The trial has begun in the slaying of 15 year-old Larry King.  If you need a refresher on the details:

Brandon McInerney, now 17, is charged with murder in the 2008 shooting death of Lawrence King in a high-profile case that has rallied the gay community and triggered calls for greater protections of young homosexuals on school campuses.

King was bullied by McInerney and other boys at the school, Deputy Dist. Atty. Maeve Fox said in her opening statement in the trial, which is being conducted at a courthouse in Chatsworth. But shortly before his death, King had begun wearing high heels, makeup and earrings to school and had become more confident in himself, she said.

“Larry King for the first time in his life wasn’t taking it anymore,” Fox said. “And he started to give people what I prefer to call the proverbial chin. Only it was more profane. The proverbial ‘f … you.’”

McInerney allegedly mentioned that he was going to kill King the day before the murder occurred. Oh, but look at what the defense is doing:

McInerney’s lawyer, Scott Wippert, argued that King — and not his client — was the aggressor. He said King targeted McInerney for sexual harassment, making flirtatious remarks, and had humiliated him.

King was encouraged in his effeminate behavior and dress by school administrators who said he was within his rights to dress that way, Wippert said.

For his part, McInerney was “a confused, emotionally torn 14-year-old from a violent home who saw no other way out than to shoot Larry,” Wippert said. “It was a heat-of-the-moment decision.”

Gay panic. The suggestion that if a person feels uncomfortable because a gay person flirts with him, that murder is somehow on the spectrum of Reasonable Responses. I do remember from the days immediately after King’s murder that he did seem to have a crush of some sort on Brandon McInerney. That happens, especially in the formative years of high school.

My feeling on this case has always been that it was tragic all around — that a kid like Larry could be murdered in cold blood at school just for being who he is, and that a kid like Brandon could have been raised/neglected in such a way that he would feel justified in taking Larry’s life.  But the suggestion from the defense that a little 15 year-old gay boy who liked to wear make-up was the aggressor in a situation which resulted in his own murder is beyond disgusting.

Yeah, so this happened in Pennsylvania:

A 28-year-old Upper Darby man has been charged with murder after telling police that he stoned a 70-year-old man to death when the man made homosexual advances toward him, authorities say.

John Joe Thomas, 28, of Sunshine Road in Upper Darby, spent almost every day with 70-year-old Murray Seidman at Seidman’s Lansdowne home, police say. Days before Seidman’s body was found on Jan. 12, Thomas allegedly beat Seidman to death with a sock full of rocks.

Thomas told authorities that he read in the Old Testament that homosexuals should be stoned to death. When Seidman allegedly made homosexual advances toward him over a period of time, Thomas said he received a message in his prayers that he must end Seidman’s life, according to court documents.

Lovely. It’s always funny when we argue with Religious Right figures who claim to take the Bible literally, and consider it inerrant, because they will bark some Leviticus at you, but they know they can’t get away with what their Bible really says, in 21st century civilized society.  So, obviously what happened in Pennsylvania is completely sick and disgusting, but I just want everybody to remember that the deranged killer wasn’t actually mistaken about what the Bible said.

[h/t Joe]

Peter LaBarbera, Bryan Fischer, Matt Barber, and the rest of the usual suspects, are triumphantly asking for apologies from the mainstream media and gay activists for bringing up the rhetoric of Scott Lively in connection with the murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato.  Why are they so happy?  Media reports are coming out that seem to possibly tell a slightly different story, at first glance, if you’re not paying attention, and if you read this story in a vacuum without any foreknowledge of what’s been going on in Uganda.  Here’s Bryan Fischer:

According to Reuters, a man has now confessed to the killing, and police are saying a “personal disagreement” let to Kato’s untimely death. Meaning, of course, the whole thing had nothing to do with Lively or any other pro-family leader in America.

In fact, the police spokesman said quite pointedly that the murder “wasn’t a robbery and it wasn’t because Kato was an activist.” So the whole hate crime meme is out the window, gone, history, in the archives.

