You Can Help

It could have been any one of us.

Jimmy Lee Dean was beaten nearly to death five years ago by two men looking for a gay man to rob, leaving him with a smashed face and many physical problems.  Failed surgeries and the indifference of the medical profession have left him with a ruined life.  The Dallas Voice ran an article on the fifth anniversary of tbe brutal attack, but here's the story in Jimmy's own words:

On July 17, 2008 I was the victim of a hate crime in Dallas, Texas. Through the kind act of everyday people like you, I did not die that night. The criminals were stopped, prosecuted and the good people of Texas provided $50,000.00 from their crime victims fund to repair my physical damages and any phycological help that might be needed.

Problems started when I left Parkland County Hospital intensive care unit. Up to that point everything seemed to be going ok. Then After some 16 visits to the Oral Surgery Clinic, 2 surgeries and one attempted surgery that never took place and 27 visits to Parkland crisis center I am in the same phycical situation as at the crime scene.

Work done in the second surgery at Parkland Hospital has all come undone. My jaw and cheek bone are no longer attached. Teeth have never been dealt with. No one has followed up on my broken back. I have headaces every other day. My eyes are having problems. I walk with a causious gate. I get light headed all the time. I don't reallly go anywere because of the facial disfigurments and the way I look when I eat.

I never asked for what happend. It could have been anyone of us at that spot at that time.

My dreams and identity are gone along with my alillity to smell, but maybe there are medical procedures that might restore me to a point where I can have some kind of a normal life.

Nobody should have to go without needed medical treatment in this country, but you guys know the score as well as I do: if you have no money, the doctors won't even look at you. But we can make a real difference in Jimmy's life by contributing at his Indiegogo page. Please do.

It could have been you.





 Honk to Unfinished Lives.

French Parliament Approves Marriage Equality

Socialist deputies applaud in the National Assembly today
following passage of the same-sex marriage bill.

Antigay demonstrator hurls a missile at police during a protest
following the vote in Parliament.

The French National Assembly approved the final passage of a same-sex marriage bill today by a vote of 331-225, along party lines, making France the 14th nation in the world to approve marriage equality nationwide. President Francois Hollande's Socialist Party swept into power last year with a promise to enact the law, which recent polls have shown is favored by by 55%-63% of the population.

However, rightwing activists, with the support of France's Catholic hierarchy and American antigay groups like NOM, have made an issue of the adoption rights which marriage would allow to gay couples, equating it to "the murder of children," along with the familiar rhetoric about "traditional family values." In recent months, they have led massive, sometimes violent demonstrations against the law in the streets of Paris.   After tonight's vote, protesters decrying "Socialist dictatorship" once again clashed with police. Gay haters are also circulating messages of "Death to Gays" and "Homosexuals Must Be Killed" on Twitter. The conservative UMP party, which has used the marriage law to regain some support among voters, now plans to appeal the law to France's Constitutional Court, which has the power to disallow the law before it comes into effect (unlike the American Supreme Court), but analysts say there is little likelihood of that occurring, and same-sex couples may be able to marry starting in June. Since 1999, France has offered civil unions, called PACS, to both gay and straight couples; straights made up more than 95% of couples getting "PACS-ed" in 2010. However, the PACS provides significantly fewer rights than marriage, and does not allow gay couples to adopt.

In other marriage news, same-sex marriage bills advanced in the Delaware House and the Rhode Island Senate, and the Nevada Senate approved the first step in removing that state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Also, Nevada state senator Kelvin Atkinson (D-North Las Vegas), came out publicly, saying:

I know this is the first time many of you have heard me say that I am a black, gay male. . . . If this hurts your marriage, then your marriage was in trouble in the first place.

Texas Lesbian Beaten by Homophobe on School Playground

Sondra Scarber

The incident occurred in Mesquite, a less-affluent suburb on the east side of Dallas. Although the victim, Sondra Scarber, received a broken jaw in the attack, Mesquite police are not treating it as a hate crime. WFAA reports:

The couple had taken Causey’s son, Jaxon, to the playground at Mesquite’s Seabourn Elementary on Feb. 17. Shortly after arriving at 2:30 p.m., though, the couple said some older children began pushing Jaxon around.

