For a while in the 1980s, gay-bashing was a fad.
You may remember a scene in the film Milk about assassinated city Supervisor Board member Harvey Milk, where he is confronting the police over a series of gay murders. Some nutjob was going around the Castro district and stabbing gay men and the police weren't doing much - or anything - about it. "Probably just a fight between some queens" they say, or, "his trick stabbed him" - as if that excused murder even it if was true. Which it wasn't.
(Say, whatever happened to the guy who killed Milk and Muscone? Oh, right, the "twinkie" defense - junk food made him do it! You see how people bend over backwards to not find a crime against minorities!)
But it was typical of that era, or indeed, even today, where marginalized groups of people are often victimized and no one really seems to care much. People make jokes about dead hookers - as if being a prostitute merits a death sentence. And when they are found dead, people complain their rotting remains are a nuisance to dog-walkers! Young indigenous women are being murdered across the Pacific Northwest and the only thing we've done is give this a trendy name, "The Trail of Tears." But not much is being done to actually solve the crimes. (Sadly, a similar trail of tears exists across Northern Mexico, where young women are murdered for some sicko's sexual perversion. Again, not much is done).
The homeless have been subject of such marginalization, at least in the past. There were stories - and indeed, even jokes told (shame on you Jon Stewart!) about beating homeless people with baseball bats and other implements. Today, the stories are more about homeless people victimizing others or each other, which is why I say, we need to bring back the mental institution - for the safety of everyone involved. Letting mentally ill people live on the street is just a bad idea all around. But I digress.
Once a group is marginalized, it is much easier to abuse them, victimize them, and even murder them. One neat trick is to tell people that the marginalized group is not even human, and thus proscriptions about murder no longer apply. This has been done, historically, against religious minorities, who, being unbelievers or apostates, were deemed not to have basic human rights.
In the 1980's it was "Morning in America" and Ronald Reagan was elected President. The HIV epidemic was also in full-swing and gays, as a result, were getting a higher profile in society - but not because they wanted to, at least in that way. Many on the far-right, particularly the religious far-right, claimed this was God's vengeance against the gays. They invoked Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of the retribution of God against those who practiced fornication. There is some debate, however, about what those passages in the Bible actually mean - presuming you believe the Bible is more than just silly stories.
Of course, these religious and political leaders weren't calling for violence against gay people - well, at least most of them weren't. And yet some other Republicans proposed forcibly quarantining gays that tested positive for HIV (no doubt the same Republicans who were against CoVid testing and vaccines). Many wondered whether these were "wide stance" Republicans who were just afraid of catching HIV and wanted a safe playing field - as they were in the closet.
The end effect, of course, was to make it seem acceptable to attack gays, and a few mentally deranged or just violent people decided to do just that - secure in the knowledge that "society" approves of their actions and the consequences, if any, would be minimal. In many cases, perpetrators were not caught, or if caught, given light sentences or even suspended sentences, due to their young age.
When we moved to Washington, DC, the gay-bashing era was in full swing - if you'll pardon the sick pun. Teenagers would drive into the district from the suburbs and go to some place notorious for "cruising" such as the P Street Beach, and the beat the brains out of some hapless gay, with a baseball bad. Beating someone in the head with a bat is a particularly nasty and personal crime. It isn't as abstract as merely shooting someone, rather you are trying to destroy them, quite literally.
Oddly enough, these perpetrators, on the rare occasions they were caught, would use the scourge of AIDS as an "excuse" for the attacks and murders. You want to avoid getting HIV, it probably would be a good idea not to let someone bleed all over you, for example, when you are beating them to death. HIV was just a cover-story for violently inclined people to have an outlet for their violent fantasies.
You read all the time in the papers about someone surviving an attack, an accident, or a shooting, with the notation that they had "non-life-threatening injuries." This sounds benign, like they needed a band-aid or something. But non-life-threatening injuries could include being paralyzed from the neck down, losing a limb or limbs, or having severe brain damage.
I met a young man who had this happen to him. Someone whacked him on the head with a club, simply because he was gay. He survived, but had double-vision, loss of balance, and memory problems - plus a huge scar across his forehead, like Frankenstein. He could never again drive a car, operate machinery, or even hold most jobs. He was fortunate to have a partner to support him, but his life was changed forever. The teenager who did it? Out on bail in 24 hours, and given a suspended sentence due to his "youthful offender" status. In other words, the judge and prosecutor wanted to get rid of some icky gay case as quickly as possible.
Of course, this was not merely a Washington, DC thing or even an American thing. Australia is coming to grips (somewhat) with its history of gay-bashing. At one time, closeted gays would "cruise" a cliff area near Sydney, Vicious teenagers would then confront these gays, beat them, and push them off the cliff to their deaths. The Police, taking the easy way out, would claim these were suicides - the gays hating themselves, after all. Only recently has this come to light and people are actually being prosecuted for it. But likely, most of these "suicides" will never be solved.
I ran into this, personally, in the 1980s when I was at Syracuse University. A friend of mine told me about a shortcut diagonally through the park, which I thought was a bad idea, as it was at night. Sure enough, we were only a few hundred feet from his apartment when a car of young men rolled up and they started shouting epithets at us. They piled out of the car - a 1962 Oldsmobile - and the lead one was swinging a length of galvanized pipe.
"What do they want?" my friend asked, frozen in fright.