The confessed murderer, one Nsubuga Enock, is a “well-known thief,” according to police, and had been in prison until January 24. He had been staying with Kato since getting out.

Okay, “police are saying” that it was a personal disagreement. I can’t imagine why we’d have any reason not to believe the police in a nation that is seriously considering a bill that would criminalize homosexuality, and where political and religious leaders routinely tell citizens the sorts of malicious lies about gay people that they’d never get away with in a first world nation. Indeed, Scott Lively was sort of the one who kicked all of this off in Uganda, as he ran across the pond to find perhaps the only people brainwashed enough to believe his disturbed, malicious bullshit about gays causing the Holocaust and gays causing the Rwandan genocide.

Let’s look real quick at the Reuters article Fischer references, to see if he’s leaving anything out:

Kato had been featured in an anti-gay newspaper in October that “outed” people it said were gay and called on the government to kill them. His photograph was published on the cover under the headline: “Hang Them.”

The activist said he had received death threats since the publication.

[...]

Gay rights activists told Reuters they feared police may try to cover up a motive of homophobia to protect the Western aid upon which the country relies. They said they wanted proof from police that Kato was not killed over his sexuality.

And has that proof been forthcoming? Nein.

The rest of the story that’s being floated by Ugandan police smells a lot like the “gay panic” crap we’ve been hearing for years in cases like that of Matthew Shepard [which Religious Right wingnuts still try to absolve themselves of responsibility for]:

A man whom police arrested yesterday on allegations of killing David Kato, a human rights activist, has reportedly told police that the deceased coerced him into sodomy. David Kato, 46, an advocacy officer for the gay rights group, Sexual Minorities Uganda, was found with head wounds at his home in Bukusa, Mukono District but died on his way to hospital last Wednesday.

Police spokesperson Judith Nabakooba said the suspect had been hiding in Nakabago village, Mukono District. “It is true the suspect has been arrested but we need to record his statement first before giving a formal statement,” Ms Nabakooba said yesterday. But a police source, who preferred anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to the press, said the suspect confessed to killing Kato because he was reportedly tired of engaging in homosexual practices.

“We have taken him to Mukono Magistrate’s Court to record an extrajudicial statement,” the source said. “He told us that he killed Kato after he failed to give him a car, a house and money he promised as rewards for having sex with him,” the source said.

Anonymous sources to the extremely bigoted Ugandan police are good enough for Matt, Pete and Scott if they allow them another day of blissful ignorance of the people they hurt every day.

Take over, Joe Jervis:

Surely you can understand the predicament the Ugandan government finds themselves in. They couldn’t ignore or even sanction the murder of a gay man, as they normally would, due to the international publicly surrounding the case. But they also couldn’t allow the murder to be construed as politically motivated, lest the resultant outrage dry up those annual millions in foreign aid.

And don’t overlook that this so-called “motive” precisely fits the long-running Christianist claim that evil local gays are using using Western-supplied money to recruit Uganda’s helpless youth into homosexuality, a charge repeated in the very issue of the newspaper that called for Kato’s murder.

We will never get the truth, you can bet on that.

No, we won’t. But here’s what we DO know. An anti-gay crusade is being waged in Uganda, aided by American Evangelicals who, in that climate of hatred and ignorance, are allowed to express their true fear and bigotry more clearly and dishonestly than they get away with in the United States. A people suffering from poverty, malnourishment, disease, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and a corrupt government are, of course, being led to scapegoat their problems on people who haven’t done a damn thing to hurt them and who never will, and idiot American Evangelicals are okay with that. Why? Because no one in the First World gives a damn what they say anymore! This is why they spend so much money on “missions” in the first place! Give impoverished people economic empowerment and education and medical care and tools to pull themselves out of poverty and they’ll have a better life, but they’ll become less and less likely to drink the religious Kool-Aid, and they might just get smart enough to realize that their goverment has been screwing them over for decades.

But if you go over there with a Bible and a scapegoat for all their problems, you protect the power of the people screwing them and you win converts without having to help a single person.