“Sondra said, ‘Can you please keep your hands off of him, he’s only four,’” Causey said.

The father became enraged, she said, when he realized Scarber, who wears baggy clothes and has short hair, is a woman, and that the two are lesbians. Friends since the third grade, Scarber and Causey have been girlfriends for three years. They’re raising Causey’s young son together.

“When he walked up thinking it was father and mom with the kid, he wasn’t as angry,” said Causey, 26, “but then when he figured out it was a female, he got like super pissed, and I don’t know why.”

She said the man punched and kicked Scarber repeatedly, hurling homophobic slurs at her while she lay on the ground, unconscious.

“He was like, ‘well if you think you’re a man… I’m going to treat you like a man,’” Causey said. “All she kept saying was, ‘I’m a female. I’m a female…' She never even had time to take her hands out of pockets to try and block herself.”

Mesquite police haven’t caught the suspect. Officers aren’t convinced the attack meets the true qualifications of a hate crime, since the scuffle among children was the initial trigger.

“At this point, we have no indication the assault occurred because of her sexual orientation,” said Lt. Bill Hedgpeth with the Mesquite police. “Regardless of motive, we want to catch them.”

Scarber's mother has set up a donation page for her (your Head Trucker has not verified it himself, though) and gives further details of the beating:

My 27 year old daughter was at the park with her girlfriend and her son, playing on February 17, 2013 at 2:30 p.m., when a bigger boy around 12 began bullying their 4 year old son, Jaxon. My daughter asked the older boy to please stop. The boy went to his car to his parents at their car and upon returning the boy said “That's him!”. My daughter replied, “I am a female. I am a girl.” Without warning, the B/M punched my daughter while calling her a white dyke bit** and knocked her out with the first blow. He continued kicking, punching, and slapping my daughter, breaking her nose, and shattering her jaw. He stole her earrings, teal Mainers hat, I-Phone 4, which he dropped as he ran from the scene. He choked Sondra with her cross necklace which did not break, and even tried to take her Nike shoes. All of this, in front of a B/F he was with and his 4 children. Sondra suffered two concussions on both sides of her head.

About fourteen men playing basketball and their girlfriends were in the area, but no one tried to help my daughter or her girlfriend, Hillary. They were driving an older silver Chevy Impala with paper tags. This occurred in Mesquite, Texas at Seaborn Elementary on a Sunday. We need help with some kind of reward to help find this creep, and funds as she can not work for at least 6-24 months. Thank you for reading this and any donations.

Beaten, Stabbed, Thrown in the Fire

I can't get it to embed, but I want you guys to go to the news story and watch the video. This is what happens to gay people in Texas:

Burnett was at the party with some female friends when he says three men, who were upset that he is gay, began beating him and calling him names.

"Faggot, cocksucker, gay bitch," Burnett said.

Twenty-six year old Burnett is from nearby Paris and says he has never experienced homophobia like this. He came out of the closet when he was 15, inspired by Matthew Shepherd -- a gay man from Wyoming man who was killed because he was gay.

"I was about 11 when that happened. It really, really hit home and it scared me as a little boy to think that's what happens to gay people," Burnett said.

Reno police are being tightlipped about the case, but three days after the attack, they had three suspects in custody all charged with aggravated assault. Daniel Martin, James Mitchell Laster and Micky Joe Smith are being held on $250,000 bond each.

Reno's mayor William Heuberger calls the attack appalling. He says his sympathy goes to the victim and no one deserves this kind of treatment.

Another interview with Burke:




BTW - Thanks mucho for all the cards and letters, guys.  I really have appreciated all your kind thoughts and good wishes.  Sometimes a fella just needs to get quiet and be in his own space, ya know?  Nothing anyone can help with.

But of course it doesn't help a damn bit to be stuck out here on the prairie surrounded by millions of homo haters, and no conceivable way out.  But I'll manage.


