Tag: Congress

Vigils for Ryan Skipper – April 14, 2007

Jon Ponder

Equality Florida, in conjunction with the family and friends of Ryan Skipper will be holding vigils in his memory across the state of Florida on Saturday:

Here are the details as listed on the Equality Florida website:

  • Winter Haven
    1:00 PM
    Central Park, Central Ave at 4th and 5th Streets, Winter Haven
    Russell Patterson, 813-849-3919, russ@eqfl.org

  • Daytona Beach
    7:00 PM
    Home Metropolitan Church
    500 South Ridgewood Avenue
    David Perreault, 386-453-3089
    david.perreault@earthlink.net

  • Tampa
    7:00 PM
    USF Dream Pool, MLK Jr. Memorial Fountain by the Student Union
    Tamara Wasserman 941-626-3164, wasserman2001@yahoo.com

  • Jacksonville
    1pm on Saturday, April 14th
    UU Church of Jacksonville,
    7405 Arlington Expressway, Jacksonville, FL
    32211uujax@bellsouth.net(904) 725-8133

  • Clearwater
    7:00 PM
    On the shores of Peace Pond, Unity Church of Clearwater
    2465 Nursery Road
    (on the south side of Nursery, between Belcher andUS 19)
    Leddy Hammock, Minister, Unity Church of Clearwater, 727-531-0992
    leddy@unityofclearwater.org

  • Pensacola
    1:00 PM
    Holy Cross Metropolitan Community Church
    3130 W Fairfield Dr, Pensacola, 32505 – (850) 469-9090
    www.holycrossmcc.com

  • West Palm Beach
    Downtown Lake Worth
    6:30 PM
    Gather at Town Hall
    Dixie and Lake Ave
    Three block vigil walk to park in center of Downtown
    Allan Hendricks, 561.541.3700, eqflpbc@yahoo.com

  • Fort Lauderdale
    1:00 PM
    Gay and Lesbian Community Center
    1717 N. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale
    Rev. Frank Faine, frank@sunshinecathedral.org

  • Port Richey
    11:00 AM
    Waterside Landing
    7737 Grand Blvd.
    727-841-7900
  • Miami
    1:00 PM
    Pridelines Youth Services
    180 NE 19th St (Corner of NE 19th St & 2nd Ave)
    Tobias Packer, tobias@eqfl.org, 305-924-6237
  • Broward
    The Broward Vigil will be held at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center,
    1717 N. Andrews Avenue,
    at 1:00 p.m. On Saturday, April 14
    For more information, contact Rev. Frank Faine:
    frank@sunshinecathedral.org

  • Tallahassee
    10:00 AM
    Front steps of the Old Capitol
    Jim Van Riper & Alain Raymond, alain@eqfl.org, 904-807-5928
  • Ocala
    8:00 PM
    Downtown Square
    Robert W. Poth III, homes@robpoth.com, 352-697-2522
  • Key West
    7:00 PM
    Steps of the Old Customs House
    Base of White Head Street
    Sponsored by GLCC of Key West and NOW
    John Andola, jandola@hotmail.com, 305-849-0379
  • Washington, D.C.
    6:30 PM
    Dupont Circle Park
    Lara Martin, lsm4u1982@hotmail.com

Updated by Trish on 4/13

Why I Won’t Be in Church on Easter

Trish

As Christians and people of Eastern Orthodox faiths observe their holiest day this Sunday, one of their number has a few questions about what they think it means to follow Christ.

Christian commentator Roland Martin speaks for many.

When did it come to the point that being a Christian meant only caring about two issues,­ abortion and homosexuality?

Roland Martin: “I’ve grown tired of people who pimp God”

Ask the nonreligious what being a Christian today means, and based on what we see and read, it’s a good bet they will say that followers of Jesus Christ are preoccupied with those two points.

Poverty? Whatever. Homelessness? An afterthought. A widening gap between the have and have-nots? Immaterial. Divorce? The divorce rate of Christians mirrors the national average, so that’s no big deal.

