VIGIL to Remember Gay Teen Jorge Lopez Mercado

Stop the Slaughter

A Vigil will be held in Philadelphia on Friday evening, November 20th to remember 19-year-old Jorge Lopez Mercado. Lopez, a Puerto Rican native was found partially burned, decapitated and with arms and legs dismembered, on the side of the road near his home town Caguas, Puerto Rico on Saturday, November 14th.

The Vigil will be held at the Church of St. Luke and The Epiphany, 330 South 13th Street in Philadelphia from 6:30 to 7 p.m.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender organizations, activists and allies are invited. The Vigil will include the Philadelphia Gay Men’s Chorus, Gloria Casarez, LGBT Liaison to Mayor Nutter, Cynthia Vasquez, youth activist at the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative (GALAEI), and Malcolm Lazin , Executive Director of Equality Forum.

There were 29 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) hate crime murders in the United States in 2008.

“We must stop the homophobic slaughter,” stated Malcolm Lazin , Executive Director of Equality Forum. “Since Matthew Shepard’s murder in 1998, there have been over 16,000 gay hate crimes, and on average, about 1,450 GLBT hate crimes per year.”

Police have identified a suspect in the murder of Jorge Lopez Mercado. According to Puerto Rican activists, gay hate crimes in Puerto Rico are not prosecuted.

“We call on US Attorney General Holder to investigate and prosecute in federal court this horrific crime,” stated Lazin. “The decapitation and dismemberment of Jorge Lopez Mercado reminds America that we need to eliminate homophobia in our schools, communities and culture.”

There will also be a Vigil in New York City on Sunday, November 22nd. “It is our hope that communities around the nation will hold Vigils to remember Jorge and that his memory will be a call to conscience,” said Lazin.

Equality Forum is a national and international GLBT civil rights organization with an educational focus. Equality Forum coordinates GLBT History Month, produces documentary films, undertakes high impact initiatives and presents annually the largest national and international GLBT civil rights forum.

www.equalityforum.com


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Gay Mosque Celebrates Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Act

(PRWEB) November 2, 2009 -- Ali Ghalib, head Imam of the Gay Mosque, is thrilled along with other members of the gay community, in celebrating the president's recent signing of of the expanded Hate Bill which will gets its funding from the $680 billion dollar defense authorization bill.

This Bill is named after a homosexual teenager, Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr, an African-American, who was dragged to death.

"With this improved hate crimes bill, the gay mosque will flourish in our communities making a better life for gay and happy Muslims everywhere in this blessed land, the United States of America. Blesses be America!" Imam Ghalib said.

"This truly shows that the U.S. wants to help keep religion free," Imam Ali said.

the gay mosque
Ali Ghalib
2155551212

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VIDEO: Historic Day - Obama Signs Federal Hate Crimes Act

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Video: Vigils around the world for Tel Aviv Gay Center shooting

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Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

I'm a pretty patient guy, Mr. President. I must be, considering that while you were celebrating your 6th birthday I was putting my life on the line for my country, serving as a Military Policeman in Vietnam, even though I had to lie every minute of every waking hour to do so. I kept myself going with the faith that someday other patriotic gay and lesbian Americans would be able to proudly serve their nation without having to live a lie.

I must be a patient man, Mr. President. When you were 8 years old I gave up a promising law enforcement career with the Washington State Patrol rather than continue to put up with the incredible pressure of attempting to pass as a
heterosexual. I kept myself going with the faith that someday GLBT people would be
protected in their jobs from the whims of heterosexual bigots.

I must be a patient man, Mr. President. When you were 10 years old my good friend, John Singer and I were refused a license to marry. The courts of the day upheld that decision. I kept myself going with the faith that someday every person in this country would have that most basic of rights, the right to make his or her own decision about whom to marry.

I must be a patient man, Mr. President. When you were 15 years old a gang of young men armed with baseball bats showed up at my door stating that they were going to show me "What we do with fags in this neighborhood". I came out of that unscathed only because I was able to reach the shotgun I kept handy for just such an occasion. I kept myself going with the faith that someday the same laws which protected racial minorities and religious majorities from hate crimes would also protect those targeted simply because they are GLB or T.

I must be a patient man, Mr. President. For the past 40 years and more I have defended and supported the Democratic Party even though their promises of support for the LGBT community always had to take a backseat to other more pressing issues, issues that affected "all" Americans. I kept myself going with the faith that someday our issues would make it to the top of the heap of things that needed to get done.

