May 28, 2008

Anti-Gay Marriage Amendments Lead to Anti-Gay Violence

Recently a woman reported that she was brutally raped at her home in Charlotte [NC]. Now an anti-gay marriage amendment has been introduced in the state Senate. You may wonder what the two have to do with each other. I believe they are directly related. You see, the woman, who chose not to disclose her identity to the one local TV station, WBTV, that covered the crime, said she was a lesbian, and that while brutalizing her, her attacker made it clear that he was raping her because she was a lesbian.

… [In North Carolina] crimes committed on account of a victim’s sexual orientation are not classified as “hate crimes” under state law. But make no mistake, gay people are targets. The violence is real and it is systematic.

Efforts to amend the state constitution to preclude forever a same-sex couple from marrying are but one component of that system of violence. Such efforts, regardless of their sponsors’ intention, have the effect of branding gay North Carolinians as the “other,” as something less than equal.

Imagine systematically denigrating a segment of the population and then believing that the consequences stop with the law on the books, without any real-world ramifications. When proponents of a marriage amendment brand certain North Carolinians as targets for special disadvantage, other people believe them, and gay people, like the woman in Charlotte, are raped — or worse.

Last semester, I taught the close friend of a young man named Sean Kennedy. … Sean is dead. In May 2007, he was assaulted in Greenville, S.C., by a young man who called him “faggot” while punching him so hard that he broke every bone in Sean’s face. Sean fell to the pavement; the impact caused his brain to separate from his brain stem.

Shortly after driving away, Sean’s killer left a message on the cell phone of one of Sean’s friends: “Tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand.”

Or consider Scotty Joe Weaver… Or there is the case of Danny Overstreet…

Studies show that in states, particularly in our neighboring Southern states, where anti-gay marriage amendments are in place, violence against gay people, and especially gay youth, is escalating at alarming rates. …

The [North Carolina] anti-marriage amendment was introduced on May 14 by Sen. Jim Forrester, R-Gaston, whose wife recently wrote that gay people in North Carolina are “seeking to … rob our children of their innocence.”

Reading those words, I thought of my friend, shot at on the streets of Roanoke, who has now been with his partner for 13 years; neither of them is interested in robbing anyone of his innocence. I thought of Sean Kennedy, Gwen Araujo, Michael Sandy, Brandon Teena. Doesn’t anybody care about their innocence? …

Some in our state Senate recently opposed a bill passed in the House that would protect gay youth and youth perceived to be gay from bullying and harassment on that account. I can only assume that the opponents believe these youths deserve to be beaten, cut, urinated on and set on fire as gay youth I have known and counseled have been. Do these kids also deserve death?

It’s a hard truth, but when you recognize that marriage amendments, and the dehumanizing culture of which they are a part, break not only hearts but also bones, you understand what really is at stake. …