Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex Discrimination in Kentucky

South Carolina: 3 years for gay murder

If one thing is apparent, it is that the U.S. Midwest and Southern states have a long, long way to go for LGBT rights..... let alone marriage equality.

I remain surprised that most LGBT advocates in those areas don't even like to place the words "gay" and "marriage" in the same sentence. In addition to marriage equality, hate crime laws, discriminations laws, and domestic partner benefits seems a long way off.

A couple of days ago, the first state of leave the Union sentenced a man for killing a gay teenager to 3 years in prison. Yes, 3 years. The State of South Carolina has no hate crime law that covers LGBT people.

The brutality of the telephone call the man made after hitting the victim, Sean Kennedy, has kept this blogger awake [it is now nearly 4 AM EST].

“Hey, I was just wondering how your boyfriend’s feeling right about now [laughter]. The f___ing faggot..... Yeah boy, your boy is knocked out, man. The mother______. Tell him he owes me $500 for breaking my g__damn hand on his teeth, that f___ing b____.”

As one local told me in an email: "Equally troubling to me is that not one single LGBT organization has spoken out about this, organized protests, sent out fliers, issued an action alert to promote new hate crime legislation, used a damn phone, or even send flowers to the victim’s family to show that they care. What happened to that joke we call the Human Rights Campaign or the South Carolina Equality Coalition? Why isn't someone screaming in Columbia that this is wrong?"

Click here to read the story by Matt Comer.

National Day of Silence

Today is the National Day of Silence.

The National Day of Silence brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.

This year’s event will be held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed February 12, 2008 by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. Hundreds of thousands of students will come together on April 25 to encourage schools and classmates to address the problem of anti-LGBT behavior.

Anti-gay violence increases across the nation

There is an alarming increase in anti-gay violence across the nation.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reports more than 7,000 anti-gay hate crimes in 2005 alone (latest year statistics are available), and since 2003 at least 58 people have been murdered because of their sexual orientation. 6 of those 58 deaths have happened rights here in Kentucky!

Gay/Lesbian/Straight Education Network, is advocating a countrywide vigil in protest against violence toward the gay/lesbian community. This national effort is in reaction to the Feb. 12 shooting at a California school of a 15-year-old gay student that left him brain dead. Another student shot him in the head because of his expressions of his sexual orientation.

In Florida’s Broward County, 17 year-old Simmie Williams Jr, was murdered last week, which Police are investigating as a possible hate crime based on his sexual orientation or gender identity.

In West Virginia, Ricky Williams, 45, was beaten by a man and two women forced their way into his apartment. Williams later died from brain damage.

A Metropolitan Community Church in Washington, D.C. was shot up for the second time in recent weeks and the congregation is worried that hatred could be behind the attacks because of who was worshiping. The Metropolitan Community Church in Northwest ministers to the largest congregation of gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people in the D.C. Area.

Those facts are from an amicus brief that two gay groups — Pink Pistols and Gays and Lesbians for Individual Liberty — have filed in [District of Columbia v. Heller]. Pink Pistols is a shooting group who believes we should take up self-defense with guns).

Gun control laws in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts did not prevent Jacob Robida from acquiring a gun, and hate crime laws did not deter him from entering a gay bar in New Bedford and shooting several patrons. After learning he was in a gay bar, Robida pulled out a gun and shot one person in the face, another in the head (twice), and a third person in the abdomen.

The boundaries of queer-minded comedy also come up once again this past Friday, thanks to a gay punch line and some politically-minded video editing. Canadian comedian Harland Williams, appeared on Conan O’Brien this week and delivered a fairly recognizable joke: Brits call cigarettes “fags” and it’s confusing for North Americans. Williams stated “I’d like to smoke a fag and boil a couple of lesbians myself.”

Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern has received more than 7,000 emails and death threats after making the statement that gays are indoctrinating our children at age two, and are "the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam." “Oh and also gayness is a cancer that spreads just like life-threatening toe cancer.”

What can be done to stop this? How does the LGBT community protect itself?

Iran and Kentucky; Does the state have the right to kill you?

Does the state have the right to kill you? Consider these two high profile headlines:

1. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced sharp criticism yesterday about his opinions on women, gays, Israel, nuclear weapons and the Holocaust in an appearance at Columbia University, where protesters bearing signs reading "Hitler Lives" lined the streets and the university's president issued blistering introductory remarks inside a crowded lecture hall.
   