The point is that being a Christian should be about more than abortion and homosexuality, and it’s high time that those not considered a part of the religious right expose the hypocrisy of our brothers and sisters in Christianity and take back the faith.

Martin puts his finger on one of the reasons I and so many others have all but turned our backs on faith, and can’t be pushed into an organized religious service with a Mack truck.

…it’s troubling to listen to “Christian radio” and hear the kind of hate spewing out of the mouths of my brothers and sisters in the faith.

In fact, I’ve grown tired of people who pimp God. That’s right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it’s time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.

I mean no disrespect to the people closing their businesses to celebrate Good Friday, or those joining the throngs at church on Easter Sunday. But the joy of religion is long since past for me. And until it becomes more about quietly setting the highest example for others to follow and less about judgement and scorn, it will probably remain that way.

Bush, Cheney Dig Deep for Friendly Graduates to Address

Trish

Both the president and his impeachment insurance — er, I mean, his vice president — will speak to graduating young people this month. Cheney will go to Mormon-run Brigham Young University while the holder of the nation’s highest office will go to…wait for it…a satellite campus of a community college.

Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice will address the graduates of Little Tots Preschool in St. Joseph, Missouri. Rice is preparing for tough questions afterward, like “Can I go pee-pee now?” Oh wait, Bush won’t be there to ask that last question.

President Bush will deliver a rare commencement address at a community college: the Miami Dade College Kendall Campus, on April 28.

The White House said Monday that it’s only the second time in history that a sitting president has spoken at a community college commencement. The first time came last year, when Bush traveled to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College following Hurricane Katrina.

O.K., it’s billed as the country’s largest community college but still. This is just embarrassing. Why MDC?

“Though his popularity is at a historic low, [Bush] remains more popular among Cuban Americans, said Fernand Amandi, executive vice president at public opinion research firm Bendixen and Associates…

”I think the student body at Kendall Campus are an educated body and will understand that he’s the commander-in-chief and will show him the respect he deserves,” [17-year-old Student Government President Christopher] Miles said.

Well, Chris, I are educated enough to know that you’re probably right. There’s no chance Bush would go anyplace that isn’t a slam dunk to love him. And obviously, those places are getting harder and harder to find. No offense.

Cheney, meanwhile, is venturing into hostile waters. I know, he’s supposedly from the West and Mormons are very Republican but BYU students are protesting his visit. A writer for the University of Utah’s independent student paper really let it go, saying Cheney came looking for the work.

BYU has invited the devil to Happy Valley.

OK. That last sentence isn’t entirely true. Vice President Dick Cheney will be giving the commencement address at BYU-and yes, he is the devil. What isn’t true is that BYU sought out his services. It was the Bush administration that laid the groundwork for this controversial decision. It asked politely if BYU leaders could see it in their hearts to listen for an hour or two to the half-smiling codger. It seems Cheney won’t be busy this month giving no-bid contracts to Halliburton, outing CIA agents over a grudge or shooting his friends in the face.

Whew. Want to come to work for Pensito Review when you graduate? The pay’s not so good but…well, anyway.

The first of the actual protests got off to a very Mormonesque start.

The College Democrats passed out fliers listing their grievances with having the VP speak at the ceremony. Among them are complaints that: “Cheney’s controversial actions do not represent a model our students should follow,” various issues with the war in Iraq from, the war being “preemptive” to “misleading use of weak intelligence to elicit fear” to ties with Halliburton…

The protest was a peaceful sit-in style with discussions between students but very little shouting and no chanting.

At the BYU College Republicans’ counterprotest, students handed out blue armbands, circulated a letter thanking Cheney for agreeing to speak and offered cookies, brownies and lemonade.

The speeches are still a couple of weeks away, so maybe the action will pick up. Meanwhile Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address graduates of Little Tots Preschool in St. Joseph, Missouri.* Rice is said to be preparing for tough questions afterward, like “What’s your favorite color?” and “Can I go pee-pee now?” Oh wait, Bush won’t be there to ask that last question.

