December 2009
5 posts
Texas' "Womp-womp"
While banning gay marriage in 2005, Texas accidently made all marriage illegal.
One of the clause reads: “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”
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Cleve Jones
I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Cleve Jones, one of the leaders of the first wave of gay rights activists. He himself was a victim of a terrible hate crime and almost died.
He was him in the shoulder walking him and fell over. Then, the attackers kicked him on the ground and held a knife up to his throat, acting as though they were going to slit it. The blade bumped off his chin, but...
Maine, New York and D.C.
Maine voted down a law that would allow gay-marriage to take place in the state. The numbers were reminiscent of California’s Prop. 8 with about 87 voting for the people’s veto effort (to repeal the law) and 53 voting against it. During the same election the people legalized the use of medical marijuana.
Read More Here
New York’s Senate voted down the proposed gay marriage...
Uganda
Uganda recently proposed a bill that would make it incriminate homosexuality and those who fail to report the existence of a known homosexual. It would be a crime for doctors to give treatment to homosexual patients and homosexuality would be punishable by death.
Iran Execution
Two teenage homosexuals in Iran were hung for their relationship. Homosexuality is also punishable by death in Bangladesh, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritiana, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Gays are imprisoned in many other nations.
Read More Here
November 2009
12 posts
Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act
“The measure, an amendment to a necessary military-spending bill, expands federal hate-crime laws to include sexual orientation, gender, sexual identity, and disability.” - New York
Full-Text Here
Response: Student Government
GUPride member and Speaker of the Georgetown University Student Association for the Student Government, Adam Talbot, is working with other students to change the way the University treats hate crimes.
Junior Josh Mogil proposed the bill that would change such an act from a “biased-related” incident to a “hate crime.” Mogil himself was a victim of a hate crime and he said...
Response: Self-Defense Classes
Carter Levin, the student who organized the rally, is also encouraging members of the LGBTQ community and their allies to take self-defense classes in response to these events. Currently, this response is more of a word-of-mouth things and hasn’t spurred much change; however, Levin plants to talk to the President of GUPride (the GLBTQ group on campus), and try to arrange something....
2007 Georgetown Hate Crime
A student was attacked in 2007, allegedly because of his orientation. The school did not notify students at first, but many found out through news outlets and protested at the GUPride Rally in Red Square to encourage the University to improve its response to “biased related incidents.”
In response to the hate crime and student outrage at the University not reporting it, a LGBTQ...
Other related incidents on and around campus
A message that read “Homo go home to India” was left on the door of the LGBTQ Resource Center at Georgetown. The message was directed at the Director of the Resource Center, Sivagami Subbaraman, more commonly known as “Shiva.”
“I have no idea whether this is because of the recent hate crimes or not, but whatever it is, I just want to say that I’m not afraid of their fear,”...
Response: Safety Forum
One of the biggest concerns this incident brings is about the safety of the Georgetown campus. Technically, the incidents occurred off campus, but only a few blocks from it.
The DPS officers get paid less than any other campus officers in the area. Because of this, officers often get their training at Georgetown before transferring to one of the other universities around the area. This negatively...
Response: Vigil
Adam Talbot speaks at the vigil. He is a member of student government and is working to pass legislation that would force the school to recognize hate crimes as something separate and more serious than a regular assault. We spoke with him our first day at Georgetown.
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The day after the rally, on Nov. 2, a vigil was held in response to the hate crimes. A couple hundred people...
Response: Rally
Carter Levin holding up his sign for the rally.
The first response to the crimes was a rally put together by Carter Levin. After hearing about the event, Carter was trying to write a paper, but was too angry about what happened. He decided to have a rally and told friends about it. Seventy students showed up on the Sunday morning.
Students show their outrage at the rally.
Sources:
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What happened?
Two Georgetown students were assaulted in October.
The first was a female wearing a t-shirt supporting gay rights. The two attackers shouted anti-gay slurs at her before grabbing her book bag, pushing her to the ground and hitting her with her own book bag. She retained minor injuries.
The second attack occurred at the corner of 36th and N Streets Halloween night. The victim was assaulted by a...
WatchNote: Carter Levin didn’t organize the vigil. He put together the rally.
The rest of the information is consistent with the research and interviews that we conducted.
Not in Our Town: Introduction and Objectives
In October, a series of anti-gay hate crimes occurred at Georgetown.
For our Understanding Media project Jasmine Rao, Marley Cooke, and I (Ashley Dejean) have decided to film a short documentary about the incidents and response to those incidents at Georgetown for PBS’s “Not In Our Town Project.” This blog follows both research for the documentary and about other hate crimes and...