I must be a patient man, Mr. President. Even though I worked tirelessly for your election and donated more money to your campaign than I have for all other elections COMBINED in the past, I was willing to cut yo cut you some slack on your avoidance of addressing issues affecting the gay community once you had been elected. You have a lot on your plate. I kept myself going with the faith that you, who declared yourself a "fierce advocate" of full equality for GLBT people would get around to fulfilling your campaign promises once you got caught up.

But then you crapped all over us, and haven't even gotten around to saying "I'm sorry".

So I'll say it. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that I confused "Yes we can" with "Yes we will".

I'm sorry that I confused campaign promises with political will.

I'm sorry that I forgot that even though all people are created equal, some are created more equal than others.

But most of all I am sorry that for me and other LGBT people the Audacity of Hope has been changed to the abandonment of hope. That hurts most of all, Mr. President. We had allowed ourselves to have a dream, but last week's comparisons of our relationships to pedophilia and incest shattered that dream, perhaps beyond repair.

By the way, the DNC recently sent me a fund raising letter. I returned it without the
requested check but simply with the notation scrawled across it in large letters "I am gay". That will be my standard response to all fund raising requests from the Democrats until such time as I see one or more of the following take place:

The repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue"

The repeal of the so called Defense of Marriage act.

The passage of Hate Crime legislation that includes protection for ALL in the LBGT
community.

The passage of employment non-discrimination legislation which protects ALL in the LBGT community.

I understand that you like to play basketball, Mr. President. Well, Sir, the ball is now in your court.


Paul Barwick, San Francisco

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GayTalk-Roundtable Discussions, Socialized Medicine and Hate Crime

1/25/2009 - 2 hrs

GayTalk at 9 AM (PST). Call in during the live show (347) 237-5246 otherwise call voicemail at (360) 283-5052 or send me email tom@2015Place.com . As always we have an Open Forum but hope discussion today includes Socialized Medicine and Hate Crimes.

Click here to listen.

I have started a new project to create a dedicated LGBT Channel/Station. To hear more about this, click here. Donations and or sponsors are welcome. Please click here to donate.

All the best to you and yours.

GayTalk - Whitehouse.gov, LGBT hate crime, APA, Mesa,

1/22/2009 - 1 hr

GayTalk at 9 AM (PST). Call in during the live show (347) 237-5246 otherwise call voicemail at (360) 283-5052 or send me email tom@2015Place.com . Today I'll speak on the recent Whitehouse.gov website changes and why that affects your personal safety, the APA, Mesa Arizona and more.

Click here to listen.

I have started a new project to create a dedicated LGBT Channel/Station. To hear more about this, click here. Donations and or sponsors are welcome. Please click here to donate.

All the best to you and yours.

Oklahoma: No such thing as gay hate crime

According to Oklahoma law sexual orientation is not protected under the hate crime statute(s).

David Schulte, a writer with Tulsa World reports;

Twice within the past week, Robert Stotler and his partner

have been targets of anti-gay messages at their Tulsa home.

About seven days ago, the message "Gays Must Go" was spray-painted on their garage door, and a symbol resembling a swastika, which is used by some white supremacist groups, was spray-painted on the side of their home.

Holes were punched in a friend's pickup's tires and the truck was set on fire while parked in Stotler's driveway.

The message "I'll be back" was spray-painted on both sides of the vehicle.

And back the person came.

A few days later, holes were punched in the front door of their home in the 11800 block of East 25th Street, and the message "Gay Go Away" was painted on it.

Stotler and his partner say they are victims of hate crimes, but police say they are not. Their reports call the crimes acts of vandalism or malicious mischief.

full article

Boston PD seeks cooperation of club owners in reducing hate crime

by Ethan Jacobs
Bay Windows

Detectives from the Boston Police Department’s Community Disorders Unit (CDU) told a gathering of LGBT bar and club owners June 25 that there has been a steady rise in LGBT-related hate crime investigations in the city in the past four years, particularly in police districts D4, which covers the South End, Back Bay, Lower Roxbury and Fenway; and C11, which covers Dorchester.

Curry told Bay Windows she was unsure how many of those incidents took place at LGBT bars and clubs, but she said the CDU decided to reach out to bar and club owners after receiving a handful of reports of robberies and other incidents in and around LGBT bars. This year at least two violent incidents in and around LGBT bars in Boston have generated headlines. In January, 20-year-old Roxbury hair stylist Daniel Yakovleff was found stabbed to death in a Dorchester apartment; he was last seen in the South End’s Boston Eagle bar. His murder remains unsolved. Last month Daniel D’Orsi, a 22-year-old Northeastern student, was brutally assaulted and robbed while walking past Fritz bar in the South End in the early morning hours, and he alleged that his assailant shouted anti-gay slurs at him during the assault.

full article

60 people arrested for disrupting Bulgaria's gay pride march

from FOCUS Information Agency

Sofia - Bulgarian police arrested 60 people Saturday opposed to Bulgaria's first gay pride march after they tried to storm the small group of about 100 marchers in the capital Sofia, AFP reports, citing the interior ministry.

Security concerns had already forced organisers and municipal authorities to change the route of the march twice and deploy a large number of police to prevent clashes.

"Bulgaria is in the EU now. People have to accept us like normal human beings. We are not criminals," 51-year-old German engineer Peter Moews who lives in Sofia told AFP.

"Hostility comes from misunderstanding. Most people think that we are all feminine and wear women dresses but this is not true," he added.

full article

Unleashed dog led to slaying at park, court told

by Rachel Pomerance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia: A bucolic park where people, but not dogs, can roam free was the scene for years of skirmishes between two of its patrons that ended last year with one of their deaths.

But whether Charles Martin Coats, 57, of Stone Mountain stabbed William Scott Carr, 50, of Snellville last year to defend himself or was motivated by anti-gay sentiments is yet to be determined.

"Get your blankety-blank dogs on a leash!" Coats told Carr on one occasion, said prosecuting attorney David Keeton. The two traded insults, with Carr telling Coats to "mind his own business." Carr and his male partner were nervous about Coats, and kept a copy of a police report filed over one of their tiffs in their vehicle's glove compartment should there be another run-in at Gwinnett's Yellow River Park where paths occasionally crossed.

full article

'Counselling can change homosexuals'- Iris Robinson

U.tv
Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

The Royal College of Psychiatrists has rejected Iris Robinson’s claim that homosexuality could be overcome by counselling.

The wife of DUP leader Peter Robinson made her comments in the wake of a homophobic attack that left a man seriously injured in Belfast.

Stephen Scott, 27, was kicked and punched by three youths as he walked home in the Newtownabbey area on Wednesday night.

Mr Scott was treated in hospital for a head injury, a leg injury and broken ribs.

full article

Man is charged with hate crime

by Ryan Lillis
sacbee.com

SACRAMENTO – In what was labeled a hate crime, a 34-year-old man attacked two transgender homeless men Saturday afternoon, but was arrested after one of the victims stabbed him in the leg, according to police.

William Lee Johnson attacked the men about 2 p.m. near the Longview Drive on-ramp to Interstate 80 near Del Paso Park, according to the police report. Johnson is a "validated skinhead," the report said

full article

Northeastern student alleges gay bashing

by Ethan Jacobs
associate editor
Bay Windows

BOSTON: Daniel D’Orsi, a 22-year-old Northeastern student, was assaulted and robbed in the early morning hours of May 6 outside Fritz bar in the South End. D’Orsi, whose injuries were severe enough to require reconstructive surgery to repair his collapsed cheekbone, said the assailant shouted anti-gay slurs at him during the assault.

Boston Police are currently investigating the incident as a straightforward assault and robbery rather than as a hate crime.

A detective from D-4 involved in the case, who declined to give his name to Bay Windows, said police do not believe the mugging was a gay-bashing because the description of the assailant provided by Warner matches that of a man who attempted to mug a woman a block away on Lawrence Street about a week before D’Orsi’s assault. In that instance the detective said the woman was able to get inside her apartment, lock the door before the assailant reached her and call the police.

full article

Michigan hate crime: 133% increase

by: Todd A. Heywood
Michigan Messenger

Triangle Foundation -- the Detroit-based anti-violence and policy organization for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders -- released its annual hate crimes report today. The report shows that in 2007, crimes and discrimination against the LGBT community and those with HIV had increased substantially over the last year. The report showed a 133 percent increase in crimes and discrimination reported in Michigan over 2006 statistics. In real numbers, Michigan reported 226 incidents in 2007, up from 97 reported incidents in 2006.

full article

New Mexico: Man takes plea in attack authorities call hate crime

UPDATE (to the original article below):

It appears all individuals involved, except for Thompson were part of the Navajo Nation.

Here is the article which discusses that.


ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

FARMINGTON — The second of the three men accused of attacking another man for being gay pleaded to the crime Monday in district court on reduced charges that dropped the one-year hate crime sentencing enhancement.