* Not.

Human Rights Network Perpetuates Bad “Reportage” of Ryan Skipper’s Murder

Buck Banks

You’d think something called Human Rights Headlines would be more concerned with the truth. I mean the thing quotes Montesquieu at the top of the page: “An injustice committed against anyone is a threat to everyone.” Well, on behalf of everyone, let me just say, Thanks, Human Rights Headlines, for the latest injustice perpetrated on the late Ryan Skipper and, by extension, everyone.

Thanks, Human Rights Headlines, for the latest injustice perpetrated on the late Ryan Skipper and, by extension, everyone.

Posted on the site is a “story” “bylined” Janvieve Williams that “reports” the facts of Skipper’s murder and the subsequent arrest of his alleged killers. But Ms. Williams didn’t write the piece. She didn’t interview anyone for it. She merely cobbled together newspaper reports — complete with the lies, smears and distortions Pensito Review has been pointing out in coverage of the murder for weeks — without attributing her sources.

And you wonder why weblobgs don’t get no respect.

Human Rights Headlines just regurgitated the bad reporting that’s been done by the Lakeland Ledger and other outlets in covering this case, compounding the inaccuracies and distortions by lumping them all together on one long rambling document. This headline thing is the work of something called Human Rights Network, which describes itself this way:

Underlying all human rights work in the United States is a commitment to challenge the pernicious belief that the United States is inherently superior to other countries of the world, and that neither the US government nor the US rights movements have anything to gain from the domestic application of human rights. Rather, in the view of a growing number of US activists, the US government should no longer be allowed to shield itself from accountability to human rights norms and the US civil, women’s, worker, immigrant, lgbt, prisoner and other rights movements stand to benefit, perhaps now more than ever, from an end to US impunity in this regard.

Such an avowedly internationalist and multi-lateralist stance has not been common to domestic rights advocacy in the United States since the Cold War. Its current resurgence in US rights work, from the death penalty to economic justice, signals a fundamental shift in the politics of US rights activism.

The resonance of human rights with progressive trends in US rights work ensures its increasing relevance to domestic activists. The movement for human rights in the United States is here and plans to stay.

After reading that, I’m kind of glad they didn’t write a real story about the Skipper murder because they probably would have really screwed it up. I can’t even tell what they supposedly do or stand for.

In the hope that they will remove their inaccurate and distorted piece of copyright infringement from the Web, I’m going to post a comment on the site with a link back to this post and Pensito Review’s other coverage of the Ryan Skipper murder. Maybe then they’ll do the human right thing.

Ryan Skipper Press: With Friends Like These…

Trish

One of the nation’s top gay focused web sites has smeared Ryan Skipper, a young Florida gay man recently murdered in what police labeled a hate crime. In fact, what queerty.com said makes the local sheriff and news media — blasted by us and many others for repeating the suspect’s version of events before investigating — look like paragons of open-mindedness and circumspection.

At no time does Pensito Review accept sources at face value and pass them along, unexamined. And if you ever catch us doing that, we’ll strap on some balls and admit it.

According to friends, Ryan Keith Skipper, 25, went cruising Wahneta, Florida, for some quick and easy sex when he came across 21-year old Joseph Bearden. Testing his luck, Skipper offered Bearden a ride, which Bearden accepted. Skipper then took him to his house, where they smoked a bit of ganj and, according to police reports, chatted about using Skipper’s computer expertise to copy checks.

Skipper and Bearden then apparently took Skipper’s laptop and headed off to meet Bearden’s friend, 20-year old William David Brown Jr. From what police gather, Bearden and Brown, nestled in Skipper’s car, then stabbed Skipper 20 times before tossing his body on the side of the road.

That would make a good movie but it bears little resemblance to what actually happened.

Not a single one of Ryan’s friends has said he was cruising that night. All have said they know of no time Ryan ever looked for sex with strangers.