Update:  The Lamar County grand jury has indicted Burke's three attackers on hate crimes charges, making them liable for first-degree felony convictions, with up to life in prison.  Yes, Texas actually does have a hate crimes law, passed in 2001 after the dragging death of James Byrd, which covers crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, among other things.

Fear and Loathing in East Texas - and Elsewhere

Just to show you that the next post about the Arkansas Asshole, Clint McCance, is not unusual at all in these parts, here's proof.  The NBC affilliate in Tyler, Texas - about a hundred miles southeast of Dallas - asked its viewers today, "Will the gays destroy America?"

The listener comments start at the 2:40 mark.  And no, the voices you hear are not from Central Casting - trust me, they're real, and that's what I'm surrounded by down here, guys.  My own people, my fellow Texans and Southerners - I'm ashamed to say.

Although there are, surprisingly, some supportive voices too.  I'm surprised the station included them.



Honk to Joe.My.God.


And in this context, it's fitting to note that by curious coincidence, today is the anniversary of Allen Schindler's stomping death at the hands of fellow U. S. Navy sailors in 1992:

Airman Apprentice Terry M. Helvey, who was a member of the ship's weather department (OA Division, Operations Department), stomped Schindler to death in a toilet in a park in Sasebo, Nagasaki. He was left lying on the bathroom floor until the Shore Patrol and the key witness to the incident carried out Schindler's body to the nearby Albuquerque Bridge. Schindler had "at least four fatal injuries to the head, chest, and abdomen," his head was crushed, ribs broken, and his penis cut, and he had "sneaker-tread marks stamped on his forehead and chest" destroying "every organ in his body" leaving behind a "nearly-unrecognizable corpse" that was only identifiable by the tattoo on his arm.

Any mother's son from Mari Fagel on Vimeo.


Don't think it can't happen here.  Don't think it can't happen to you, fucker.  It can, very easily.  Especially if the Tea Party comes to power.  They're already starting to stomp on people's heads.

I'm doing early voting tomorrow.  The Republicans will as usual win nearabouts every office, but by God I'm not going to just hand it all to them for free.

You are planning to vote in this election - aren't you?

Matthew Shepard: 12 Years

Yesterday was the twelfth anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death, which for a time seemed to galvanize the attention of the nation on the problem of homophobia.  Perhaps the recent teen suicides will have a similar effect.  Matthew's mother Judy Shepard speaks on this topic:

Newsbites

At this holiday time, when the Christian world is - theoretically - piously commemorating the birth of Christ, a little good cheer from Mexico . . . and a lot of fake-Christian crap from elsewhere.

A bill to legalize same-sex marriage, including adoption rights, passes  Mexico City's legislative assembly by 39-20.  The city enacted civil unions in 2007, and will be the first jurisdiction in all of Latin America to have equal marriage.  Population, 2009:  8.8 million, and 21 million in the metro area.

City lawmaker Victor Romo, a member of the mayor's leftist party, called it a historic day.  "For centuries unjust laws banned marriage between blacks and whites or Indians and Europeans," he said. "Today all barriers have disappeared."

But in New Mexico, whose statutes do not specify that married couples have to be male and female, a state legislator has filed a bill to close that theoretical loophole by constitutional amendment.  (New Mexico has never recognized or performed same-sex marriages.)  A domestic partnership bill was defeated there earlier this year, but Governor Bill Richardson says he hopes to get such a bill passed next year.

Up in Canada, where equal marriage became the law of the land in 2005, the gay-haters are foaming at the mouth over this wicked, disgusting, totally obscene Christmas card sent out by Member of Parliament Scott Brison to 5,000 friends and constituents:

Nova Scotian Brison, on the left, married his husband, Maxime St. Pierre, in 2007, the first federal MP to marry a same-sex partner while in office.  The wedding was attended by the cream of Canadian politicians, including two former prime ministers.  And still, even in liberal, gay-friendly Canada - the haters just can't stand even the merest suggestion that two men can love each other.  Especially at Christmas time!

Back in the U.S., Prominent right-wing homophobes Peter LaBarbera and Matt Barber are slugging it out over who should take the rap for this repulsive description of gay relationships:  "one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’”  Joe Jervis, as usual, is on the case, with glee. 

