Box Turtle Bulletin

Don’t Ask, Don’t Live

A sailor, August Provost of Houston, Texas, was found dead at Camp Pendleton near San Diego at about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday. Sources say he was shot and burned, which lead authorities to believe that it was foul play. A “person of interest” is in custody. Some believe it wasn’t an ordinary murder, but a hate crime:

Ben Gomez, head of the San Diego chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a national advocacy group for gay and lesbian military personnel, said he and other local activists believe Provost’s death was a hate crime. Citing unnamed sources with access to a report on the seaman’s death, Gomez said Provost was killed during an argument with another sailor over the victim’s sexual orientation. On his MySpace page, Provost made references to same-sex dating and identified another Houston man as “the love of my life.”

“He Fell and Hit His Head”

CBS Channel 11 is reporting the most bizarre story yet about how Chad Gibson came to be in intensive care with bleeding on the brain:

Police Chief Jeff Halstead said Gibson had grabbed at the agent’s groin and was so drunk he was vomiting and fell and hit his head. Gibson was one of those arrested but was taken to the hospital instead of jail.

They also provide this first-hand account:

George Armstrong, 41, said he had been at the Rainbow Lounge about 30 minutes and had ordered one drink when officers stormed inside. He said as on officer passed him, he smiled and flashed the peace sign, but then he was suddenly grabbed and tackled to the floor with his arm twisted behind his back.

“He was yelling at me to stop resisting arrest, but I wasn’t doing anything. It was horrible. I really thought he had broken my shoulder,” Armstrong told The Associated Press on Monday. “I’ve never been so embarrassed and humiliated. I didn’t do anything to him.”

Armstrong was arrested, but he said no officers advised him of his Miranda rights or administered any tests to determine his blood-alcohol level.

He said he noticed that other people who were arrested were injured or said they had been tackled by police.

When Armstrong was released from jail the next day, he went to the hospital, where his arm was put in a sling after X-rays determined his shoulder and back were severely bruised and strained, he said.

Armstrong said he never saw anyone inside the Rainbow Lounge make lewd gestures at or grab the officers. He said the raid happened very quickly at the club that had just reopened.

“To me it seemed like they were trying to make a point,” Armstrong said.

With Right Wing Extremists In the Headlines, Even Fox News Is Frightened By Their Own Viewers

Today’s shooting at the American Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., coupled with last week’s murder of Dr. Tiller in Wichita, Kansas — both by right wing extremists — has not gone unnoticed by other groups who are also potential targets, including members of the LGBT community. Many LGBT advocacy groups and community organizations are now on high alert. Darrel Cummings, chief of staff at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center said this to reporter Karen Ocamb:

“Our security is fully staffed and on high alert. We, like other groups targeted for right wing hate rhetoric and violence, are always in the mix. When the hate and attacks and rhetoric on the right increases, so does the danger to our own community. We might have been spared a death, but we haven\’t been spared harassment and hate speech and other form of physical assaults around the marriage issue.”

Dan Savage has this succinct rundown on the Holocaust Memorial shooter:

James Von Brunn is a “revered elder statesman” to right-wing extremists, a Neo-Nazi, a “birther,” a white supremacist, a contributer to right-wing-rant-site FreeRepublic.com, and… a painter.

The term “birther” refers to right wing extremists’ allegations of a conspiracy to conceal President Barack Obama’s “true” birthplace. They allege that he wasn’t born in the United States and therefore is not eligible to be president. (Factcheck.org has the truth about Obama’s birth certificate. See also PolitiFact.) Fox News hasn’t done much to squelch those allegations. It’s sister site, Fox Nation, continued to raise the question again just a few weeks ago. But with these two shootings in just the past two weeks, even Fox News reporters are pulling back from the brink — and expressing alarm at the emails they get from their own viewers.

Shepard Smith: I read a lot of email around here, and the email to me has become more and more frightening. It’s not a new thing. It’s been happening over the past few months. It’s been happening, you know, to some degree since the election process went along. I mean we had a woman, we had a black man, we had, you know, we had a lot going on. And there are people now who are way out there on a limb, and I think they are just way out there on the limb with the email they send us, because I read it. And they are out there. I mean out there in a scary place.

I’m going to read to you a little bit, and I’m not going to read the name, but this is, I promise, a representative sample of the kinds of things that we get here.

“Shepard. How dare you tell us to get over Obama not being a U.S. citizen? Where is the birth certificate? Where? He won’t show it. So why are you so trumped up to believe it? I cannot stand Hussein. He’s a socialist Marxist who is at fast rate destroying our country.”

