With all the hubbub recently about the California Supreme Court’s decision regarding marriage equality, lost in America—including lost within the GLB communities[1] and other self-described progressive communities—is the reality that while a few states offer happiness equality in the form of legalized same-sex marriage, no state offers what can be called trauma protection equality—that is, the full, routine enforcement of hate crime statutes. Below the fold, I’ll describe what is and isn’t happening in one more-or-less gay-friendly state in New England in terms of hate crime reporting, enforcement, and activism. As you read this diary, please consider these questions: To what degree is marriage equality lessened when it occurs within a larger community that permits the physical assault and murder of GLBT citizens to go barely punished? Or, more graphically: What good is the quality of a government-sanctioned same-sex marriage if one of the partners in that marriage suffers from hate-crime-caused PTSD symptoms; you know, the round-the-clock fear, the intrusive memories, the lost sense of safety, the nightmares, the perception of a foreshortened life, the relationship-destroying feelings of detachment?
I’ve diaried here before about specific hate crimes; they have involved gay, Jewish and non-white victims. I’ve pointed out that there is no issue that divides the two major political parties more than hate crime legislation (see pdfs of voting records and analyses here and here). Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don’t want marriage equality in America; hell, I want it everywhere and I've even taken some steps in my own state to try to make that happen. It’s just that while many gays and lesbians scurry about trying to figure out how to get states to legally normalize same-sex relationships, I’m left horrified reading about hate crimes against GLBT folks and the impact these crimes have on victims and their communities. As those in the gay and lesbian communities give time and money to try to pass marriage equality laws, I'm also left horrified reading the opinions of some so-called spokespersons of "the gay/lesbian community" regarding hate crime legislation, be it federal or state legislation. I’m not sure what it means that those gays and lesbians who’ve publicly denounced expanding hate crime laws to include sexual orientation are almost entirely from the South, but it’s a fact not gone unnoticed by me. Sometimes I feel that these days gay society in America—and perhaps all of progressive American society—is staring off at that beautiful sunset possibility called "marriage equality" while ignoring what's now rotting at America's feet: hate crime carnage that harms all sorts of people. Because sexual minorities find themselves disproportionately the victims of hate crimes, it seems that more GLBT people should be pressing much more strenuously for far better enforcement of hate crime laws, regardless of the victim. But, we're not. As you will realize when reading the rest of this diary, the GLBT communities have shown (at least in one state) callous indifference to the suffering of its own people.
In a diary I wrote last year, I asked Kossacks a poll question. The results revealed to me that even among self-identified liberals there is a lack of understanding about just where hate crime law enforcement stands today in America. Of those who took the poll 47% said (erroneously, in my opinion) that police officers—more so than prosecutors (37%) and judges (14%)—prevent hate crime laws from being adequately enforced. Yet in Massachusetts—the first state to legalize same-sex marriage—the Essex County District Attorney’s Office has not filed hate crime charges in an April 11, 2009 gay-bashing assault in Gloucester that left the victim, 35-year-old Justin Goodwin, of Salem, Massachusetts, with significant injuries necessitating "nearly 10 hours of surgery for severe head trauma and facial injuries at [Boston's] Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center" according to one news outlet. The Gloucester Police Department, however, tabulated that crime for what it was: a gay-based hate crime. Police assert Mr. Goodwin was attacked outside the Old Timer’s Tavern by four or five male assailants who used anti-gay slurs and who beat and kicked him into unconsciousness. Mr. Goodwin, who may lose hearing in his right ear due to the attack, also sustained a fractured eye socket, a broken nose, broken teeth, and a broken jaw (his jaw was fractured in five different places). Police assert that two men, Jonathan Chadwick, 23, and his brother William J. Chadwick, 21, both of Gloucester, were two of Mr. Goodwin's assailants. The brothers were arrested three days after the attack, and they were charged with Aggravated Assault & Battery with a Dangerous Weapon. Despite the police's assertion that the crime was committed solely because of the victim's sexual orientation, the judge is helpless: no hate crime conviction can occur in this case, because the Essex County prosecutor did not file hate crime charges. Isolated case, you say? Read on.
