---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 19:36:38 -0500 From: Michael Novick <part2001 at usa.net> To: lparsons at tao.ca Subject: Anti-gay attacks most common in "gay-friendly" areas
Published Friday, October 16, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News ------------------------------------------------------------
Anti-gay crimes: no safe place Enclaves like the Castro have highest rates of violence
By Michelle Guido Mercury News Staff Writer
The brutal >>killing<< of popular, openly gay college student Matthew Shepard has sparked outrage across the Bay Area and the nation like no other gay-bashing.
As his family and friends prepare for Shepard's funeral today in Wyoming, people in the Bay Area's cocoon of liberalism and tolerance want to believe that what happened to him couldn't happen here. But it could, and it does -- in numbers much higher than almost anywhere else in the country.
Statistics show that reported anti-gay violence, contrary to stereotypes, is concentrated in areas where gays feel most comfortable congregating. The California cities with the highest rates of reported anti-gay violence -- West Hollywood, Palm Springs, Laguna Beach and San Francisco -- are notably gay-friendly communities. In March, in a case that received much less publicity, a man was beaten to death in San Francisco's Castro district, a gay enclave since the 1970s.
There are many possible reasons why rates are higher in such places than elsewhere: Urban areas generally have higher crime rates than rural areas; there is a large, established gay population; outreach and awareness in the gay community is higher; and people are urged to report anti-gay crimes.
"Take (San Francisco's) Castro district. Here's a neighborhood that is very gay and very gay-friendly, and there is a great deal of a kind of safety in knowing that you are one of thousands," said Lester Olmstead-Rose, executive director of Community United Against Violence in San Francisco. "But the flip side to that is if someone wants to beat up a gay person, they know where to go."
That seemed to be the case in Shepard's death. The two young men accused of
>>killing<< him -- Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22 -- are
said to have lured him from a campus bar Oct. 7 under the guise that they,
too, were gay. >>Police<< say they savagely beat the 21-year-old
political-science major and tied him to a split-rail fence where he
dangled, freezing, for nearly 18 hours.
Perhaps because it happened "out there," in rural Laramie, Wyo., the brutal crime fed stereotypes of small-town America. But gay people here say that under the Bay Area's veneer of tolerance, there is ignorance and fear, and those things can lead to violence.
"The difference in places like the Bay Area -- and San Francisco specifically -- is that a strong, visible gay community pushes back," said Wiggsy Sivertsen, a San Jose State professor and longtime lesbian activist.
"But we can't forget that we are always but a centimeter away from having something like that happen here -- again and again."
Gay mecca
Some local gay people said they came to the Bay Area -- and to San Francisco specifically -- because it was supposed to be the "gay mecca," and in some ways it is. There is safety in numbers, they say. But violent and brutal crimes have happened here.
CUAV's Olmstead-Rose tells of people in the Castro who were beaten with baseball bats with nails in them. He talks about packs of suburban teenage boys who come to San Francisco simply to find gay people and beat them up. And he shares stories like the one about the Peninsula teen who, after coming out of the closet to his family, was beaten with a golf club by his grandfather.
"America seems to be shocked, but gay and lesbian people really aren't," said Tracey Conaty, communications director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. "We're chilled by it, we're saddened by it and we're upset on a very personal level, but these types of murders have happened before -- gruesome, hateful, brutal murders. And exactly why the media and the rest of the public is responding with such outrage at this one is not fully clear."
What is surprising, experts say, is not only the prevalence of anti-gay crimes, but also that they continue to climb while overall violent crime rates decline. Crimes against gay people make up a growing proportion of all hate crimes. FBI statistics show that in 1996, 11.6 percent of the 8,759 reported hate crimes were based on sexual orientation, compared with 8.9 percent in 1991.
Security shaken
"Any sense of security that we have is a false sense of security, and that's one of the ways that this murder has shaken up the gay community," Conaty said. "We are not safe. Period. And this one of the most unsafe times that we've lived through."
Though the numbers are troubling, gay community leaders say they fall far short of the real number of attacks because most victims are reluctant to report the crime.
Often, even if victims don't report a violent episode to >>police<<, they will report it to gay advocacy groups. And members of groups like Community United Against Violence in San Francisco's Castro district -- which keeps its own numbers -- say there are disturbing patterns in anti-gay hate crimes. One example is that data shows June to be the most dangerous month, as hundreds of gay-pride parades and festivals are held across the country.
FBI records show 90 anti-gay hate-crime incidents reported to San Francisco
>>police<< in 1996. But Olmstead-Rose of CUAV, which works on issues of
violence within and against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
community, said his agency gets about 400 reports of violence each year.
According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, there were 18 gay-related slayings reported in 1997, down from 27 in 1996. Men are attacked much more frequently than women, and about 5 percent of the victims of anti-gay crime report that they're heterosexuals mistaken for gays.
Olmstead-Rose said many >>police<< jurisdictions -- particularly in rural areas and in states without hate-crime laws -- don't report those kinds of crimes to the FBI.
Hate-crime teams
He points out that reporting is much more prevalent in San Francisco because the >>police<< department has a hate-crime team and all officers are trained to respond to suspected hate crimes.
The San Jose >>Police<< Department also has a hate-crimes unit, and Sgt. Hipolito Delgado, who runs the unit, said his officers get a steady stream of hate-crime reports. But the number of reported hate crimes in San Jose based on sexual orientation is relatively small -- hovering between three and five each year. The Santa Clara County District Attorney's office also has a hate-crimes unit in place.
Olmstead-Rose said that's why hate-crime laws are important: When the issue receives attention, fewer hate crimes are overlooked.
"Our challenge now is to take this outrage and to carry it to the next step," Conaty said. "We want people to make the connections between the more common, everyday expressions of homophobia in our society like a `fag' joke, or like a full-page newspaper ad saying that gays can and should change.
"We want to help ensure that people just don't dismiss the men who
>>killed<< Matthew Shepard as evil, because that's an easy and convenient
way to wash our hands of it."
The Stanford University Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community Center is sponsoring a candlelight vigil in remembrance of Matthew Shepard tonight at 8 p.m. The group will gather in White Plaza on the university campus for the vigil, followed by a procession to Memorial Church for an interfaith service.
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