If you’re one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who’s performing abortion? Well I think we just learned for the killer of Dr. Tiller. If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the President of the United States — and I can read a hundred of them like this!

Other reporter: Thousands.

Smith: I mean from today! People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are so absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous. Yet they are mad, and they’re very mad that I just called it preposterous.

Other reporter: Well if anybody wants to know the level of anger or whatever you want to call it, crazy, just take a spin around the blogs out there on the Internet, and take just half an hour and go out through and randomly see what’s being said out there. It’s frightening on a lot of different levels. And part of the problem I think is they’re feeding each other.

Smith: They are.

Other reporter: People are not going out there and…

Smith: Their own web sites feeding each other…

Other reporter: Right.

Smith: … the same bunch of fact, of hate that’s not based in fact, and it’s ginning itself up and I guess if that’s what you want to do with your time, maybe that’s what you do. But more and more it seems like people are taking extra step and getting the gun out.

Blowback From Right Wing Extremists

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security issued a pair of security assessments warning that right wing and left wing extremists may be on the rise this year. Conservatives were particularly incensed that Homeland Security chose to discuss the rise of right-wing extremism following the election of the first African-American president. The report noted that right wing extremists were especially targeting Iraq war veterans for recruitment.

That assessment sent conservatives through the roof, charging that the report was a smear campaign against the Republican party. Newt Gingrich tweeted, “The person who drafted the outrageous homeland security memo smearing veterans and conservatives should be fired.” Michelle Malkin called it a “hit job on conservatives.” Of course, that would only be true if all conservatives were right-wing extremists.

But what’s happened since that report was released. An abortion doctor in Wichita, Kansas was gunned down in front of his wife while attending church by Scott Roeder. The assailant was a part of the Freemen group which was part of a three-month standoff with the FBI in Montana in 1996. He was also in contact with Operation Rescue at least two years before gunning down Tiller.

Now just today, one person was killed during an attack at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The gunman, James W. Von Brunn, has been a prolific writer for White Supremacist and neo-Nazi groups for a number of years.

When the Homeland Security issued their report, Conservative media including Fox News howled in protest and demanded an immediate apology from Secretary Janet Napolitano. With two violent actions by right-wing extremists in the space of just a couple of weeks, will those same people — Newt Gingrich and Michelle Malkin in particular — apologize to Secretary Napolitano?

It’s at least encouraging to see one reporter at Fox News who is covering the scene at the Holocaust Memorial to question their prior

In Studio: Katherine, for the second time in as many weeks, a crime scene reminds me of a memo which you broke on the Fox Report from the government warning, look out for crazy extremists out there about to go do weirdness, and here we are.

Katherine: Well this is an excellent point to bring up because I think we have to now see those two intelligence assessments that were released by Homeland Security earlier this year — one dealt with left-wing extremists, the other dealt with right-wing extremists — you have to see them in a somewhat different light. It would appear — and I emphasize appear based on the evidence that’s available to us — that it does seem to be the act of an individual who had extremist views, and if it is indeed von Brunn, someone who did have a military history — and as you remember, that was the element of the right-wing intelligence assessment which was so controversial and there was a lot of blowback on Homeland Security from that assessment.

In Studio:Yeah, there was blowback and here we are.

I bring this up for one reason only, and it’s not to bash Republicans or conservatives. But it is to sound a warning. There really are extremists out there. Different extremists target their hate towards different groups, including the LGBT community. For several years now, we as a community have continued to bear the brunt of the lion’s share of violent hate crimes, moreso than any other group tracked by the FBI.

We have gained tremendous ground in the past few months, with same-sex marriage now legal throughout New England and Iowa, in addition to all-the-rights-of-marriage Domestic Partnerships in Washington State. We also have a hate crimes act passed in the House and working its way through the Senate. We have seen unprecedented victories in a very short amount of time. That cannot be going unnoticed among some of the more violent-prone segments of the population. Let’s be careful and vigilant out there.

ADF Sues Michigan Group For Disrupting Church Services

The Alliance Defense Fund, an a Scottsdale-based anti-gay legal group, has filed a federal lawsuit against the “Bash Back!” anarchists who invaded a church during morning worship services near Lansing, Michigan. Here is the ADF’s statement:

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed suit in federal court Wednesday against a radical anarchist group that openly advocates the use of riots and crime to further its views in favor of homosexual behavior. ADF attorneys filed the suit on behalf of Delta Township\’s Mount Hope Church against the group “Bash Back!,” which invaded the church\’s building during a worship service on Nov. 9 of last year.

