Source: Missoulian
(includes material from Missoula Independent)
Flickr photo: sbpoetMissoula, Mont. -- A 29-year-old Missoula woman who was beaten up by a group of four women last weekend says she was also verbally assaulted with homophobic remarks.
Jess Keith first encountered her assailants inside a restroom at the Press Box restaurant after the Montana Grizzly football game. One woman was vomiting in a toilet, and Keith offered to bring her some water.
"They looked me up and down," she said. "Then one of the girls called me a dyke and told me to use the men's room."
Keith left the bar and headed toward the Missoula Club downtown, where she planned to meet some friends. But as she was cutting through the parking lot of the Missoula Public Library on Main Street, the same women pulled into the lot and attacked her.
"It was clear they were out looking for me," Keith said. "I heard one of them say, `There she is,' and then they piled out of the car and one of them punched me in the face."
The punch knocked Keith to the asphalt, where the women continued kicking her in the back. One of them stole Keith's wallet before they drove away.
Keith was not seriously injured -- although a full week later her back still aches -- but she said the experience was frustrating and raised concerns about Montana's hate crime statute, which doesn't include anything about sexual orientation.
"They stereotyped me," she said. "Whatever society's stereotype of a gay woman is, yeah, I fit that stereotype. I have short hair and wear boyish clothes."
The 2007 Montana legislature failed to pass a bill that would have added gender, disability and sexual orientation to the current hate crime statute, in spite of efforts by Missoula state Rep. Diane Sands, a Democrat and lesbian, who suffered verbal attacks from Republican legislators.
Expanding Montana's hate crime statute would allow judges to dole out harsher sentences to those convicted of bias-based crimes, and might include ordering someone to participate in a restorative justice program, such as victim-offender mediation. However, the bill died in committee.
In July, 2007, Missoula resident and University of Montana professor Casey Charles reflected anti-gay violence in a Pride-week article for a weekly newspaper, the Independent. He pointed out that The Advocate had named named Missoula one of the best places to live in the country, but noted a dark side to the town:
Missoula is a complicated place to live for gays and lesbians. Seattle's Capitol Hill it is not, but my partner and I often walk over the Higgins Avenue bridge to one of our favorite queer-friendly cafes downtown... without thinking twice about the young men from Frenchtown and Huson who mistook Wally Catton for a gay man and broke his jaw two years ago on this very same street -- the same assailant who was chastised this year by a judge for showing no remorse.
Striding back over the same bridge after choir practice at the Western Montana Gay and Lesbian Community Center, I rarely find myself thinking about a recent FBI report that concluded bias violence against gays is now the second most important category of hate-crimes in the U.S., after race. Most of these nights, practicing the lyrics of "Don't Fence Me In" takes precedence over worries about suicide and hate crime statistics among gays and lesbians in the West. "It doesn't happen here," I tell myself. "Not in our blue oasis."
Or does it? How can we explain recent publicized violence against gays and lesbians, by most accounts the tip of an iceberg in a culture where most assaults go unreported by women and men wary of historically unsympathetic authorities?
Keith was assaulted just a few blocks from that same bridge.
Charles points out that the "blue oasis" for LGBTQ folk in the college town sports a thriving community center, gay newspaper, and clubs; but he asked in the spring if the periodic reports of violence -- with Keith's report as the latest example -- can ever be stopped without more support from city and state laws.
Although the Missoula Police Department gained national attention when it named Officer Scott Oak as its gay and lesbian liaison after the Higgins bridge assault a few years ago (since replaced by Officer Nicole Pifari), the department has yet to undertake a prejudice-reduction workshop with members of the lesbian and gay community. As long as the mayor and city council refuse to enact local hate crimes legislation, domestic partner benefits, and employment discrimination laws, the police and district attorney cannot proceed with investigating recent homophobic attacks as hate crimes.
Keith's report in the fall only reinforces Charles's conclusion in the spring:
As Missoula's recent queer history demonstrates, our town is in the process of becoming one of the very best for lesbians and gay men to live, but that status will remain precarious unless we continue to teach acceptance in our schools and churches, in private and public spheres, to ourselves and others.
"It's sad and it's scary," Keith told The Missoulian, "but nothing will change unless people stand up and do something about it."
Last modified: 11 Nov 07 03:03
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