Notice, guys - this is a scared-shitless straight boy's nightmare concept of what it's like.  Not at all the reality as we experience it.  Not the truth.  A lie - but a Big Lie that straight boys for centuries have built up and spread in the name of their self-reflecting Heterosexual God - and have used, and are still using, to absolutely crush the life out of gay people wherever they can.

Joe is also keeping track of the freeper-creepers whose maniacal calls for Civil War II are growing more strident:

A violent overthrow of the socialist bastard traitors BEFORE this hellish health care debacle gets enacted is the only way we will ever be able to stop our plunge into socialist-fascist tyranny. I only hope that we have enough patriotic military officers & soldiers who will fight with us & for us.

 Uh-huh.  Socialist-fascist tyranny.  Can you say oxymoron, you morons?

Over in the United Kingdom, where civil partnerships have been in place for four years now, they have their extremists too:  Stephen Green, leader of Christian Voice, says Jesus approves killing the gays - and adulteresses too: 

The Bible calls for the ultimate penalty for sodomy (Lev 20:13) and for rape (Deut 22:25), and our Lord upheld the death penalty when He called for the accusers of the woman caught in adultery to cast the first stone (John 8:7) – if, that is, they were not implicated in adultery themselves. The contrast between our politicians and those of Uganda could not be more stark. A Parliamentarian in Uganda is trying to protect his nation's children. The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is trying to corrupt ours.

Hmm, so just Who Would Jesus Kill? - and would that include all the family-loving, Bible-believing, adulterous Republican politicians in this country?

Also, in Northern England, an Anglican priest in York, the Rev. Tim Jones, has delivered a sermon advising his congregation to shoplift from big retailers - not small ones, mind you - because "God's love for the poor is more important than the property rights of the rich."  Help me out here guys - I just can't find this verse in the Sermon on the Mount, can you?  And just What Would Jesus Steal, anyway?

Down in Puerto Rico, though, a voice of sanity:  out bisexual closeted I-never-said-I-was-gay singing star and single dad Ricky Martin has a timely message of peace and goodwill to men posted on his website:

The murders of James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, Jorge Steven Lopez [Mercado], Marcelo Lucero, Luis Ramirez and countless others who were victims of violent 'hate crimes' should be completely unacceptable to every human being; because we're all human beings. . . .  Accepting diversity is the first and most important step we can take towards eliminating hate crimes and uniting humanity. If we ACCEPT, humanity unites. If humanity unites, equal human rights will become a reality. And if equal human rights become a reality, peace will be within our reach.

And finally, on an archaeological note, the remains of a small, modest house dating from the time of Jesus have been found in Nazareth, illustrating the typical living accommodations of that time and place.  Nothing fancy, just little bitty houses in a little hick town way out in the boonies:  you'd never think anything worth mentioning would come from a place like that, would you?

Hate Thy Neighbor

World homosexuality laws, from Wikipedia: orange, red, and brown indicate criminal penalties for homosexuality, up to life in prison or death.

I'm not an atheist; but I am continually horrified at the many ways in which religion is used to justify the most inhuman, ungodly behavior - which to my mind suggests that men often make God in their own image.

According to a story in the New York Times,

The relative freedom of a newly democratic Iraq and the recent improvement in security have allowed a gay subculture to flourish here. The response has been swift and deadly.

In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.

Iraq remains religious, conservative — and still violent. The killers, the police say, are not just Shiite death squads, but also tribal and family members shamed by their gay relatives. (And the recent spate of violence has seemed aimed at more openly gay men, rather than homosexuality generally.) . . .

Clerics in Sadr City have urged followers to help root out homosexuality in Iraqi society, and the police have begun their own crackdown on gay men.

“Homosexuality is against the law,” said Lt. Muthana Shaad, at a police station in the Karada district, a neighborhood that has become popular with gay men. “And it’s disgusting.”

For the past four months, he said, officers have been engaged in a “campaign to clean up the streets and get the beggars and homosexuals off them.”

