I've made it to the initial round for favorite progressive blogger in the Air America Cruise Contest. I have to stay in the Top 5 before the second voting round begins, so your vote is appreciated! First voting round:
The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend: "a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."
He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior."
(CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)
Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).
"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008
Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:
A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist." (Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)
"A nutty lesbian blogger." (MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)
Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush
who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
With hate crimes legislation passing in the House of Representatives this past week, this story seems very relevant.
So, when hate crime legislation regarding sexual orientation and gender idenity are discussed by the President tonight in his speech to the HRC, I hope he mentions LaTeisha Green and/or Angie Zapata. Trans lives that were snuffed out in hate crimes deserve mention with Matthew Shepard.
~~Autumn~~
By Michael K. Lavers Photos by Laura Vogel
Roxanne Green spoke emotionally, passionately and even angrily as she talked about her murdered daughter LaTeisha at a forum at the Brooklyn Law School on Oct. 7.
"You would have liked LaTeisha--she was very outgoing," she said. "She was like the energizer bunny."
An Onondaga County jury convicted Dwight DeLee in July of first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon after prosecutors accused him of shooting Green and her brother Mark Cannon last November as they and a friend sat in a car outside a Syracuse house party. Initial media reports indicated DeLee targeted Green because he thought she was gay. She was actually transgender.
New York State does not include gender identity and expression in its hate crime statutes, but prosecutors constructed what Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, described as a "narrative Teish was gay or lesbian to achieve a conviction." A judge sentenced DeLee in August to 25 years in prison, but Roxanne Green said she feels the sentence was too lenient.
"He shouldn't see another day on the street," she said.
Cannon added he decided to participate in the panel because he did not "want to see another family go through what our family has gone through."
"We lost someone very important to us," Cannon said.
LaTeisha Green's death was among a series of anti-LGBT violence and bias crimes that have taken place across New York State over the last year. Keith Phoenix and Hakim Scott allegedly beat Ecuadorian immigrant José Sucuzhañay to death on a Bushwick street corner last December because he thought he was gay--he and his brother Romel were arm-and-arm as they walked home from a nearby bar. Trinidad Tapia and Gilberto Ortiz allegedly severely beat Leslie Mora with a belt buckle as she walked home from a Jackson Heights nightclub in June. And a group of assailants attacked Carmella Etienne with rocks and empty beer bottles as she walked home from a store in St. Albans on July 8.
"I was pretty much scared for my life," Etienne recalled as she described how nobody came to her assistance while the men attacked her. "I felt like nobody cared. It happened in my neighborhood."
Syracuse (WSYR-TV) - A Syracuse man was sentenced to 25 year in prison Tuesday, after being found guilty last month of manslaughter in Onondaga County's first hate crime trial. Dwight DeLee was convicted of fatally shooting...Latiesha Green.
The 22-year-old victim was a transgendered person.
The District Attorney's office said during the trial DeLee intentionally targeted [Green] because of the victim's sexual orientation...
The 22-year-old Green was born male, but lived mostly as a female after age 16. She was killed outside a house party in November.
DeLee was acquitted of murder. The manslaughter conviction means he intended to injure, not kill, someone when he fired into a car where Green was sitting with her brother and a friend.
Well, the maximum sentence for manslaughter after being convicted of a hate crime homicide. Justice for Teish was served as best it could be today.
There is a verdict in the trial of Dwight DeLee for the death of Lateisha Green. Green was a trans woman who died from gunshot wounds in November; DeLee was originally charged with murder in the second degree as a hate crime.
Just minutes ago, the verdict came back and was announced on Twitter (the AP also has a blurb). A jury convicted Dwight DeLee of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime.
A jury on Friday convicted a man of manslaughter as a hate crime for killing a transgender woman he shot outside a house party last year.
Dwight DeLee was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter for the fatal shooting of 22-year-old Lateisha Green outside a Syracuse house party in November because of anti-gay bias. He becomes just the second person in the U.S. convicted of a hate crime that involved the death of a transgender victim.
The Onondaga County Court jury delivered its verdict after deliberating for about six hours over two days.
DeLee faces additional prison time because he was convicted of a hate crime.
DeLee, 20, of Gifford Street, now faces a minimum of 10 years in state prison, and a maximum of 25 years, when he is sentenced by Judge William Walsh Aug. 18.