“The use of violent threats and criminal behavior to make a political point should never be acceptable in America,” said ADF Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb. “Bash Back! revealed how dangerous the homosexual agenda is to our First Liberty, religious freedom. ADF filed this suit to stop Bash Back! and other activist groups from invading churches, disrupting worship, silencing pastors, and terrifying adults and children who attend religious services.”

A local news account of what happened is here. The ADF cites a clause of the “Freedom to Access To Clinics Act,” which was intended to protect those who provide or obtain abortions. That clause also protects places of worship by prohibiting actions by anyone who:

(2) by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship;

What “Bash Back!” did was clearly inexcusable and against the law. It was also abyslmally stupid. My dad used to tell me that even a broken clock is right twice a day. I think this is the first time I’ve ever said this about the ADF, but the ADF and Mount Hope Church are very much in the right. “Bash Back!” clearly and deliberately violated Mount Hope’s First Amendment rights and should be held accountable for it.

IFI Corrects Paraphilias Claim

On May 5, the Illinios Family Institute joined the chorus of those who misstated the APA’s definition of orientation so as to claim that the Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Act would protect pedophilia, exhibitionism and various other paraphilias:

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has defined the broad term of “sexual orientation” to include bestiality, pedophilia, incest, and “gender identity” disorder among 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias.’

Clearly our Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, are at risk, not to mention legitimizing and safeguarding over 2 dozen mental/sexual disorders.

H.R. 1913 is an insidious piece of legislation that is aimed at protecting immoral deviant behaviors while inhibiting moral verbal opposition with the threat of prosecution…

We contacted the IFI and referred them to what the APA actually says. They have now issued a correction:

In the article entitled “Hate Crimes Bill Moves to Senate” (5/5/09), we mistakenly stated that the American Psychiatric Association’s actual definition of “sexual orientation” includes paraphilias. The APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) classifies “sexual orientation” as heterosexual, homosexual, and bi-sexual. The 547 mental disorders called “paraphilias” specifically involve non-human objects, physical pain, or unwilling partners as in pedophilia. IFI apologizes for the error.

Ok. That’s more of a slur by association than an apology. Which is, naturally, why IFI has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And, of course, the IFI went on to oppose the bill in terms of “threats to equal protections”, an argument that did not seem to require attention when other classes of people were offered hate crimes protections.

Nevertheless, I do commend them for taking action to admit their misstatement.

Hate Crimes Bill Passes the House

NYT

The vote was 249 to 175, with most Democrats voting in favor and most Republicans against. The bill, H.S. 1913, defines hate crimes as those motivated by prejudice and based on a victim\’s race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The measure would provide grants for state and local authorities to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, and it would empower the federal government to prosecute cases if states asked for Washington\’s help or were reluctant to exercise their own authority.

Obama Urges Action On Hate Crimes Bill

The White House has released this statement:

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT ON H.R. 1913, THE LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT HATE CRIMES PREVENTION ACT OF 2009
This week, the House of Representatives is expected to consider H.R. 1913, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.  I urge members on both sides of the aisle to act on this important civil rights issue by passing this legislation to protect all of our citizens from violent acts of intolerance – legislation that will enhance civil rights protections, while also protecting our freedom of speech and association.  I also urge the Senate to work with my Administration to finalize this bill and to take swift action.

The House is expected to debate and vote on the bill Wednesday. The Human Rights Campaign urges everyone to call their representative and ask them to vote for the bill’s passage.

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) introduced the hate crimes legislation in the Senate. Co-sponsors include  Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Arlen Specter (R D-PA).

Angie Zapata’s Murderer Found Guilty

It has just been announced that a Colorado jury found Allen Andrade guilty of murdering 18-year-old Angie Zapata. He was also found guilty of the additional hate crime enhancement as well as vehicle theft and identity theft. The charges carry a mandatory life sentence without parole.

Angie Zapata was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher on July 17, 2008 when Andrade discovered that she was a transgender woman. Andrade then stole her car, a 2003 PT Cruiser. It was that stolen car which led investigators to Andrade.

During the trial this week, jurors heard a tape of phone call Andrade made from jail to a girlfriend. In that phone conversation, Andrade said that “gay things need to die.” He also joked about his “celebrity” status which should fetch him $50,000 for his life story. That phone call was made just days after his arrest.

Colorado added gender identity to its hate crime law in 2005, making it one of only eleven states to include transgender protections. This is the first case in which Colorado’s hate crime law has been applied in a case involving a transgender person.