Ryan’s brother, who is in the computer/internet/all that stuff business, was preparing a laptop to send him from his home in Las Vegas but had not yet shipped.

At the time of his murder, Ryan owned a desktop computer, but no printer and no scanner.

Ryan has no history of criminal activity beyond some underage personal consumption charges related to pot. He was a student at a technical college and held a steady job at Sunglass Hut.

Though they jumped to the conclusion expected by rabid anti-gay evangelicals, Queerty is refusing to apologize. They blame their sources and then, worse, their defenders hide behind the excuse they are a blog, not a legitimate news outlet.

In this story, we passed along the Associated Press story…

Skipper’s friends, meanwhile, wrote us an angry note insisting that not only do we have the story wrong, we’re defaming this boy’s name: a stunning allegation, if you ask us…

Rest assured…that was not our intent. We simply report the news as we find it. We’re sure Skipper would be pleased to know that you’re keeping his good name alive. We must say, however, that we find nothing wrong with cruising for sex and, thus, cannot agree that we assassinated anyone’s character. Regardless, we’re sorry for your loss. It’s always upsetting when people are murdered – especially when it’s a senseless a crime as the one that took Skipper. We’ll be sure to keep our virtual eyes on any and all developments in this convoluted and multi-faceted story.

The only convoluted stories are the ones coming from the suspects. But George Bush himself could not have sidestepped this any better. Next they’ll be saying, “mistakes were made.”

“It’s always upsetting when people are murdered.” Yeah, don’t you hate that? What a bother. It probably happens to them all the time, which is how they know it’s “always upsetting.” Sheesh.

That they find nothing wrong with cruising is not the point, SINCE RYAN WASN’T DOING THAT ANYWAY.

We didn’t know Ryan when we read the first reports of his death, but we have half a brain and could see that the suspects’ version wasn’t adding up. Since then, we have spoken to his brother, scoured the web for updates, and are in the process of speaking to his friends. At no time does Pensito Review accept sources at face value and pass them along, unexamined. And if you ever catch us doing that, we’ll strap on some balls and admit it.

Ryan’s family has been cautioned that capital murder trials can take up to two years to prepare. If this is the kind of support they can expect from the “good guys,” it’s going to be a very long 24 months.

Official Misstatements about Ryan Skipper’s Murder Have Been Propagated in the Media

Jon Ponder

One of the saddest aspects about the aftermath of Ryan Skipper’s murder is that no one outside his friends and family seems to care about the heinous manner in which he was killed.

“I want to identify with the people that I serve. I want them to identify with me. And I want to be blatantly honest with them. I don’t intentionally say anything that will impugn anyone other than a real criminal, and then I’m not too concerned about that.”
— Sheriff Grady Judd, March 18, 2007

Neither the governor nor the attorney general in Florida — both of whom are Republicans — has expressed concern about the fact that Skipper’s murder has been labeled a hate crime. National gay organizations have been largely mute, and coverage in the local and national gay press has been very slim, especially considering the brutality of his murder.

Sheriff’s Assertions Were Based on Killers’ Statements

It is likely that the lack of outrage stems from a series of misstatements to the media at the outset of the investigation that have been attributed to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and others in his office. On the face of it, the motivation for making these statements appears to be bigotry toward gay people.

On Friday, March 16, two days after Skipper’s body was discovered, the local newspaper, The Ledger, reported:

Skipper, 25, was driving around Eloise late Tuesday night looking to pick up someone when he met [his all edged killer, Joseph] Bearden, whom he took back to his home in Winter Haven, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The next day, the paper ran a quote from Sheriff Judd that sounded like it could have been the basis of the earlier reporting:

“What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening,” Judd said.

Elsewhere, the full quote has been given as:

“What we do know is that Ryan was looking for someone to pick up that evening. And unfortunately for Ryan, he picked up the wrong person.” [Emphasis added.]