Gay men, he said, can be arrested only if they are seen engaging in sex, but the police try to drive them away. “These people, we make sure they can’t get together in a coffee shop or walk together in the street — we make them break up,” he said. . . .

In 2005, the country’s most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a religious decree that said gay men and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed.” He added, “The people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” The language has since been removed from his Web site.

Boston EDGE reports:

An Iraqi GLBT advocate living in exile claims that gay men in Iraq are being subject to a loathsome, and fatal, form of torture: their anuses are being glued shut, after which the victims are force-fed a mixture that induces diarrhea, leading to their deaths.

Ali Hili, the London-based leader of Iraqi LGBT, was cited as making the claims in an April 21 article appearing at Queerty.

The Queerty item stated, "Buoying the theory that it’s the ’anal sex’ part of being gay that really infuriates homophobes, Iraqi militants are reportedly gluing shut the anuses of suspected gays.

"Repeat: Gluing shut their anuses. With a glue so resilient, you need surgery to remove it," the article continued.

"This is torture, and some 60 men have already been attacked with it."

The Denver Post:

An openly gay member of Congress, [Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colorado] has been investigating the treatment of gays in Iraq for several months, and last week he spoke through a translator by phone to a transgender Iraqi man who said he had been arrested, beaten and raped by Ministry of Interior security forces. Human-rights groups tracking the issue also passed Polis a letter, allegedly written from jail by a man who said he was beaten into confessing he was a member of the gay-rights group Iraqi-LGBT. The group said the man had been sentenced to death in a court in Karkh and finally executed.

"Is there anyone to help me before it is too late?" said the letter. Its author's name was being withheld to protect his family.

Polis carried some of that evidence with him to Iraq and presented State Department officials in Baghdad with a letter outlining the allegations and pressing members of the Iraqi parliament's human-rights committee.

"We will see whether the Iraqi government is serious about protecting the human rights of all Iraqis, and we can also see what role our own State Department can play in helping to protect this minority in Iraq," Polis said by phone Wednesday after leaving Iraq.

The Guardian (UK) points out the link between religious hatred and political oppression:

When human rights are undermined, those responsible sometimes claim to be defending virtue and national interests. In late 2001, as drastic measures were brought in supposedly to defeat terrorism, US attorney general John Ashcroft condemned critics: "to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil." Many people were convinced, or intimidated into silence. The grim consequences continue to come to light.

The rhetoric of patriotism and morality is currently being used to try to justify the same gender marriage (prohibition) bill in Nigeria. Sex between men is already illegal, but this bill could be used to imprison people of the same sex who live together "as husband and wife or for other purposes of same sexual relationship" and anyone who "witnesses, abet[s] and aids" such a relationship. Not surprisingly, it has been condemned by human rights activists in Nigeria and internationally. . . .

In a statement supporting the bill, [Anglican] Archbishop Akinola starts with his own (contested) interpretation of the Bible, and warns, "Any society or nation that approves same sex union as an acceptable life style is in an advanced stage of corruption/moral decay. This bill therefore seeks to shield Nigeria from the complete annihilation that will follow the wrath of God should this practice be accepted as normal in this land." . . . The fact that these dire predictions have not come to pass elsewhere in the world does not deter him. . . . In this apocalyptic worldview, it can be too risky to love one's neighbour as oneself.

But violating human rights ultimately damages morality and national wellbeing. According to a former judge advocate general of the US Navy, Admiral Hutson, "In dealing with detainees, the attitude at the top was that they are all just terrorists, beneath contempt and outside the law so they could be treated inhumanely . . . we had Abu Ghraib and its progeny. The self-respect of the military and the country was diminished. Our international reputation will be tarnished for generations." The Nigerian authorities should take note.

Meanwhile, back here in the land of the free and home of the brave: former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, who was White House chief of staff under Bush 41, and is the current chair of the NH Republican Party, calls equal rights for LGBT people "garbage."

Did you catch that, God?

Hate Is Alive and Well

On Sunday night, three punks burst in to Robert's Lafitte, a gay bar in Galveston, and started stoning patrons, causing some serious injuries. The bar has both gay and straight patrons, and as I blogged about last fall, was a gathering point for survivors of the hurricane that devastated the island. Kudos to the police, who quickly arrested the perps.