"To kill us! Run!" I said, grabbing his arm and nearly dragging him away.
We ran down the opposite side of the hill they were climbing, which gave us time. By the time the foursome got to the top of the hill, we had swung around and headed toward the street and the commercial district. Incredibly, they kept chasing us, getting closer and closer (and their compatriot was driving the car behind them). Finally, we got closer to "civilization" and the pursuers realized they might get caught, and they piled into the Oldsmobile and left.
We got back to his apartment, tired and panting and his roommate complained we were making too much noise. After our heads cleared, we called the Police, who sent an undercover officer to investigate. We described the four youths and the car - which was rather unique - and the Police officer said, "Oh, I know those guys, they were just messing with you!" and he left. He knew the perpetrators and yet refused to arrest them. We were too stunned to do anything, other than to realize that shortcuts at night were a bad idea.
That was 1985. Things got better in the coming years. Police forces started to take crimes against minority groups more seriously. But still, there was this dichotomy between the response to a crime against a wealthy, white male, and a crime against a poor black female - particularly if she was gay. I've seen it firsthand, how many Police officers decide, within seconds of rolling up on a crime scene, to decide who is right and who is wrong in a situation - and often these decisions are made based on personal prejudices. The Police often side with the guy who looks, acts, and talks like them. And once they've made up their mind that you are the bad guy and the perpetrators are innocent, well, you're screwed.
But the real reason gay bashing fell from favor was that society stopped sending signals that gays were less than human or needed to be eliminated. In the 1990s and 2000s, gays were more tolerated and even celebrated, which of course made me nervous. Once you are no longer the flavor-du-jour you get kicked under the bus in short order.
Turns out there are a lot of folks under that bus - again, pardon the pun, because sometimes it is quite literal. Bus - or subway train. Anti-immigrant and Anti-Asian sentiments were shouted in the 2010s, with (again) Republicans announcing these groups as threats to America. Violence against immigrants and Asians started to rise. All you have to do is create the aura of fear and then the wind-up soldiers will take charge.
Hitler knew this. Long before there was official state-sanctioned violence against Jews in Nazi Germany, there was unofficial violence that often occurred with little or no consequence to the perpetrators. Brownshirts knew the could beat up a Jew - right in front of Police Officer - and not be arrested. They even ran unofficial concentration camps - incarcerating Communists and others they disagreed with - without any legal sanction to do so. Of course, once they were officially in power, those concentration camps escalated to a whole new level of violence and death.
Given the history of this kind of violence, it is laughable that Republicans can say, "who, me? I didn't attack anyone, I'm just exercising my free speech rights, and by the way, Jews control the banking system!" It is hate-speech and it sets others off, which is the intent. Not a specific intent, but the intent all along that someone will hear their call and take up arms against the out-group and that someone else will be a victim. They can say they never saw it coming, but given the history of hate speech and its consequences, it is hard to claim ignorance.
And maybe that is why we had a lull in this kind of violence in the 1990s - we decried hate speech and even Republicans admitted it was abhorrent. That was the old-school GOP, before hate-mongering became a campaign strategy. Sadly, an effective campaign strategy.
Much ado is made about a recent mass-shooter who was Hispanic, and yet claimed to be a White Supremacist. Elon Musk is claiming it was a "PsyOp" - do you really want to buy a car from this man? Maybe the Swastika will be the new logo instead of the stylized Tesla "T". Republicans are once again claiming innocence (or denying it even happened) and pointing out that the clearly mentally ill young man was nutzo. How can you be a white supremacist with a name like "Garcia"?
And yet the leader of the "Proud Boys" is an Afro-Cuban - what the ever-loving fuck?
It just goes to show you how this all works. The GOP puts out noise about how blacks are all on welfare, Latinos are gang-bangers, Asians are taking all our jobs, and gays are pedophiles and so on and so forth. "Just exercising our first amendment rights!" they say. But they know that some mentally ill person will exercise their second amendment rights as a result of these "dog-whistles." The problem is, wind-up soldiers are usually crazy and thus will seize upon this sort of stuff (conspiracy theories and whatnot) and end up going off the deep end, thinking they are heroes for shooting random people (or often, not-so-random people).
You create an environment of hate, violence will soon follow. The GOP has blood on its hands.
So, here we are, nearly 40 years later, and the GOP's main platform plank is that "trans" people are bad, and ergo, drag queens (who generally are not "trans") are also bad and somehow "grooming" children, and thus, all gays are all pedophiles - and pedophiles deserve the death sentence. And that's just Florida, folks!
How do you think this will play out over time? How long before we have another Pulse nightclub shooting? Not long, it seems. Even today, indifference and inaction by the Police is part and parcel of the problem. People have gone to great lengths to explain that the Pulse massacre wasn't an anti-gay thing, but that the shooter had a grudge against night clubs in general. What the ever-loving fuck? I mean, that is going to extremes to not see a hate crime here. And I wonder if the Police would have waited four hours before going in, if the target of the attack was an F.O.P. lodge?
The sad thing is, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The demonization of political discourse, even, is getting out of hand. Yesterday, I was nearly run off the road (in our golf cart) by an F150 with a bumper sticker that read, "You're either an American or a Democrat!" - as if believing in health care meant you were a traitor to your country (but storming the Capitol to overturn an election makes you a patriot).
This too, shall pass. But how many will die in the interim?