Anyway, since we’re supposed to be “apologizing to Scott Lively,” let’s see what the poor dear has been doing the past couple of days. Oh, look, as Alvin McEwen points out, Scott wrote another anti-gay screed about Uganda! Let’s see what it says:

Uganda is being murdered. The nation once called “The Pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill, a lush and beautiful country as fertile as the Nile Delta.

By whom?

The murderers are the lavender Marxists, the now-global network of sexual revolutionaries bent on remaking the entire world in their own perverted image, whose juggernaut has toppled even once mighty Britain, crushing under their lavender boots after eight centuries the symbol of its Christian power: the Magna Carta, whose first principle had proclaimed “The English church must be free!”

These revolutionists of Sodom, who march triumphantly through all the major cities of the western world to flaunt their defeat of moral law, and who hold both Hollywood and the heart of America’s president in their iron grip: These very same zealots have fixed their malevolent gaze on Christian Uganda.

Uganda is the only country in the world with a national holiday commemorating its rejection of sexual perversion. Every June 3 it honors the 22 young men and boys who were tortured and roasted alive in 1886 by homosexual King Mwanga, because they refused to submit to sodomy. Is it any wonder, then, that Uganda has reacted violently against the army of agitators, led by George Soros, who now seek to re-homosexualize Ugandan culture?

It is as if the militant ranks of “Code Pink” were transported back to 1890s America to agitate for “sexual freedom.” Our great grandparents would not have countenanced this. There would have been violence, as there has now been in Uganda.

[...]

There is indeed evil in Uganda today, but it is not the reaction of Christian and Moslem citizens to the rape of their culture. It is the pink-gloved hand of western powers that are cutting the throat of Africa’s most God-fearing country, and one of the world‘s most promising Christian democracies.

He actually believes his own crap. He’s not even a good imperialist white man preying on the downtrodden. He actually believes that a gay army, led by George Soros [wingnut dogwhistle!], is traveling to Uganda to “re-homosexualize” the culture. Even though we know, from SCIENCE, that there are gay people in every country, tribe, religion, or any other population group you can think of. That’s sad, pathetic and sick. Get help, Scott Lively, for your own good.

So again, there will be no apologies forthcoming, from me or any other writer with a soul and an ability to use Google, analyze information and sleep at night with a good conscience.

But keep running away from it, guys. Keep running away from the consequences of your worldview. Every time you open your mouths, a few more people fall onto the side of fairness and equality and away from your fearful bigotry.

Everything about this gruesome story is just bizarre, but it speaks of the self-hatred engendered by religious teaching, which could lead a person to try to kill in others that which they wish to kill in themselves:

A male model has apparently admitted using a corkscrew to castrate a gay fashion writer to ‘cure’ him of his homosexuality.

Renato Seabra also allegedly used the corkscrew to gouge out the eye of 65-year-old Carlos Castro during the gruesome attack.

Castro was found dead in his New York hotel suite having suffered multiple injuries, including being castrated.

[...]

After his arrest Seabra allegedly told police he had killed Castro to get rid of his ‘homosexual demons’.

‘He said he did it to get rid of Castro’s homosexual demons,’ one of the police sources said.

Seabra is also alleged to have shouted ‘I’m not gay anymore’ after the attack.

The model’s mother is later quoted as saying that her son never hid his sexuality — his heterosexuality.  Details are sketchy, but the boy is also described as being very religious, hence my original comment.

This is a nice way to wake up on Friday morning.  Via Andy Towle, we learn that Tim Ravndal is the president of Montana’s Big Sky Tea Party Association.  This happened on his Facebook page:

In case you can’t read the text, the original post is a whiny, victimized statement about Tradishnul Murge, which says:

“Marriage is between a man and woman period! By giving rights to those otherwise would be a violation of the Constitution and my rights.”