On May 27, 2009, a judge in the Middlesex County District Court, Judge Thomas C. Horgan, completely ignored the Commonwealth’s hate crime statute when he failed to give Fabio Brandao, 28, a pizza deliveryman from Framingham, Massachusetts, any jail time for a multiple-victim gay-bashing assault in 2008 in a neighborhood of Boston known for its large presence of gay citizens and businesses. The South End attack occurred on Columbus Avenue on a warm summer’s night; the victims were three gay men in their twenties and a 27-year-old female friend of theirs. She turned out to be an amazing hero in the face of the unprovoked attack by Brandao and three other men who shouted, from their car, anti-gay slurs at the victims before jumping out and assaulting them. During the mayhem, the female victim was able to read the license plate of the car driven by the perpetrators and, immediately after the attack, to call 911. It was that act of getting the license plate number—a heads-up hate-fighting act which occurred during her own assault—that led police to arrest Brandao for a series of crimes, including hate crimes. The police tabulated that incident for what it was: a hate crime incident. Judge Thomas C. Horgan and the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, however, didn’t do such a good job upholding the Commonwealth's hate crime law. Instead, the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office, while it arraigned Brandao on four hate crimes charges, made the decision not to go to trial. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office agreed to a plea bargain and to this, the judge’s sentence (after Brandao pleaded Guilty to all nine charges against him): Brandao is to pay the victims a total of $4,250 for medical bills and related expenses; he is to stay away from the victims and the South End area of Boston; and he is to complete an anger management program. Yes, Brandao assaulted four people because of his hatred towards gays, and he received no jail time. With this paltry, offensive punishment—one that communicates no empathy toward the four victims or the greater Boston GLBT communities—I might suggest that Judge Horgan and the D.A. also stay away from the South End. Know these facts: in Massachusetts one count of Assault & Battery can lead to a sentence of up to two-and-a-half years behind bars; and, a hate crime can lead to even harsher punishment. Brandao committed four hate crime assaults, and yet—with the blessing of the judge and the prosecutor—Brandao received what amounts to a reduced sentence! Oh and by the way, because there was no trial, Brandao was never asked to reveal under oath the identities of the other three attackers, violent homophobes who remain unknown to authorities, at-large, and unpunished.
Did any gay or lesbian person, or did any GLBT group in Massachusetts or elsewhere publicly condemn this plea bargain arrangement by the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, and Judge Thomas C. Horgan? Did any gay or lesbian person, or did any GLBT group in Massachusetts or elsewhere protest the Essex County District Attorney's Office for not filing hate crime charges in the Gloucester gay-bashing? To my knowledge, no. The GLBT civil rights battle that is not being fought is the demand for prosecutors and judges to regularly enforce hate crime laws. The California Supreme Court said, in essence, that the will of the people should prevail in an important civil rights matter, same-sex marriage. I don't agree with that logic, but okay, let's roll with it: how about making it a job requirement for all district attorneys and judges to enforce the will of the people by making DAs and judges do their jobs to uphold the civil rights laws of the people, force them to protect the community by regularly enforcing hate crime laws?
In general, law enforcement officers do a reasonably good job of reporting hate crimes. Though it wasn't always the case, it is becoming part of many police cultures to report hate crimes (with exceptions of course). It is to these police officers that I say thank you. Thank you for doing your job professionally. Thank you for recognizing hate crime statutes. Thank you for doing your bit to promote safer communities to everyone, but especially to those who are made more vulnerable because of their socio-demographics. Just as groups of citizens had demanded that police investigate certain crimes as possible hate crimes, thereby forcing police practices and the culture in which they work to change, it is high time for people, including GLBT persons, to demand that hate crime perpetrators face hate crime indictments, and when found guilty, that these criminals receive appropriate punishment.
Just four days before Fabio Brandao was able to escape a jail sentence, in another part of Massachusetts, in Provincetown—perhaps the most gay-friendly town in the Ground-Zero-Marriage-Equality-State, a town that is perpetually a summer vacation destination for thousands of gays and lesbians—an apparently drunken University of Colorado student, a heterosexual white guy whose father is an attorney in nearby Dennis, Massachusetts, and whose mother is an educator at Salem State College north of Boston is said to have attacked two lesbians who he mistook for gay men. Allegedly hurling anti-gay slurs at his victims, Eric Patten, 20, of Winthrop, Massachusetts, is said to have punched one victim in front of police and to have pushed another through a restaurant window. Not surprisingly the Provincetown police, once they spoke with the victims and with eyewitnesses, classified the attack for what it was: a hate crime incident. For their part, the local DA's office arraigned Patten on hate crime charges. Accusations of beating someone while screaming in the middle of a gay vacation ghetto, "I'll kill all you faggots!" apparently made an impression on someone within the Barnstable County District Attorney's Office. We'll see if this case actually goes to trial (my guess is that it will not and that Patten will never be found guilty of a hate crime...did I mention daddy-Patten is an attorney?).
