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Tuesday, Sep 30, 2008
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Joe and the Jena 6 |
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| Joe and the Jena 6 | ||
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Why commit the Gay movement to the defense of jock bullies
who beat and kicked a teenager unconscious in a schoolyard? Easy: politics. by Chris Crain - SGN Contributing Writer The fight for marriage equality is boiling over in Maryland and California, as Gays in Alabama and New York cry for justice for the hate-motivated murders of Gay men there. The nation's largest Gay rights organization claims to be energized and mobilized, and yet they're missing in action on the battlefield. As it happens Joe Solmonese, the head of the Human Rights Campaign, was giving a speech, but it wasn't about marriage or Gay bashings. He was committing HRC to help "free the Jena 6." The Jena 6? Why would HRC ignore its own movement in favor of another? The answer is politics. African-American leaders have been very supportive on Gay issues, and now HRC is scratching their backs in return. No doubt for some of the HRC staff flown (at HRC expense?) to join the protest this week in Jena, La., there is also a genuine bond among civil rights groups. The larger issues at play in Jena are understood by most of us. We would agree that this country still suffers from racial discrimination, including bias in the criminal justice system, from police and prosecutorial abuse to lopsided juries and sentences. But if these injustices are as common as we all believe they are, why pick the Jena 6? Why commit the GLBT movement to the defense of six jock bullies who beat, kicked and stomped a defenseless teenager unconscious in a schoolyard? And yet there was Joe Solmonese, standing at a podium, comparing the senseless beating of Justin Butler in Jena, La., to a hate crime. Only he wasn't comparing victims; he was invoking the image of James Byrd no less to side with the six macho bullies who punched and kicked Justin unconscious on the ground. Solmonese tried to explain HRC's involvement by saying, "We are here because we know about bigotry. We know about hate. We know the pain in high school of standing apart. Of being taunted. Of standing up, only too often, to be shut down." We certainly do. We know what it's like to be bashed by teenage jocks seething with macho bravado. That's the real "Jena 6": six football players who blindsided Justin and then beat and kicked him, causing injuries requiring hospitalization. If not for the intervention of an uninvolved student, things could have been even worse. If Solmonese and HRC could only refocus their eyes on the prize of the movement they're supposed to be leading, they would see that defending "Jena 6" is an abject betrayal of the Gay and Transgender youth (of all races) who are victimized every day by macho bullies (of all races) like these "Jena 6" heroes. Yes, the Jena 6 beating took place amid racial tensions, brought on six months earlier by bigoted white students who hung nooses on a tree they stupidly claimed was their exclusive social property. No one has suggested that Justin was connected to the nooses, but that hasn't stopped HRC from joining with others in insinuating that the Jena 6 smackdown was somehow justified as retaliation - either for a racial epithet or a thrown drink, the story keeps changing and has never been substantiated. HRC and its allies seem to not realize that by so casually blaming the victim here, they only dig the hole deeper. If HRC were right and it was a retaliatory racial strike, then the Jena 6 aren't just guilty of a beating, but a race-motivated hate crime as well. How even more unconscionable, then, for HRC to seek their freedom. Meanwhile back at the movement, only a few hundred miles from Jena, La., the local media in Bay Minette, Ala., has been "straight-washing" the coverage of how 19-year-old Scotty Joe Weaver was beaten, stabbed to death and mutilated post mortem because he is Gay. One TV reporter defended omitting the Gay bashing motive of Scotty's murderers by insisting, with no sense of irony, "There's no such thing as a hate crime in Alabama." Yet Joe can't muster a speech on behalf of Scotty Joe Weaver, or even Michael Sandy, an African-American Gay man whose killers go on trial in New York City this week. He hasn't even managed a trip next door to Maryland, where the state's political leaders are in the midst of betraying Gay supporters who hope to overturn the court decision last week upholding a Gay marriage ban. Across the country in California, Gay activists look in vain for HRC resources to help pressure Governor Schwarzenegger not to veto a Gay marriage bill passed by the Legislature. How can HRC get fired up about the Jena 6 but stay ho-hum on Gay marriage? Again, it's all about the politics. Democrats such as HRC - that's Hillary Rodham Clinton - are loath for Gay marriage to emerge now as a hot issue, so HRC does nothing to stoke the embers. Fanning the flames is Jena is work enough. Chris Crain is former editor of the Washington Blade, Southern Voice, and Gay publications in three other cities. He can be reached via his blog at www.citizencrain.com. |
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