   Homosexuals are stoned to death in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
   
   President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says Iran doesn't have homosexuals in their country like the United States.
   
   Iran is marked as critical by the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA).
   
   
2. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injections in a case that could affect the way inmates are executed around the country.
   
   The high court will hear a challenge from two inmates on death row in Kentucky - Ralph Baze and Thomas Clyde Bowling Jr. - who sued the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 2004, claiming lethal injection amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
   
   Baze had been scheduled for execution Tuesday night, but the Kentucky Supreme Court halted the proceedings earlier this month.
   
   "This is probably one of the most important cases in decades as it relates to the death penalty," said David Barron, the public defender who represents Baze and Bowling.
   
   Baze, 52, has been on death row for 14 years. He was sentenced for the 1992 shooting deaths of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe.
   
   Bennett and Briscoe were serving warrants on Baze when he shot them. Baze has said the shootings were the result of a family dispute that got out of hand and resulted in the sheriff being called.
   
   Bowling was sentenced to death for killing Edward and Tina Earley and shooting their 2-year-old son outside the couple's Lexington, Ky., dry-cleaning business in 1990. Bowling was scheduled to die in November 2004, but a judge stopped it after Bowling and Baze sued over the constitutionality of lethal injection.
   
   

Does the state ever have the right to kill one of its citizens? Do the circumstances make a difference?

States who carried out the most executions last year: China (at least 1,010 but sources suggest the real tally is between 7,500 and 8,000), Iran (177) Pakistan (82), Iraq (at least 65), Sudan (at least 65), and the United States (53).

FACT: The use of the death penalty is becoming increasingly restrained in retentionist countries. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and the U.S. are the only fully developed countries that have retained the death penalty. The death penalty was overwhelmingly practiced in poor and authoritarian states, which often employed the death penalty as a tool of political oppression.

Though the public stoning of homosexuals is different from a Jury electing to execute a citizen, do the ends justify the means?

Former Kentucky Gay Health Leader Murdered

Commonwealth of Kentucky -- Dr. Emery Lane, the former president of Community Health Trust, which focused on Louisville's LGBT community and People with AIDS has been found beaten to death in his home. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Lane, 75, was found by his housekeeper. He had been beaten with a blunt instrument police said. Cash, other items and his Jaguar were stolen.

Police in the commonwealth's largest city arrested two men in connection with the murder.

Police have charged Gene Raymond Miller, 39, who they said knew Lane, and Bennett Shaw Bilbrey, 42, with murder, burglary, robbery and theft of Lane’s car, a Jaguar, according to Louisville Metro Police spokesman Dwight Mitchell.

Mitchell, reading from the arrest report, said the two men “unlawfully entered” Lane’s home on University Avenue, assaulted Lane, who lived alone, with a blunt object and left with an undetermined amount of cash.

Dr. Emery Lane knew his accused killer well — he wrote to Gene Miller in prison and provided money to care for Miller’s children. “Emery had definitely provided for (Miller’s) family. They considered him like family,” said Ken Plotnik, Lane’s attorney and friend.

In 1996, before leaving Community Health Lane presided at the unveiling of an AIDS memorial. In an interview at the time with the Louisville Courier-Journal he said that "Gays and lesbians have been invisible."

"More times than not, they have been driven to live in the dark. Some did live in the open, but they were received in contempt. Some have tried to mask who they really are by getting married … This memorial honors those people," he told the paper.

NKU Update - Northern Kentucky Gays Sustain Record Number of Attacks (all within weeks).

These attacks, targeted against the LGBT community in Northern Kentucky are record in numbers. Never before has the commonwealth seen such blatant hate crimes related to our community. Education and exposure to diversity in non-threatening environments promotes tolerance; it is critical that occur during high-school and college, when individual minds are significantly more open to social diversity. Jordan Palmer, president of Kentucky Equality Federation spoke with Mike Volmer, co-president of Common Ground at Northern Kentucky University; the Federation offered Common Ground financial and material aid, and plan to meet next week.

COVINGTON - Police believe two apparent homophobic attacks - one in which a man was stabbed - are not related. The victim in the stabbing was attacked following an encounter in a local restaurant.

