October 22, 1999 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

speakout

Murders, bashings, suicides: Who's keeping the list?

by Patti Harris

I don't know if I'm just terribly codependent or overly empathetic, but I get real affected when bad things happen to good people. I mean, I still wear my POW bracelet and visit "my guy" at the Vietnam Memorial Wall any time I'm in Washington, almost thirty years after first tightening that worn silver band on my 13-yearold wrist.

So last night, the only thing that kept me from screaming at an inanimate movie screen in a crowded theater was the knowledge of how much it would embarrass my girlfriend.

I had asked her out for dinner and a movie, and the Brandon Teena film Boys Don't Cry wasn't exactly what you'd call a romantic choice for date night. Watching a young girl passing as a guy get humiliated, brutalized, raped and murdered wouldn't find us walking out feeling all warm and cuddly.

I grew up in a Southern home where it was encouraged to care deeply about other people. I was born into a family that kissed and hugged and said "I love you" like you would say "hello" or "good bye." From my immediate family to my distant cousins, that closeness never did anything but grow stronger as I grew up and came out.

My only sibling and older brother was both my constant protector and my biggest foe. He would threaten to rip your arms off and beat you with them if you messed with his little sister. He remains, to this day, the only person who has ever fought me physically. I don't remember who won those childhood fights, but I'm sure I started most of them.

I moved out shortly after he snarled, "Do that shit somewhere else." He had met my rst sleep-over with a girl that wasn't just my "best friend."

We lived in a town where the boys spent Friday night looking for fags to beat up and I don't know what the straight girls did. I was too busy trying to find other dykes. And hanging out with Rhonda.

Rhonda was striking at 6'2", 130 lbs., smart, funny, and wanted to be called Ron. She was called "sir" more than I was, except that she liked it. She, too, came from a family that kissed and hugged and said "I love you." It is many years later that I look back and realize how fortunate we were. At the time, it was just the way I thought it was for every family with a kid

that was a little bit queer.

As I moved around, made more friends and became active in each new town's gay circles, I soon recognized how lucky I was. I also became depressingly aware of how awful others had it, from the alienation and name-calling in their high

How can my loving someone

who wants me to love them

incite in any single person this much hate, and fear, and loathing, and resent-

ment and, all too often, this much violence?

schools to discrimination in their jobs and the estrangement from their families, a thought almost impossible for me to fathom. These painful acts were often blessed with a rousing “Amen” from the Bible-thumping spiritual leaders they grew up respecting, and believing every word they spat. Why, even God "hates fags," if you read the posters at the funeral of gaybashed Matthew Shepard, which were shaken angrily by the children of minister Fred Phelps.

Working for a gay newspaper enabled me to see the many other attacks on gays that don't make it into print, because every news outlet suffers from space limitations. It also got me on lots of mailing lists, from every GLBT group you could imagine.

I keep asking, "Has it always been like this? Have there always been this many?" when seeing the news these lists bring, about firings and harassment and suicides and beatings and rapes and murders. It sends shooting pains of realization to my brain, like a spasm that starts at your shoulder and grips the base of your skull until you want to, no have to, scream out.

So it was with every bit of restraint that I forced myself to remain silent and firmly seated in that deathly still theater. Yet my brain screamed as my heart pounded to

letters tothe editor

Continued from facing page Wake me up from this nightmare

To the Editors:

I am not sure where to start. We have been getting feedback about our letter to the editor concerning Pride ["Kings Island was a closeted event," October 1]. We have had more arguments about our "in-your-face" tactics, our "ACT UP Cincinnati" approach to gay rights, our "ignorance" of the feelings of all the people that don't feel Cincinnati is a safe place to be openly gay, and the list goes on.

The general attitude we have heard is that things will eventually change, and there is no reason to open up a big argument about gay rights. "They will come to us soon enough." I was hoping to stir things up a little. To possibly light a flame under a few butts.

To just maybe open a few eyes as to what is going on here. Neither Marc nor myself have heard much good from any gay person about making waves. "Do not rock the boat so hard."

We are amazed. The emperor does have a new set of clothes! Maybe we just haven't

spoken to the right people. Maybe this is all a bad dream, and Issue 3 never happened. Maybe we are wrong, and Cincinnati is a mini San Francisco. Maybe our city hall is not full of homophobes.

Maybe we are mistaken and the gay population is supporting organizations such as Stonewall and the Community Center, openly, generously. (After all they are both in enormous headquarters, lots of full time staff.)

Issue 3 is a thing of the past! So far in the past that many gay Cincinnatians do not know what Issue 3 was. Marc and I are so wrong in thinking that there are more then a dozen or so gays in this town-oh, on the weekends there are many more. The Pride parade here is so well nurtured, it has grown to an enormous event.

Pride month is at least a week long. The gay population is all registered and votes every election. All three or four of us. And the Jews were not massacred in Germany! I don't like this nightmare. Wake me up, please. David H. Epplenhill

Cincinnati

match my building rage, “How can they hate love this much!" How can my loving someone who wants me to love them incite in any single person this much hate, and fear, and loathing, and resentment and, all too often, this much violence?

As we mark the anniversary of another slain gay kid, or cover the trial of yet another murderer who killed because some fag called him "beautiful," or didn't hear about the 12 transgender people murdered in the last year alone, or read about another gay student killing himself, or take our lover to a movie about another true story, I can't help asking: Who's keeping the list? Somebody really needs to be keeping a list.

Then maybe we can build a wall where each name is etched in granite, with books nearby that would reveal the details of each murder, from the "sin" the victim committed, like "Revealed a Secret Crush"

or "Smiled at Me" to the outcome each murderer received, like involuntary manslaughter or acquittal.

We could have our own queer memorial, that could be criticized as an ugly pink scar running through the landscaped beauty, like the Vietnam Memorial was attacked when it was first unveiled.

Then when our senators and representatives and men of God are arguing over how hate crime laws are just special rights for that damn homosexual agenda, we could march them down in neat little lines to show them one special right we literally, can't live without: the right to love one another.

Now isn't that in the Bible somewhere?

Patti Harris is business manager of the Gay People's Chronicle.

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