Joe.My.God also has this horrible story of a double murder in a redneck corner of Spain, and the perp's acquital on a "gay panic" defense.

And still, we are the ones who are so awful, so sinful, so immoral? I don't think so.

Goodwill to Men? Not Yet

As Mike Signorile puts it, some things never change:

One thing you can always depend on each Christmas: 1) The Pope will attack gays and gay marriage (and this year transexuality) for all the violence in the world -- during his message about peace, joy and unity; 2) some crazed heterosexual will perpetrate a Christmas Eve massacre during the supposed season of comfort and joy, usually inspired by the stresses of his heterosexual marriage and the holiday season itself.

I already posted on the first point. Mike's second point is about the beyond-horrible mass murder of at least 10 people at a family Christmas dinner in Covina, California. The perp, a recently divorced in-law and a faithful usher at his Catholic church, arrived at the house dressed as Santa Claus and rang the doorbell. When an 8-year-old girl ran to open the door, he shot her in the face, then proceeded to kill everyone else he could, then set the house ablaze. After escaping the scene, he drove to his brother's house where he shot himself.

The 8-year-old and one other child are hospitalized in intensive care. Several others of the 27 people at the Christmas dinner were injured as well.

Jeezus, what kind of fucking monster can do such a thing? No matter how badly he got hurt, no matter how bad he got burned in the divorce. Especially one who attends Mass every week? What the hell goes on here? I just don't get it, not at all.

But I don't get a lot of things like that. For instance, all the increasing hate crimes against LGBT people, as the San Jose Mercury News reports. My heart goes out to the young gay woman who was brutally gang-raped and left naked on the street by four creeps in Richmond, California, this week. Police are still looking for the perps, two of whom go by the names "Blue" and "Pato," and a reward is offered for information on them.

Likewise, my sympathies to the families of 15-year-old Larry King; Jose Sucuzhanay, Duanna Johnson, and many others who had an empty chair at the Christmas table this week. All of those deaths caused by straight male homophobia and utter contempt for human life.

And ultimately, all of that is promoted and condoned by the arrogant, filthy lies put out by people like this asshat of a Pope and his Protestant counterparts like Rick Warren. Oh if you asked them, they would deplore the beatings and the killings, yes, very sad, such a pity.

But THEY are the ones who tell their flocks, and by extension the larger society, that we queers are sick, evil, perverted, doomed to eternal damnation and not fit to live; less than full and equal humans, way less, deserving nothing.

Oh and we're also destroying the family, society, the nation, the military, the economy, in fact the whole freaking planet. Why not shoot, stab, or beat us to death? Wouldn't that be doing the world a favor? Oh please. The Church/churches love to talk about Love and Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, yada yada, they love to play the sweet, holy act. Especially at Christmas. But what are they really all about? Now I grew up Christian here in the Deep South, and I'm not yet willing to let go of every part of that. My faith sustained me through some terribly dark nights of the soul, and I do believe there is a God/Higher Power/Whatever, bigger than any box we try to put Him/Her/It in.

But in recent years my eyes have been opened wide to all the hypocrisy and dishonesty and self-righteous, self-serving patriarchy that's made my life, and millions of others, a living hell for so long.

I've had it with the whole straight-white-male Christian church as it has been rocking along all these centuries. Many good people have belonged, and done good things; but the Church in its various branches and manifestations has also condoned for ages (until forced to change) scientific ignorance, slavery, the denial of women's rights and birth control, segregation, interracial marriage, and of course, homophobia. (One day soon I'm going to post here a summary of how the church has persecuted gays down through history; it's not anything new.)

But now I think I see a crack beginning in that last one; the Church (or churches) has changed its attitude on all the others, and it's time to get a new attitude on this one too. Real soon.

If there's anything of God in it. Because God is Love.

For more religious asshattery, here's Signorile's interview with Bill Donohue of the Catholic League about the supposed "campaign of violence" we queers are waging across the country now: