Richmond, Va.
Atrocity puts spotlight on anti-gay laws
By
Leslie Feinberg
Yet another right-wing lynching has claimed a life, this
time in Richmond, Va.--once the capital of the slave owners'
Confederacy.
Like the horrific murders of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper,
Texas, Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., and Billy Jack Gaither
in Sylacauga, Ala., the killing bore the stamp of a Klan-style
execution.
But the hideous murder of Edward Northington in Richmond
laid bare the half-hidden relationship of the police, courts
and lawmakers to this right-wing violence.
On March 1, two pedestrians found the severed head of
Northington, a gay white man, carefully placed on a footbridge
in James River Park. The rest of his body was found nearly a
mile away, in the James River.
Police say they believe Northington was beheaded along the
river bank. Then whoever murdered him carried his head about a
half-mile through the park, climbed 70 steps to the pedestrian
walkway and placed it in the middle of the footbridge.
The site is a reportedly popular meeting area for gay men.
According to the March 12 New York Blade, "It was also a
recreational spot popular with gay men during the summer
months."
James River Park has also been the epicenter of a
large-scale, anti-gay police entrapment offensive. Undercover
Richmond police approach men in the guise of willing sex
partners. When the men verbally accept, they are immediately
arrested on the charge of solicitation for "sodomy."
Some 53 gay men have been arrested in city parks--including
James River Park--in the last two months.
Based on widespread local media reporting of the arrests in
James River Park, it wasn't hard for Northington's killer--or
killers--to know where to find gay men. But whoever was
responsible did not seem to be concerned about getting caught
in the snare of police surveillance.
Why not?
And why didn't undercover cops see what happened that night?
Did police literally "look the other way"? Was a cop, or cops,
involved in the murder?
Also, since the cops and courts have criminalized the gay
and bisexual men who frequent the park, how can anyone who
might have information about the murder turn to the police?
Only an independent investigation can determine the truth.
That panel has to include members of the lesbian/gay/bi/ trans
communities. And it must have the power to subpoena police
officers.
Expunge anti-gay, anti-trans
laws now!
"It may be a hate crime, it may be a sex crime, it may be a
ritualistic crime," a police homicide detective said about
Northington's murder to the March 6 Richmond
Times-Dispatch.
That's the kind of intolerable slap in the face that drives
some lesbians and gay men to demand hate-crimes legislation.
They want laws that force the cops to call these crimes what
they are: driven by bigotry. And they want the state to get
tough with bashers once and for all.
Newspaper editorials and politicians--including President
Bill Clinton--have called on the lesbian, gay, bi and trans
communities to channel their outrage and frustration into
focusing on the inclusion of a sexual orientation category in
hate-crime laws as the solution to anti-gay and anti-trans
murders and assaults.
It's true that the men who lynched Shepard and Gaither lived
in states that exclude sexual orientation from hate-crime laws.
However, they knew that, if caught and convicted, they faced
the death penalty--the harshest sentence of all.
A growing number of lesbian, gay, bi and trans activists
reject the state's use of the death penalty as well as the call
for hate-crimes legislation. They point out that the state
machinery--cops, courts, prison officials and Pentagon--is as
inherently anti-gay and anti-trans as it is racist, sexist and
anti-worker. So they oppose legislation that beefs up the
state's power.
And where hate-crime laws exist, they do not alter the
nature of the beast.
For example, in the first known case under Rhode Island's
new hate-crimes law, a judge ruled that the legislation did not
apply to the brutal beating of a transgender person.
Last November, two men reportedly hurled anti-gay slurs at
trans person Diana Obidowski, and then physically assaulted
her. A federal judge ruled on Feb. 24 that the attack was not a
hate crime because the two men claimed that in response to
their anti-gay slurs, Obidowski pulled the antenna off their
car.
In fact, the courts, cops, politicians and media must be
held accountable for their complicity in right-wing
violence.
Doesn't the criminalization of same-sex love--from police
entrapment to Pentagon purges, court-enforced "sodomy" laws to
anti-cross-dressing statutes--provide the "legal" underpinnings
that instigate bashings against gay and trans people?
These statutes and policies institutionalize oppression.
Their existence has allowed countless reactionaries--including
the accused killers of Matthew Shepard and Billy Jack
Gaither--to claim that they were justified in committing murder
because the men "made a pass" at them.
This argument is reminiscent of the Klan "justification" for
lynching African American men. Although less than an estimated
one-quarter of the Black men lynched were even accused of
raping white women, that spurious charge became the cover for
racist mob violence.
Of course, rape of Black women by white male property owners
continued to be used as a weapon of terror. It was not
considered a crime. But miscegenation laws earlier in this
century criminalized even consensual relationships between
African American men and white women.
Thus these racist laws helped lay the basis for lynching.
White supremacists claimed they were "protecting the sanctity
of white southern womanhood."
Today, there's a new twist to this twisted argument.
Anti-gay lynchers are claiming to protect the "sanctity of
manhood" by claiming that their victims made sexual
advances.
And like Jim-Crow legislation, anti-gay laws serve as the
legal foundation for these reactionaries to stand on.
Clinton said publicly that he deplored the anti-gay
lynchings of Shepard and Gaither. But Clinton and Sen. Jesse
Helms of North Carolina joined together to pass the "Defense of
Marriage Act"--a vicious bill outlawing same-sex marriage that
is reminiscent of the racist miscegenation laws.
It's time for every vestige of anti-gay and anti-trans laws
and measures to be removed from the books. In fact, it's long
overdue.
What will it take to stop right-wing lynchings and police
violence?
A giant self-defense movement of all who have a stake in
fighting back shoulder to shoulder against right-wing
violence.
That movement will declare, as tens of thousands vowed in
victorious struggles against night-rider violence in earlier
decades: "Who's gonna stop the Klan? We're gonna stop the
Klan!"
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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