January 4. 2010

Man arrested for Benton Harbor, MI anti-gay assault

Benton Harbor, MI

   ::: Police in Benton Harbor, Michigan have arrested a man in connection with an alleged hate-crime assault that occurred at a gas station in the area on Dec. 12, South Bend Tribune reports. The victim told police a male approached him as he exited his car in the station’s parking lot. The assailant asked the victim, who is in his 50s, “What’s up?” and then reportedly struck the victim in the face with his while uttering anti-gay slurs. “The victim was dazed from the blow and tried to make it to the entrance of the gas station but slipped on the ice and fell,” Benton Township Police Chief Vincent Fetke said. “The subject punched and kicked him several times” and then ran off, Fetke said. The assailant did not try to steal money or property from the victim, Fetke said. Using video surveillance from the gas station’s cameras, police were able to track down the 23-year-old alleged assailant who was arrested Saturday morning. The suspect is being held in the Berrien County Jail on suspicion of aggravated assault. The victim told Benton Harbor LGBT support group OutCenter about the attack. That group then issued a warning to news media that it had heard of a similar attack in nearby St. Joseph, WSJM reports. OutCenter said in the Dec. 18 statement that it was “deeply concerned”, and urged “local law enforcement authorities to continue their expedient work on these cases.” Police in St. Joseph told area media that they had not been informed of the attack in their town.

Posted by NewsEditor -- 04 Jan 2010 4:42 PM (PT)

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Friends mourn popular bartender murdered at Louisiana gay club

image Mia Bonet, from from Baton Rouge, was one of several drag queens who traveled to Houma to help raise money at a benefit for the family and friends of Robert LeCompte, who was killed after-hours at what Houma Today calls  “the only venue in Lafourche or Terrebonne that openly welcomes gay and lesbian people”. Houma Today photo by Teressa Pace
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About 250 people turned out Saturday night at Drama Club in Houma, Louisiana to mourn for a friend and to help raise money to pay for the funeral Robert LeCompte, the gay club’s manager and long-time bartender whose battered body had been found in the bar on Christmas Day, which was also LeCompte’s birthday. Drag queens from throughout the state traveled to Houma to help raise money for the LaCompte’s funeral fund.

LeCompte, who had closed the club for the night, was stabbed at least ten times by his attacker, Houma Today (Courier) reports.

LeCompte’s fully-clothed body had been found not far from the bar’s entrance on Christmas morning by detectives who had been alerted that he didn’t return home after closing the bar for the night, The Courier reported last week in a separate story. It doesn't appear that the building's alarm had been armed, sources said.

Sources close to the investigation have confirmed that a note alleging that he infected his attacker with AIDS was found with the body, according to the paper. LeCompte was HIV positive and didn’t hide the fact, friends and family have said, the paper reports.

Rumors of the note had been circulating through Houma's gay community since the killing occurred, the paper reported last week.

At LeCompte’s funeral on Wednesday one of his friends told the paper’s reporter that he was certain LeCompte would disclose his status to anyone with whom he had relations. “He didn't hide it one bit,” said the friend, George Knight.

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Posted by NewsEditor -- 04 Jan 2010 3:21 PM (PT)

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Rally and clergy urge NJ lawmakers to act on marriage equality

   ::: Hundreds of marriage equality advocates braved below-freezing temperatures to rally at the New Jersey statehouse in Trenton, NJ.com (Star Ledger) reports. They called for quick action on a much-delayed bill that would grant marriage equality to lesbian and gay couples in the state. The equality bill was thwarted last week when the Assembly speaker said he would not post the bill until the Senate voted on it. “We want to be married,” Marsha Shapiro, 55, told the crowd. Shipiro lives with her partner of 20 years, Louise Walpin, 56, with whom she has raised two disabled children. She choked up as she told fellow demonstrators, “No other family that we know of … has gone through what we have gone through," she said. “Eighty-five percent of legally married couples divorce when there's only one disabled child.” Also today, 120 clergy members released a letter they had sent to the leaders of the two houses of the state legislature, the Star Ledger reports. The clergy said in their letter that the current marriage law favors a particular religious viewpoint which calls for discriminatory civil marriage laws. The clergy from 19 different faith groups point out that marriage is allowed for gay and lesbian couples in their churches. 

Posted by NewsEditor -- 04 Jan 2010 2:18 PM (PT)

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Article details vital role of US right wing in Uganda’s kill-gays bill

Site: New York Times 
Article: Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push
Author: Jeffrey Gettleman
image Anti-gay protesters in Kampala New York Times photo by Marc Hofer

This article in Sunday’s New York Times posted by Jeffrey Gettleman from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, details the important role that three US anti-gay activists played in promoting the spirit—and even, Gettleman reports, some of the language—of the country’s proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill”. It’s a draconian bill that, if passed, would impose the death penalty in some cases for people convicted of having sex with someone of the same gender.

In the article, Gettleman quotes the Anglican priest, Rev. Kapya Kaoma, who published  one of the most important recent background paper on American homophobia in Africa.

Gettleman reports, of course, that the three Americans who peddled their over-the-top homophobia at a March conference in Kampala, have tried to distance themselves from the bill. But he also reports:

[T]he Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”

Scott Lively’s fellow American conference speakers—Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer—now claim they didn’t know that their anti-gay rhetoric would be translated into such a draconian law in Uganda. But Lively cannot claim such innocence.

Gettleman doesn’t mention it, but Lively’s previous homophobic missionary-activism was in the Baltics. In Latvia and especially in Lithuania, he learned that American homophobia translates easily into law when taken to foreign shores.

Gettleman writes:

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

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Posted by NewsEditor -- 04 Jan 2010 12:19 PM (PT)

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