface, "Hate Crime" may seem like a movie about violence rooted in religious bigotry, but underneath it’s a poorly disguised argument for vigilantism. The writer and director, Tommy Stovall, uses the same extremism and rigid stereotyping his film purports to rebel against.
When half of a young gay couple is viciously beaten and eventually dies, suspicion falls on the new neighbor, a fundamentalist preacher’s son with a brush cut, a permanently clenched jaw and a nice line in homophobic curses. Stacking the deck unnecessarily, Mr. Stovall dresses him in tight, white T-shirts accessorized with beer cans, gives him a Southern accent and a criminal record, then lights him like Robert Mitchum in "The Night of the Hunter." And just in case we’re still not clear where our sympathies lie, the gay couple is seen purchasing wedding rings and discussing adoption.
I can’t tell from this review whether this movie is any good or not…only that this reviewer thinks that violence against a gay couple by a religious nutcase is a ridiculous concept for a movie. Oh…and that showing a gay couple buying wedding rings and talking about adopting is a over the top. Oh come on…I’m supposed to believe this…?
With a little more subtlety — and a lot less predictability — the movie might have played more like a thoughtful drama and less like an outrageous exercise in wish fulfillment.
A jailhouse visit between accused murderer Benjamin Matthew Williams and his parents in which Williams compares himself to Jesus Christ and jokes, ”Oh, the devil made me do it,” came into more vivid focus Wednesday when a transcript of the tape was released.
The tape itself was entered into evidence Tuesday at a preliminary hearing for Williams, 31, and his brother, James Tyler Williams, 29, who are accused in the slayings of a Happy Valley gay couple found July 1.
…
Sally Williams also asks her son if, as reported, he was heavily armed when arrested.
”Yeah,” he replies, also acknowledging that he wore a bulletproof vest.
Then Sally Williams, apparently worried that her son might be suicidal, urges him to ”stick it out, however hard it is. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t.”
”We put five dollars in the commissary for each of you,” interjects Matthew Williams’ father in one of only two remarks on the transcript attributed to him.
The elder Williams also asked what time the brothers would be arraigned.
”They, they’re not doing the death penalty a whole lot here anymore, are they?” Matthew Williams asks. ”Are we looking at 20, 40 years or something? Then I don’t expect to serve that, though.”
His mother assures him ”the Lord can do miracles, he has.”
But then she tells him that after the detectives’ searches ”they had a tablet you took to the church and they had some of the notes you, that you said, was going to get blamed on you.
”Well, someone ratted, um, I, I don’t know, were there other people involved?” she asks. ”I don’t want to, don’t ans–, this is monitored … Um. I don’t, I don’t think you did what they say you did.”
”What do they say I did?” asks Matthew Williams.
”They say you took out two homos,” she responds.
”Huh. Why wouldn’t you think I’d do that?” Matthew Williams returns.
”Not under those circumstances,” his mother says. ”And Tyler, also?”
”I think they have pretty good evidence,” her son says. ”So I, I don’t know what an attorney could do for you other than take your money.”
His mother suggests an attorney might help with a plea bargain.
”Plea bargaining for what?” Matthew Williams says laughing, adding, ”Oh, the devil made me do it. Yeah.”
A little later in the visit Sally Williams worries about Tyler Williams, his sore knee, diet problems and hypoglycemia.
And she seems to chastise her older son.
”I knew the Lord was going to humble you and I’ve been praying for you for a long time,” she said. ”Some of the things you believe are wrong. … I’m sorry that I have failed you.”
But Matthew Williams suggests that God may have put him where he is because he can use the witness chair as a kind of pulpit and ”a lot of people will hear.”
”Basically, basically, um, society now calls what’s bad good and they call what I’ve done as bad and I want just, just to tell them, you know, if you love me, keep my commandments,” Matthew Williams tells his parents, adding that he has ”followed a higher law …
”I have to obey God’s law rather than man’s law.”
His mother warns that ”a lot of people will hear it with their ears, but not with your understanding.”
Matthew Williams then suggests that ”they” might think he’s insane and ”that might be to our advantage.”
”That will be a good thing,” his mother agrees.
Matthew Williams also says, though he ”didn’t want to do this,” he thought ”that I was supposed to.”
Then he explains that there are ”a lot of parallels between this and a lot of other incidents in the Old Testament.” But he went on to refer to the New Testament.
”I mean, they threw, they threw our Lord and Savior in jail. They, they accused him of things that, that he did that were not wrong, but they said they were wrong, you know, and he was punished for things,” the transcript reads.
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