The jury of six men and six women acquitted DeLee of a more serious charge of second-degree murder as a hate crime.
UPDATE: Press releases from The Task Force and GLAAD below the fold.
Weighing in perhaps a little late on the subject (in comparison to when The Advocate commentary entitled Gay Is the New Black? was published last November, and Tyra Banks' response to that assertion last December), ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com writer/columnist LZ Granderson weighs in on the assertion that Gay Is The New Black by asserting himself that Gay Is Not The New Black. In the middle of his piece, he states:
Despite the catchiness of the slogan, gay is not the new black.
Black is still black.
And if any group should know this, it's the gay community.
He also states:
While those who were at Stonewall talk about the fear of being arrested by police, 40 years ago, blacks talked about the fear of dying at the hands of police and not having their bodies found or murder investigated. The 13th Amendment was signed in 1865, and it wasn't until 1948 that President Harry S Truman desegregated the military. That's more than an 80-year gap.
Not to be flip, but Miley Cyrus is older than Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell." That doesn't mean that the safety of gay people should be trivialized or that Obama should not be held accountable for the promises he made on the campaign trail. But to call this month's first-ever White House reception for GLBT leaders "too little too late" is akin to a petulant child throwing a tantrum because he wants to eat his dessert before dinner. This is one of the main reasons why so many blacks bristle at the comparison of the two movements -- everybody wants to sing the blues, nobody wants to live them.
This lack of perspective is only going to alienate a black community that is still very proud of Obama and is hypersensitive about any criticism of him, especially given he's been in office barely six months.
He concludes:
If blacks are less accepting of gays than other racial groups -- and that is certainly debatable -- then the parade of gay people calling Obama a "disappointment" on television is counterproductive in gaining acceptance, to say the least. And the fact that the loudest critics are mostly white doesn't help matters either.
Hearing that race matters in the gay community may not be comforting to hear, but that doesn't make it any less true.
So perhaps in this comparison between African-Americans and gays, the comparison comes down to which minority group has suffered longer, and that gays -- in being described "akin to a petulant child throwing a tantrum" -- are perceived to be whiners for suffering less long and less hard.
I don't believe that it's tangental that this week, @TLDEF and @Andy_Marra (of GLAAD) are covering the LaTeisha Green Hate Crime Murder Trial. LaTeisha was an African-American trans woman -- her alleged killer is being accused of a hate crime because it's alleged he perceived LaTeisha as gay. (Andy, as I'm writing this piece, is reporting that the jury is in deliberations.)
I also don't believe that it's tangental that at Camp Pendleton a few weeks ago, August Provost -- an African-American and a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community -- was killed in what many of us perceive as a hate crime.
I guess my point is that African-American people in the LGBT community die in hate crimes, and from what I've seen on the Transgender Remembering Our Dead list from 2008, it's pretty clear that African-American trans people are recorded as being killed in larger real numbers than that of their caucasian trans counterparts.
I guess what matters to me more is that when it even just comes to down hate alone, there is significant community overlap between African-Americans and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) victims of these crimes.
I guess what also matters to me is that LGBT non-profit organizations tend to put too caucasian a face to their spokespeople when there is as much overlap between communities as there is.
So, I don't know how "black is the new gay"/"black is not the new gay" comparisons matter in a bigger picture -- unless the goal is to create or fester rancor between these communities. I don't see how pointing out who has suffered longer for civil rights, or which community's hate crime deaths are more statistically or fundamentally significant --either historically or now -- are useful in the pursuit equal treatment for all under the law. I don't believe the real point is about who suffers or suffered more, but instead about ending as much suffering as possible.
This week, I'm thinking about two African-American LGBT people who are dead in apparent hate crime murders. In the bigger picture -- at least in my mind -- it's that there is significant overlap between the African-American and LGBT communities, and that suffering and death by members of either community should probably very much be of concern to both communities...if for no other reason than sometimes those who are killed in apparent hate crime murders are members of both communities.
This is difficult for me to write about, and I really hope I strike the right tone. I really, really appreciate the hard work that everyone in the trans, LGBTQ communities and our allies have placed on publicizing the senseless violence that takes places against trans people. I love that much (albeit not all) of the discussion has kept the humanity of the victims front and center. Nobody deserves to be murdered, much less to have their identity stripped away after the fact by the media, and by defense attorneys looking to justify the taking of a life. Lateisha Green’s murder troubles me deeply. I’m a transsexual woman and a mother. Talking about the taking away of somebody’s child because of who they makes me nauseous. I won’t be surprised if I spend much of the next week trying to stay away from news of the trial, because I simply can’t take it. I understand the need to focus on the horrifying consequences—and the need to prevent homophobia and transphobia (yes, the two are intertwined, and yes, that’s a discussion that’s been ongoing elsewhere).