The Consequences of Anti-Gay Bullying

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover was so mercilessly bullied with gay taunts that on Monday he tied an electrical cord around his neck and hung himself. He was eleven.

Carl is not alone. Anti-gay bullying is a serious problem in public schools. It is rampant, it is pervasive, and often times it is ignored by those responsible for preventing it.

In Mentor, Ohio, the high school doesn\’t think it has a problem with bullying. So they are being sued by the parents of Eric Mohat with a lawsuit that doesn\’t ask for money but instead that the administration implement an age-appropriate anti-bullying program. The Mohats feel that the school has ignored the reasons why Eric, who suffered from persistent anti-gay bullying, killed himself in 2007. He was one of four bullied Mentor High School students who committed suicide that year.

Considering that children are dying and that the cause is obvious, you\’d think that everyone would support programs to stop the bullying. You\’d think wrong.

Anti-gay activists consistently oppose any effort to target and prevent anti-gay bullying. They say that programs which identify specific targets, including those tormented for being perceived as gay, are really “indoctrination of homosexuality under the pretext of anti-bullying curriculum.”

And they would much rather let children die than muffle those “students and school officials who object to homosexuality.”

Incidentally, neither Carl nor Eric identified as gay. That didn’t protect them.

“This is Jamaica and we are against homosexuals”

The news of the boycott against Jamaica has reached the island. Naturally, being Jamaican media, the reporter placed the boycott as solely San Franciscan in extent, questioned the “specific figures on the size of the movement”, defended the targets, and dismissed the concerns as “a perceived rise in attacks”.

Today the Jamaica Gleaner printed a letter to the editor. Needless to say, it was not one expressing condemnation of the violence or a concern about the economic impact of harboring murdering homophobes. Rather, it was the usual arrogant defense of homophobia and hatred that we have come to expect from Jamaicans.

This is Jamaica and we are against homosexuals.

There is no if, but or maybe about it. Why are they forcing us to accept them? We do not have to. We are a Christian country and homosexuality is contrary to our practices, so why should we drop all our morals, values and religious standards just to please their forbidden choice?

And as for civil protections, well there are none to be expected in the Caribbean’s pit of bigotry.

Instead of simply attacking us and trying to force us to protect and accept you, how about accepting our laws and abiding by them? You are not changing your minds and becoming heterosexuals, and we reluctantly accept that. Likewise, we are not changing our minds, or our laws to please you, so accept this. In the end, if you want to boycott our country, we don’t mind.

Thanks. I believe I will.

McInerney’s Father Found Dead

William McInerney, father of teen-murderer Brandon McInerney, was found dead today. While there was no indication of foul play, I suspect that there may not have been natural causes.

The father of a 15-year-old boy accused of killing a gay classmate was found dead at his home on Wednesday, just hours before his son was expected to appear at a court hearing, authorities said.

In addition to Brandon’s toubles, William McInerney was undergoing legal problems of his own.

The elder McInerney was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on felony charges he threatened to kill his sister during a domestic dispute last month.

The sister, Maura McInerney, testified that he became enraged and threatened her after she was unable to wake him up for a scheduled visit with his jailed son.

UPDATE:

The coroner has ruled the death an accident.

The father of 15-year-old murder defendant Brandon McInerney was found dead this morning at his home in Silver Strand after what appeared to be an accidental fall.

William McInerney, 45, died from blunt-force head injury, said Dr. Janice Frank, the Ventura County assistant medical examiner who conducted an autopsy of the body.

Frank said a contributing cause of death was alcoholism. McInerney had a history of alcohol abuse, she said, declining to elaborate.

Scott Lively and Alan Chambers Respond to Questions About Uganda Conference

Dr. Warren Throckmorton contacted Scott Lively about the coverage of the Uganda conference in which he endorsed criminalization of homosexuality. Here is his response:

I did promote therapy as an option to imprisonment, citing my own experience benefiting from optional therapy after an arrest for drunk driving many years ago. In fact, it was during that period I accepted Christ and was spontaneously healed of alcoholism and drug addiction.

I don’t think under the circumstances homosexuality should be decriminalized in Uganda since it seems to be the only thing stopping the international “gay” juggernaut from turning Uganda into another Brazil.

He also posts the full Exodus International response.

Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, responded to reports about an Exodus board member’s participation at a conference in Uganda on homosexuality:

“Unfortunately, Uganda as a country has demonstrated severe hostility towards homosexuals supporting criminalization of homosexual behavior and proposing compulsory therapy – positions that Exodus International unequivocally denounces. It is our sincere desire to offer an alternative message that encompasses a compassionate, biblical view of homosexuality not just here in America, but around the world. We applaud our board member’s attempt to convey these truths to a country in need.”