One might imagine that if a white man assaulted an African-American man at, say, 132nd Street in Harlem, while hurling racist slurs, the black community would come together and denounce this racist act. One doesn't have to imagine that if a synagogue in, say, Newton, Massachusetts, gets tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti that the community would come together and denounce that act of hate. One doesn't have to imagine this community support, because it happened.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but there have been no protests, no demonstrations in Provincetown or anywhere within in gay/lesbian/bisexual communities about the senseless attack on the two lesbians in P-town on May 23rd. And it’s not like the media failed to cover the story. The Cape Cod Times, The Boston Herald, The Boston Globe, and online information sources like Towleroad, Trends In Hate, and dailycamera have all reported on the story. I wouldn’t expect someone like Andrew Sullivan—who lives part of the year in Provincetown and who took advantage of the Bay State’s law to marry his same-sex partner in August 2007 in P-town—to be part of any such protests. He is, after all, one of those neo-con gays who supports gay marriage but is opposed to having laws that attempt to reduce homophobia in society via enhanced punishment of gay hate crime perpetrators. OK, so Andrew Sullivan didn't condemn the recent P-town hate crime, but where was everyone else?
And, of course, let’s not forget the lack of justice for Jason Vassell, the black University of Massachusetts at Amherst student turned hate-crime victim whose alleged (white) perpetrators have, thanks to the Hampshire County District Attorney's Office, gone unpunished. Let's not forget the Brockton, Massachusetts hate-rape and hate-slayings allegedly at the hands of racist, anti-Semitic fat-ass Keith Luke. In that January, 2009 case the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office has not filed any hate crime charges against the 22-year-old defendant who is reported to have told authorities that he raped his victim because he did not want to die a virgin, a man who donned a homemade swastika tattoo on his forehead in court at his arraignment (Keith Luke apparently had expected to be killed in a hail of racist glory after shooting up a Bingo night at a nearby synagogue, a mass slaying that thankfully never got off the ground). I know, I know: it doesn’t do any good to file hate crime charges in a murder case, because there can be no enhanced punishment even if the defendant is found guilty. This myopic logic, this tired fucking line—used apparently by the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office in Brockton, Massachusetts—of course completely ignores the psychological impact on the community when a hate act goes unrecognized by the prosecuting law enforcement arm of that community. I'm not Jewish, I'm not from Cape Verde or of Cape Verde ancestry like Luke's victims were, and I don't live in Brockton, Massachusetts, but if I did live in Brockton, I wouldn't feel equal, valued or safe knowing that the prosecutors in my city have refused to file hate crime charges against a guy who allegedly raped a woman of color, allegedly shot three people of color (killing two of them) because he believed the white race is in danger of ceasing to exist, and who allegedly planned to slaughter Jews—solely because they were Jews—at a Brockton synagogue. We clutch our pearls and call hate crime perpetrators "monsters"; but, we call prosecutors and judges who fail to put into action hate crime laws "pillars of the community." That disconnect makes me want to vomit.
For good reason there probably would have been a hail of protests if the Brockton Police, the Boston Police, the Gloucester Police, or the Provincetown Police failed to tag these incidents I've described as hate crimes. There certainly was when Amherst Police failed to call the obvious race-based hate crime attack on Jason Vassell a hate crime. Yet, liberal communities—including gay and lesbian communities—have remained virtually silent when prosecutors and judges have maintained the hateful status quo by not regularly upholding hate crime laws. That silence—that callous indifference toward a targeted victim of violence—also makes me want to vomit.
All over the place, people are asking: what’s it gonna take to get same-sex marriage legalized in California? I’m asking no less important questions: What's it gonna take to get gay and lesbian folks to put down their god-damn wedding planners and start demanding equal protection under the criminal law? What’s it gonna take to get prosecutors and judges to routinely enforce hate crime laws? It’s a civil rights battle that needs to be fought, because safety is no less important than tying the knot.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] I have purposely left out transsexuals here for good reason: it is my opinion that transsexuals as a group are more aware than gay men and lesbians and bisexuals (as groups) that sexual-orientation (and gender) based violence is a haunting societal problem demanding top priority.