Something about the response to Lateisha Green’s murder troubles me, though.
SYRACUSE - A Syracuse man has been indicted on a hate crime charge in a killing prosecutors said was prompted by the victim's sexual orientation.
An Onondaga County grand jury handed down the indictment Friday, charging Dwight DeLee with murder as a hate crime, murder and a weapons possession charge.
District Attorney William Fitzpatrick says DeLee shot Moses Cannon dead Nov. 14 after hearing comments about Cannon's sexual orientation. Moses Cannon was living as a woman, using the name Latiesha Green. Relatives have described him as transsexual.
Although Latiesha identified herself as a transsexual, the hate crime aspect of the charge is coming from how the alleged killer alledgedly perceived Latiesha as a gay male. Apparently, New York's hate crime law doesn't specifically list gender identity and expression as a protected class.
Donna Rose has this to say about the news in the comment section (I verified with Donna that she actually made the comment), as well as how the Poughkeepsie Journal didn't follow the Associated Press Stylebook in how they referred to Latiesha Green by male pronouns:
[G]ender identity or expression is not covered under NY State Hate Crime statues. In this case the murder is being treated as a hate crime because it was based on Lateisha's "perceived" sexual orientation. As you rightly point out [commenter Nicole], the most significant problem with the way this story is written is the incorrect pronoun use.
The way that the NY Hate Crimes Act of 2000 is written, a hate crime can be charged if the defendant:
"Intentionally selects the person against whom the offense is committed or intended to be committed in whole or in substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct".
In California, I know gender is defined by legal definition to specifically cover the gender identity or expression of trans people, but I personally don't know how the state of New York defines gender -- if one of the legal eagles here at The Blend could clue us in on the legal status of trans people related to New York hate crime laws, please do so in this thread's comments.
I'm glad that the alleged killer is being prosecuted. If Dwight DeLee is found guilty of the crimes he's alleged to have committed against Latiesha Green, the Poughkeepsie Journal states that he'd face up to 25 years to life for the crimes.
For me, this can't be about revenge; instead, I believe we must all keep in mind that this is really about justice for Latiesha. If DeLee is found guilty of a significant crime related to Latiesha's homicide, even if it's not the hate crime, I believe lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community members must consider that a satisfactory outcome might be that he should just receive a substantial penalty for the homicide, instead of recieving a substantial penalty specifically for hate crime.
Again, justice for Latiesha is what I believe this all needs to be about.
I woke up tired this morning, after a really restless night of sleep. I dreamed I was in a hostage situation, and because I had to go to the restroom, the hostage takers were going to likely discover I was trans -- it was pretty clear to me in the dream that if those folks found out I was trans that I would be considered an spiritual abomination, and would be killed.
But it was only a dream.
For the 30 individuals on the Transgender Day Of Remembrance list, they were brutally killed because their killers felt real anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.
Was she killed because she was gender variant in appearance? -- was it that Latiesha Green was a trans woman killed because she was perceived to be gay by her killer, ? From the articles, that's what appears to have happened:
Dwight R. DeLee shot and killed [Lateisha Green] with a .22-caliber rifle Friday night because he didn't like that Cannon was openly gay, Syracuse police said.
Thinking from a Matthew Shepard Act point of view, it's important to point out Teich was trans, and to point out she was perceived to be gay. If we leave either sexual orientation or gender identity and expression out of the Matthew Shepard Act...well, one of the lessons of Teish's death is that being trans or gay isn't always distinguishable in the perceptions of those who would harm us. To some people, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression are functionally the same thing.
I guess changing the focus a little, do I need to mention Teish was a double minority? Of the thirty names to be remembered this year, listkeeper Ethan St. Pierre tells me that three of the names are for caucasian victims, and the other 27 are of those who would be members of ethnic minorities. I'm not 100% sure his ethnic breakdown is 100% accurate, but it is clear that we most of the 30 names will be reading tonight will belong to non-whites.
