Queer & Conflicted on Hate Crimes Laws

Beginning in 7th grade, I was mock raped, pushed, kicked, punched, spit on, and isolated from my peers. The supportive teachers in my rural Pennsylvanian school didn't know how to help me, and the other teachers watched in silence. By ninth grade I was suicidal and threatening to quit school. My parents paid $8,000 a year for me to go a different public school in a college town an hour drive away, which provided a little bit more safety. Yet even at the new school I received death threats on my car and locker. It was during the fall of the year I transferred that Mathew Shepard was murdered. Like me, a thin effeminate male. My brother commented to my mom that I "could have been that kid."

I was lucky enough to escape rural Pennsylvania for college in Boston where I found a supportive queer community who nurtured my activist nature and allowed it to blossom. Today, I run QueerToday.com, an online hub for queer activists who fight for social justice, and I work for an organization that serves LGBTQ headed families.

Given my past and my current work you'd think I would be excited about the passage of hate crimes legislation. I'm not. In fact, I'm very conflicted about it. The legislation has been attached to military and war spending. I don't think we should throw a single penny more towards the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. This hate crimes legislation also has the potential to increase prison sentences for those who commit crimes. My father is in jail (after being entrapped for paying for sex with a male sex worker) so I have first hand experience to validate the mounds of research that show jail, the death penalty or long prison sentences do not deter crime or rehabilitate people. Finally, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (a legal organization serving the transgender community) has noted (and given examples) that hate crimes laws have been and can be used against our community especially LGBTQ people of color and the transgender community.

It feels good that the new administration is showing us they care, and that they want to view us as equals. I understand why people would feel very compelled to support hate crimes legislation, but I'll have to stand on the sidelines with Dennis Kucinich (who voted no) for this fight.

0 members like this

Comment by Karma on October 23, 2009 at 8:54am: Hi Mark,

Thanks for writing a really sensitive comment on hate crimes legislation. I, too, am very conflicted about hate crimes legislation at the same time that I am so happy our government has, at this level, recognized queer existence. However, the prison industrial complex will ultimately be what benefits most from this legislation, and because historic issues of power like racism, sexism, trans- and homophobia aren't accounted for, I fear that what the SRLP notes about he laws being used against LGBTQ people of color and trans people will only continue to rise. I too understand the desire to support it, but I stand with you and Kucinich. Thanks for your continued activism.

Comment by Shannon on October 23, 2009 at 4:57pm: Mark, I'm all with you on my ambivalence about this! The *only* positive I see here is that the federal government has acknowledged gay people via the words "sexual orientation." Otherwise I don't see any real practical benefit for anyone. Calling it the "Hate Crimes Prevention Act" is a joke as far as I'm concerned.

Comment by Bill Perdue on October 27, 2009 at 8:13am: Hi, Mark.

I think your skepticism is justified.

The new law exposes one of the deepest contradictions of the government. They claim to be against bigotry but with laws like Clinton’s DADT and DOMA on the books, which they're in no hurry to repeal, homohating is official US government policy.

That's reinforced by Democrats and Republicans who actively cater to the bigot vote. They’re both right centrist, anti-GLBT parties and it's hard to say which is worse. Clinton and the Democrats are responsible for passing DOMA and DADT. The Republicans sponsored DOMAs in 40 or so states using cults as front groups and paying them handsomely with 'faith based' bribes. Obama's campaign turned Roves strategy against him and took a chunk of Bushes bigot base from them in 2008 by catering to bigots – “gawd’s in the mix” - and solidifying that base with faith based' bribes.

The Democrat and Republican Parties can never be reformed or ‘taken over’ or 'used' because they’re owned by the rich. Political parties are commodities like everything and everyone else. Clearly, any degree of support for either of those parties and their rightist programs like TARP, union busting, and bigot catering is unprincipled and amounts to an abandonment of the GLBT struggle for equality.

In that context hate crimes laws have no chance of ending hate crimes. On the contrary the virulence of the rightwings sustained efforts to dehumanize us will lead to more violence. There is no short term option of us except highly political self defense and we can use the new law in that effort.

Only the suppression of cults and anti-LGBT political parties will put an end to hate crimes and that awaits a revolutionary transformation of US society.

In the meantime, hate crimes laws are a small victory but they'll be futile unless we use them to focus on the collusion between the cults, politicians like Obama and McCain and violence. Their constant attacks on our rights embolden thugs.

As for punishments and prison time a lot of my thinking is based on a visit I and several young radicals and socialists made to the Colorado State Penitentiary in Cañon City in 1971 or 1972 in the aftermath of the Uprising at Attica. We met with a hundred or so people and found that almost all were from working class backgrounds, many had been sexually abused or beaten as children and that they felt that they were treated like animals in prison.

Clearly that approach is bankrupt. But it’ll remain the norm until the time comes when we can rebuild American society on a humane socialist basis. For now we just can’t take a pass on demanding punishment for the thugs who maim, cut, shoot, bludgeon and burn to death about 25 of us a year and beat and often maim hundreds of others.

It's important for the left to reach out to people in prison and to demand better treatment for our class brothers and sisters in jail. There are millions and millions of them and they'll be one of the engines that drives social change. But we have to recognize that prisons can no more be ‘reformed’ than the Congress, the White House, Wall Street or the military.

They have to be replaced.

1776. Again, please.

Comment by Trevor on October 27, 2009 at 11:24pm: I'm with you Mark.

It's an inch forward, for the 'movement' but it's semantics. I can't see the real gain for our community, the youth I work with tomorrow are not going to go back into their schools feeling any safer..

I did however hear CNN reporters, speak and repeat throughout the day the term gender identity. Which was nice to hear something other than the term "gay rights" bill.

If Obama signed a hate crimes bill that did not include gender identity, would we be talking about this? Would our movement go back to marriage and not to include the trans folks?

Over all I'm glad we can move past this, and start focusing on racism, classism and everything else that should be our community priorities.