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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Thank you for your editorial, “Victims of crime often blames for their own attacks” (Soapbox, May 8), about the fact that victims are often blamed getting attacked, as if they caused the violence. I don't understand how people can be so ignorant to think that people get gay-bashed, raped, or otherwise targeted because of something they did, other than walk out of the house.
The timing of your column is especially significant: the trial is beginning for the murderer of Lawrence King, the little boy who was shot when he revealed he had a crush on another boy in his school. This case was widely publicized on the Ellen Degeneres show, if you remember. The lawyers for Brandon McInerney, the boy who shot him, are using the "gay panic" defense: that because Lawrence was out at school, he drove his classmates into a state of panic, and when King told McInerney he liked him, McInerney didn't know how else to “defend himself.” Then the lawyer said the school was responsible for "partial blame," for not stopping King for being so open about his sexuality!
It is just so shocking to think anyone would enter a courtroom and actually say this out loud, or that a judge or jury would consider it legitimate. It makes me sick.
Now I am nervous that my neighbors might shoot me because I am gay, because they are terrified about living next door to a gay person.
Sheila Grant
Victoria Park
In your editorial on May 8, it was great to see you (or someone) acknowledge Simmie Williams' murder. I agree with your stance that no matter what, no one deserves to be killed just because they choose to be a “cross-dresser.”
There is only one detail I would like to point out: you also suggested that when he was walking down Sistrunk Avenue, it was "none of our business" to know exactly what he was doing, and perhaps he was not prostituting himself, as some have suggested. Yes, this is true.
But even if he was a prostitute, that is still not grounds to get shot. Prostitutes don't deserve to be murdered just for being prostitutes. Arrested, yes, since they are breaking the law. But it’s not worth the death penalty. Unless he was waving a gun around in the air, nothing he was doing was a reason to be killed.
The police need to take these crimes seriously, and not shrug them off as "just another murder" in a bad part of town.
Name withheld
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