More Anti-LGBT Violence.
Still more violent attacks against LGBT individuals across the US:
Gay-Bashed on Pride Weekend on the Upper East Side
Our colleague Michael Feingold told us some very bad news today: a former Voice sales rep, Joe Holladay, in town on business, was jumped and beaten Saturday morning by a group of men who called him a faggot.Holladay tells us that he walked out of John Jerome’s apartment on East 85th Street between York and East End Avenues, where he’d been staying, at about 4 a.m. to smoke a cigarette on the sidewalk, and five or six young men swarmed him.
“It’s very blurry,” he says, “But yeah, they said ‘faggot.’ And the next thing I know I’m in the hospital.”
Jerome, an acting coach, heard the fracas and came downstairs to find his friend “in a pool of blood. I thought he was dead. He wasn’t moving.”
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Holladay says his doctor told him his injuries suggest he was hit with a blunt object. “The mark on my forehead looks like it was made by the base of a gun,” he says.
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Congressman says gay sailor’s death is a possible hate crime
Rep. Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista) said today that he has asked the Department of Defense and the Marine Corps to investigate whether the killing of a sailor, who was gay, at Camp Pendleton was a hate crime.Filner, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said he wanted a complete investigation of circumstances surrounding the death of Seaman August Provost, 29, of Houston. Provost’s body was found about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday in a guard shack on the western edge of the sprawling base.
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Filner said initial indications are that Provost was shot and his body burned. He said his committee also will investigate the case.[Updated 7:20 p.m.: In a late afternoon news conference, Navy officials today promised a thorough investigation into the killing. They said, however, that there was no evidence it was a hate crime. A sailor who is considered to be a person of interest remains in the brig. Another sailor, who was initially considered a person of interest, has been released.]
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We’re sad to bring you the news of another brutal attack on a transgender woman, this one coming during the height of LGBT Pride month. On June 19, 2009, at approximately 2:30 am, Leslie Mora was walking home from a nightclub on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens when she was accosted by two men who brutally beat her with a belt. They stopped only when a passing motorist threatened to call the police.
Throughout the attack, Leslie’s assailants called her a “faggot” in Spanish. The attack left Leslie with multiple injuries, including bruises all over her body, and stitches in her scalp. Police called to the scene found Leslie nearly naked and bleeding on the sidewalk. They also recovered a belt buckle from the assailants that was covered in blood.
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Her assailants, Trinidad Tapia, 19, and Gilberto Ortiz, 32, fled the scene but were arrested by police soon after the attack. Both were charged with assault with intent to cause physical injury with a weapon, a felony, and released on their own recognizance. The Queens County District Attorney has declined to investigate the attack as a hate crime.Transgender people face tremendous violence in their daily lives. A transgender person is murdered every month in the United States, on average. New York State Senators must immediately return to work and pass the transgender hate crimes legislation pending in the Senate. The Gender Expression Non- Discrimination Act (S.2406), which has passed the State Assembly and is awaiting Senate action, would make it a hate crime for an individual to attack another because of the victim’s gender identity or expression. Current state law already protects New Yorkers from hate-motivated violence based upon race, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation and other factors. It is unconscionable that transgender New Yorkers are being attacked on the streets where they live while our state’s Senators shirk their responsibility to take action to end the violence.
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But of course LGBT people don’t deserve the same hate crimes protections others enjoy. That might inhibit the “right” of others to bash us to a bloody pulp in the name of “religious freedom”.