Police say that he was in the bar of La Tradicion restaurant when a man approached him and asked "if he was really a female." The victim said he was not and walked away. According to the police report, "Suspect then approached victim from rear, stabbing him twice. Suspect stated to victim, 'I got you.'" The victim, whose name is being withheld for his own protection, was treated at a local hospital and released.

Police have listed the attack as a bias crime but have few leads. The suspect is described as a Hispanic male in his early 20s with dark shaved hair. Investigators say he fled in what may have been a gray Chevrolet Impala with Ohio plates.

Police also are looking for vandals who spray painted hate messages on a local home. The owner, a white woman who says she is not gay, found the graffiti about 2:30 in the morning. KKK and fag were painted on the exterior of the home, along with a swastika.

NORTHERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY - After vandals scrawled anti-gay messages across Jeremy Phillippi's dormitory door last week, the Northern Kentucky University resident assistant suspected the culprits would never be caught. But he hoped university officials would use the incident to underscore their intolerance for such hate crimes.

He enlisted the help of the Kentucky Equality Federation this week to push NKU administrators to take a more aggressive stance against acts of discrimination, intimidation and hatred. Now, administrators at the Highland Heights school say they will consider Phillippi's suggestions.

The 19-year-old gay man returned to his first-floor room in Kentucky Hall Aug. 28 to find expletives and anti-homosexual messages scribbled across his door in bold black marker.

"It said, 'Fag! I hope you get AIDS,'" he said.

Phillippi followed procedures that require an electronic report be filed immediately with the resident hall director and university housing administrators. After that, he cleaned the words from his door and went to bed.

In the days following the crime - officially classified as third-degree criminal mischief - Phillippi also met with the director of university housing and the dean of students. He said he hoped the university would use the case to inform students about the school's intolerance for such discriminatory acts. But he said there was a lack of action.

They "said they just wanted to see how I was doing and let me knew the administration knew about what happened," Phillippi recalled of his conversation with the housing administrator.
"I asked if a statement had been prepared about it, and (they) said yes, a statement had been written up to be released, which hasn't happened. And he kept using the word 'vandalism' which I think downplays the incident. I was pretty upset, so I just left. ... I really felt victimized again pretty much."

Phillippi said 10 days after the incident he remains dissatisfied with the university's response, so he met with members of the campus Gay-Straight Alliance. They directed him to contact the Northern Kentucky chapter of the Kentucky Equality Federation for help.

The volunteer organization works for gay, lesbian and transgender rights, and was recently instrumental in helping students at Boone County High School gain approval to form an in-school Gay-Straight Alliance.

Thursday, Phillippi filed a complaint with the federation, seeking help in getting further action from university officials. "We would definitely like for the administration to take a more hands-on approach with this," said Kentucky Equality Federation President Jordan Palmer. "I don't think realistically they'll ever find out who did it, but (administrators) could issue a statement in the school newspaper, for instance ... that you don't target people like this. This isn't acceptable behavior."

University officials said they have kept silent about the incident because they believed that was Phillippi's wish. But school spokesman Chris Cole said administrators are open to Phillippi's ideas about using the incident to teach students, administrators and teachers that all types of discrimination and hatred are unacceptable.

"The strong conclusion that the housing director and the (campus police) officer came to was that the R.A. did not want to call attention to himself and the investigation ... so we attempted to retain his privacy," Cole said.

"But, we are always looking for teachable moments, and any time an incident like this happens, it's certainly a teachable moment. ... So, anything he wants to do, I'm sure the housing director would be glad to work with him on it."

Cole said school officials understand that difficult discussions need to take place about things "in a way that's not threatening or destructive." Cole alluded to an incident in April when a professor was charged with helping her students tear down an anti-abortion display on the Highland Heights campus. Charges against the teacher, Sally Jacobsen, were dismissed after she successfully completed a mediation program, but the controversy raged for months following the high-profile incident.

Phillippi also referred to that incident as added reason for university officials to take swift and public action to condemn acts of destruction, discrimination and hatred. He said he plans to educate residents in his dorm about issues relevant to the case. His hope is that the university will lend its muscle to his message before then. "I just think that if something relatively small like this gets by, then what are they going to do with something else?" Phillippi said.

"That's why I wanted to take an educational twist with what happened. ... So people learn from it."