I don’t trust myself to respond just yet other than to say that it would seem that Alan doesn’t know the meaning of the word “unequivocally”.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Exodus Applauds Schmierer’s Part in Uganda Conference

The Christian Post has an article today in which Warren Throckmorton was critical of the carelessness with which ex-gay ministries approached the conference in Uganda:

“It is illegal to be homosexual in Uganda. There’s also a category of homosexuality (act) that has a potential for life imprisonment,” said Throckmorton to The Christian Post on Wednesday. “How often it is enforced is not clear.”
…
“I think it’s inappropriate to try to transplant American concepts of ex-gay ministry into an environment where you can’t even go in and open yourself up to that kind of disclosure without some kind of risk,” he said.

But Alan Chambers, President of Exodus, was not apologetic.

In response, Exodus International said it applauds its board member Don Schmierer, who attended the Uganda conference, for his effort to convey an “alternative message that encompasses a compassionate, biblical view of homosexuality,” according to a statement by Exodus International president Alan Chambers to The Christian Post on Wednesday.

Exodus says neither Schmierer nor the ministry agrees or endorses Uganda’s criminalization of homosexuality law, imprisonment of homosexuals or compulsory therapy. Rather, the ministry says it “unequivocally denounces” the positions the government of Uganda has towards homosexuality.

We do not yet have the full text of the statement. But to be perfectly honest, my stomach turned when I read this.

Click here to see BTB’s complete coverage of recent anti-gay developments in Uganda.

Dallas Man Given 30 Years In Anti-Gay Attack

Times are changing. If you need any proof of that, look at this recent verdict in Dallas:

A 32-year-old Garland man was sentenced to 30 years in prison Wednesday, March 4 for his role in a brutal anti-gay hate crime that occurred in the heart of Oak Lawn last July.

Before recommending the sentence to Judge Ernest White, the same 12-person jury found Jonathan Russell Gunter guilty of first-degree felony aggravated robbery following a two-day trial in Dallas County’s 194th District Court.

Gunter and Bobby Jack Singleton, 29, also of Garland, are accused of beating and robbing now-43-year-old Jimmy Lee Dean on Dickason Avenue, just a block from the Cedar Springs strip, in the early morning hours of July 17, 2008.

Dean, who was hospitalized for 10 days after the attack and suffered permanent physical damage, said Wednesday he was relieved Gunter had been convicted. Dean added that he hopes Singleton, who’s still awaiting trial, is sentenced to at least a 60 years in prison because he was responsible for inflicting most of the injuries.

What a difference twenty years makes.

On May 15, 1988, [John] Griffin, 27, and [Tommy] Trimble, 34, drove to the Crossroads, where they met Richard Lee Bednarski, an 18-year-old high school senior weeks from graduation. Bednarski rode with Griffin and Trimble to Reverchon Park, where he shot both men three times. Trimble died at the scene; Griffin died five days later.

…Bednarski, the son of a police officer, had no criminal record. But that didn’t stop him from targeting gay men along Cedar Springs Road. Testimony showed that he and several classmates set out to gay-bash, with Bednarski saying their intent was to “pester the homosexuals.”

Bednarski was convicted of two counts of murder. The prosecuter demanded a life sentence. But Dallas County Criminal District Court Jack Hampton only gave him thirty years for two brutal killings — a very light sentence by Texas standards. Why did he go so easy?

“I don’t care much for queers cruising the streets. I’ve got a teenage boy,” Hampton told the Dallas Times-Herald. Hampton said Griffin and Trimble wouldn’t have been killed “if they hadn’t been cruising the streets picking up teenage boys,” and that he would have handed down a harsher penalty if the victims had been “a couple of housewives out shopping, not hurting anybody.”

“I put prostitutes and gays at about the same level, and I’d be hard pressed to give someone life for killing a prostitute,” Hampton told the newspaper.

That comment sparked outrage nationwide, and multiple protests in Dallas. Hampton was finally censured by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. While he was never removed from the bench, Hampton has since retired.  On July 9, 2007, Bednarski was released after serving less than 19 years for killing two gay men.

Dallas has changed a lot since then Bednarksi was sentenced. Dallas County now has a a sheriff by the name of Lupe Valdes — the only lesbian Latina sheriff in the country. And yesterday, a man was sentenced to thirty years for aggravated armed robbery of one gay man. The same sentence that Bednarski got for murdering two in cold blood.

Yes, times are changing. For the better.