The poor grammar of the teabagging leader is completely unexpected, of course, as Tea Partiers are usually such wordsmiths. Note the malcontent mindset wherein if another person has equal rights, the teabagger’s rights are being violated. Far too few people understand that the political “philosophy” (to use the term very loosely) of the Tea Party movement is basically I’m White And I’ve Got Mine.

Moving along. Tim Ravndal’s friend “Dennis Scranton” then leaves a comment which says:

“I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions.”

Haha! Because Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming and hung on a fence to die! Haha! Teabaggers are totally normal people!

Then (haha!) Tim Ravndal replies back, in an equally awkward version of the English language as his original posting:

“Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?”

Haha! Maybe Wyoming has a how-to guide for killing faggots! Haha!

A note on language:

Dear Teabaggers,

English is the language of the United States of America. Either learn it and assimilate or leave.

That is all.  Oh, and “Ravndal” sounds kind of foreign, so maybe somebody should check his papers.  He certainly doesn’t act like an American citizen.

The so-called “Living Word Christian Center,” an Exodus International member organization in suburban Minneapolis, said it neither supports nor opposes a Minnesota-based Christian punk-rock group which endorses the Islamist-style extermination of homosexual persons.

Here’s the organization’s statement, courtesy of Exodus’ blog:

Statement Regarding You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries

Living Word Christian Center (LWCC) did host You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries on March 25, 2009 in our Senior High School Youth department. The speaker was Jacob MacAulay the chief operations manager of their ministry, his topic was on the influences of pop culture in our society. LWCC does not support financially or in any other manner, nor is an affiliate ministry of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries. Our faith community at LWCC believes it is the love of God who draws all men (people) to Him, not condemnation or judgment.

LWCC does not apologize for hosting the hate group, does not acknowledge the rock group’s loud-and-proud kill-the-gays message, does not clarify its own policy regarding the imprisonment or execution of homosexual persons, and does not admit to the incident on its own web site.

Meanwhile, You Can Run continues to bring its fundamentalist hate to gullible public schools in Minnesota under the guise of anti-drug and anti-sex music.

From Doug Ireland of the Gay City News, April 30:

As the murder campaign targeting Iraqi gays intensifies, a leading Arabic television network last week revealed the use of a horrifying new form of lethal torture against Iraqi gay men – anti-gay Shiite death squads are sealing their anuses with a powerful glue, then inducing diarrhea, which leads to a painful and agonizing death. The use of this stomach-turning new torture was first reported by the Al Arabiya network, which is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates and was alerted to the story by a leading Iraqi feminist and human rights activist.

Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), told Al Arabiya that the torture substance “is an Iranian-manufactured glue that, if applied to the skin, sticks to it and can only be removed by surgery. After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death. Videos of this form of torture are being distributed on mobile telephones in Iraq.”

Al Arabiya said its reporter confirmed the use of this anal torture by “visiting the Baghdad morgue in Bab-al-Moazaam in central Baghdad, where Neman Mohsen, the medical examiner, confirmed they have the bodies of seven homosexuals in the morgue. He said, ‘We were not able to identify the culprits, who dumped the bodies in front of the morgue and fled without being seen.’” A two-person team from Human Rights Watch (HRW) currently in Iraq to investigate persecution of LGBT people has also confirmed the use of this form of torture. In a widely-circulated email from Iraq, the head of HRW’s LGBT desk, Scott Long, said he and his colleague had gathered evidence which confirms the Al Arabiya report and that HRW would make its own detailed report after the organization’s two staffers return to the United States next week.

Yesterday, MSNBC’s World Blog posted additional information:

Iraq’ gay population is being targeted by militia groups in a wave of killings that has claimed the lives of up to 25 young men and boys in the past month.

“They know I am gay. I don’t know if I am going to be killed, this is up to God,” said Moyad, a 38-year-old Baghdad resident who would not give his last name out of fear for his safety.

Visibly frightened, he said that he has many friends who have been sadistically tortured, some even murdered. “They are sticking glue up their anuses; some hospitals refuse to treat them. Is it a war waged against homosexuals?” he asked.