Jerry Paul, 40, pleaded no contest to false imprisonment, a fourth-degree felony, and misdemeanor aggravated battery. The Shiprock man faces more than two years in prison on the reduced charges.

The victim, Matthew Shetima, reported the incident to Farmington Police in September 2007. While walking through an alley near the Journey Inn on Glade Lane, Shetima said he was called over to talk to several men who began hitting him, calling him "faggot."

When he fell, the men kicked him saying, "You want to die faggot?" arrest documents state. The victim was then allegedly pulled into the men's hotel room, where they continued to punch and kick him before he could escape.

Farmington Police responding to the incident identified Scott Thompson, 22, Craig Yazzie, 37, and Paul as being involved.

"My guy's the least culpable in all this," said attorney Jack Fortner, representing Paul. "He basically battered him once and prevented him from leaving the room."

Prosecutors believe Thompson was the ringleader of the fight.

"As of right now, my focus is on Scott Thompson and I don't foresee backing off on the hate crime enhancement," Capshaw said.

Thompson, who was not offered the reduced plea, is set to have a jury trial May 2 on kidnapping and aggravated battery charges. If convicted of both charges with the hate crime enhancement, Thompson could face up to 14 years in prison.

The sentencings won't be held until after the May jury trial.

Yazzie had been set to be sentenced Monday, but the matter was continued until June
That factor may benefit Paul, Fortner said, because District Judge John Dean would hear testimony of the limited role Paul played.

"The judge will definitely have heard the entire story after the Thompson trial and have that on his mind when he sentences the other two," Capshaw said.

full article

Telling Sakia Gunn's Story

Director and producer Charles Brack is in the final, frenzied stages of completing a feature-length documentary about the 2003 bias crime murder of 15-year-old Newark resident Sakia Gunn. Media coverage of Gunn's murder was paltry compared with that of Matthew Shepherd -- though Gay City News was a notable exception -- raising questions about the way race and gender play out in discussions about bias crimes against queer people.

Brack, 48, who is called Chas by his friends, grew up in Chicago and has youthful memories of the disorder during the 1968 Democratic National Convention there. The June day he left Ohio's Antioch College in 1983 with a degree in communications, he drove through the night to arrive in New York for the Gay Pride celebration.

full story and interview

BC, Canada: Hate crime closes down party

The regulars at Totally Boss at Grasshopper’s Bar & Grill last Friday wore pink.

They were showing their support for Michael Croteau and Benjamin Friesen, two customers who became the victims of hate crime there at the previous Totally Boss on March 29th. The couple was dancing when their assailant walked up to them, grabbed their heads and slammed them together. Both briefly blacked out.

When later confronted by Croteau and Friesen, the assailant exclaimed, “What the hell are you guys doing? You’re guys!” and struck Croteau in the jaw. Before Friesen could react, he was punched in the face twice.

When asked what he had thought about the situation, Croteau responded with sympathy for his assailant.

full article

Fulton DA files motion to throw out lenient sentence

ATLANTA: Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard seeks to lengthen the prison term of a Midtown man recently convicted of killing his neighbor and sentenced to only five years in jail. Howard’s office filed a motion for an “arrest of judgment” on March 21, which aims to overturn the actions of Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter during the sentencing of Craig Tomko.

On March 14, a Fulton County jury found Tomko guilty of felony murder, aggravated assault, involuntary manslaughter and simple battery in the July 2005 death of Meredith “Mac” McNair, a gay neighbor of Tomko’s at the Dakota condominium complex in Midtown. The men had a years-long feud primarily because of Tomko’s dog, and a July 4, 2005, fight between the two men left McNair dead in the Dakota swimming pool.

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Man awaits sentencing after guilty plea in '93 murder

Note: 15 years later?

Pennsylvania: Gary Gerber Jr., 36, who was charged with being involved with his brothers in a multimillion-dollar theft ring, pleaded guilty to killing hairdresser Robert Hagan, 45, of Blairstown, N.J. Hagan was found stabbed and run over with his own vehicle on Rimrock Drive, police said.

Attorney General Tom Corbett said a state grand jury investigation into the theft ring implicated Gerber in the murder.

Gerber's brother Richard testified to the grand jury that the entire family knew about the killing because Gerber had admitted the murder to him. Gerber reportedly was heard referring to the victim as a "faggot" and "queer."

When asked if Hagan's murder was viewed as a hate crime, Corbett said he couldn't comment.

full article