Most of the attacks have happened in Baghdad’ Shia neighborhoods, and many believe that religious leaders have used Friday sermons in Sadr City as a platform to incite hatred and violence toward homosexuals. The bodies of three gay men were reported to have been found in Sadr City in April with pieces of paper bearing the word for “pervert” attached to them.

The language used by the perpetrators in Iraq is much the same as that used by Exodus International and its allies in March when they launched the current campaign of intimidation and violence against same-sex-attracted persons in Uganda:

Posters and leaflets have been distributed in the Baghdad neighborhoods of al-Shola, al-Hurya and Sadr City with orders to, “Cleanse Iraq from the crime of homosexuality.”

In Uganda, the campaign co-launched by Exodus International board member Don Schmierer vowed to “wipe out” homosexuality, while Exodus continues to promise U.S. antigay heterosexuals “freedom from homosexuality” — and, it logically follows, from homosexuals.

MSNBC continues:

Baghdad police didn’t respond to inquiries from NBC News about the attacks, but the surge in violence has gained attention by the international media.

In a letter to Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki in April, Amnesty International called for “urgent and concerted action” to stop the killings of men because of their sexual orientation.

Amnesty International expressed concern at the government’ failure to “publicly condemn the killings.” It urged the government to make sure that the killings are “promptly and effectively investigated, and to see that the perpetrators are brought to justice.” The letter also condemned statements from one senior police officer that,”appear to condone or even encourage the targeting of members of the gay community in Baghdad.” An Amnesty spokeswoman said there had not yet been a reply from Iraqi authorities.

The message of Exodus and NARTH, that homosexuality is a mental illness to be treated or eliminated, resonates well beyond U.S. borders and nations such as Uganda that are served by the Exodus Global Alliance. According to Towleroad:

English language newspaper The National, based in Abu Dhabi, reports on the recent executions of gay men in Iraq.

They interview a man they call Abu Muslim, who claims to be involved in the actual killings:

“We see this [homosexuality] as a serious illness in the community that has been spreading rapidly among the youth after it was brought in from the outside by American soldiers. These are not the habits of Iraq or our community and we must eliminate them…We had approval from the main Iraqi tribes here to liquidate those [men] copying the ways of women. Our aim is not to destabilise the security situation. Our aim is to help stabilise society…Although the Mahdi Army is today limited and in fact stalled, we cannot sit by with our arms crossed while these homosexuals flout the rules and ethics that must be followed under the Islamic religion. These homosexuals think that Iraq is changing and becoming a non-Muslim, liberal society but our tribal and religious customs allow us to punish them in the most severe way.”

Change is possible — social change, that is. But violent antigay religious leaders in Iraq, elevated and empowered by an incompetent U.S. occupation, are determined to use any means necessary to stop change.

I have long been outspoken on the abuses of GLBT people in Jamaica and the need for action. I can’t imagine why any American, European or Canadian who cares about human rights would spend a dime visiting this island bubbling over with hate. Last week, Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, firmly stated how he approved of the persecution of gay people. He stated that gay rights groups are “perhaps the most organized lobby in the world” and he vowed to fight to keep the nation’s sodomy law on the books.

“We are not going to yield to the pressure, whether that pressure comes from individual organizations, individuals, whether that pressure comes from foreign governments or groups of countries, to liberalize the laws as it relates to buggery,” said Golding.

Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin wrote an excellent piece describing the abuses in Jamaica.

Personally, I’ve had enough of the prejudice and persecution. Golding’s comments are one step too far. It boils my blood when our straight friends (and uninformed GLBT people) continue to travel and spend money in Jamaica. There are thousands of people, if they knew the truth, who would not visit a place more accurately described as “Ja-Murder.”

Today, Truth Wins Out purchased www.BoycottJamaica.org. We are not yet sure if we want to launch a full-fledged boycott. But, it is nice to know we have this site in our back pocket and can take action against this nation that seems to have a unique and disturbing – if not psychotic – antipathy towards GLBT people. (Read More)