In fact — and as we have said in other coverage of this story — Sheriff Judd did not “know” this. It was immediately obvious to my colleague Trish, who reported the story here on March 18, that, since the victim was dead and could not speak for himself, the only source for this information had to have been the alleged killers.

But the slander against Ryan Skipper did not stop there. In its coverage on March 17, The Ledger published the trawling-for-sex allegation as well as three additional completely unsubstantiated statements:

[…]

Hollywood Hills Blaze Caused by Kids Playing with Fire

Jon Ponder


On our way out of town to see friends up the coast in Ventura yesterday, Page and I were more than a little rattled when we saw what looked like a giant mushroom cloud rising 5,000 feet above Hollywood.

Visitors to California over the next six months need to know that if they toss a cigarette out of a car, or hike up a hill perhaps to smoke pot, they could easily start a fire that could cause major damage, maybe even loss of life.

We found an AM all-news station where we learned that an empty lot behind the Oakwood Apartments on Barham Avenue was on fire. Oakwood is a 1970s-style apartment complex that offers temporary long-term housing. It is famous in town because its proximity to Burbank and Hollywood makes it a frequent short-term home for entertainment types. If you know LA, it is sited on a west-facing hillside within a mile or so west of Griffith Park and the Hollywood Sign.

Famous Oakwood residents have included the Jose Menendez family, who lived there when they moved here from New Jersey, five years or so before Jose’s sons, Lyle and Erik, murdered him and their mother, Kitty, in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. Funk superstar Rick James died here on August 6, 2004.

Today we learned that a couple of teenaged boys from Illinois who were staying at Oakwood set the fire. They were reportedly in the field behind the complex playing with lighters — a game I remember well from my misspent youth. Back then, we called it “Fire Up That Doobie, Man.”

What these boys did not know is that the Los Angeles area received less rain this winter than in any other year on record — under two inches the last time I checked. There is a miniscule chance we’ll get more rain before the season ends in a few weeks. Otherwise, it won’t rain again until Halloween.

By September, this place is going to be one giant tinderbox. The Barham fire yesterday is a just a precursor. The last time the scrub on that hill burned was 1961. The 41-year-old kindling erupted in seconds and burned for hours. Thanks to the property owner’s adherence to strict fire-management rules, however, the fire department quickly got things under control.

Here’s the point: Visitors to California over the next six months need to know that if they toss a cigarette out of a car, or hike up a hill perhaps to smoke pot, they could easily start a fire that could cause major damage, maybe even loss of life.

And like these teenagers, they could very well face time in jail.

War Funding Bill Benchmark Helps Big Oil Companies Gain Control of Iraq’s Reserves

Jon Ponder

The emergency war funding bills passed by the Democrats in the House and the Senate could pave the way to handing over Iraq’s oil reserves to big oil companies. Bush took us to war to gain control of the oil. Will he veto the bill anyway?

The supplemental appropriation package requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of “benchmarks” President Bush established in his speech to the nation on January 10 (in which he made his case for the “surge”). Most of Mr. Bush’s benchmarks are designed to blame the victim, forcing the Iraqis to solve the problems George Bush himself created.

One of the President’s benchmarks, however, stands apart. This is how the President described it: “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.” A seemingly decent, even noble concession. That’s all Mr. Bush said about that benchmark, but his brevity was gravely misleading, and it had to be intentional.

The Iraqi Parliament has before it today, in fact, a bill called the hydrocarbon law, and it does call for revenue sharing among Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. For President Bush, this is a must-have law, and it is the only “benchmark” that truly matters to his Administration.

Yes, revenue sharing is there-essentially in fine print, essentially trivial. The bill is long and complex, it has been years in the making, and its primary purpose is transformational in scope: a radical and wholesale reconstruction-virtual privatization-of the currently nationalized Iraqi oil industry.

If passed, the law will make available to Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, BP/Amoco, and Royal Dutch/Shell about 4/5’s of the stupendous petroleum reserves in Iraq. That is the wretched goal of the Bush Administration, and in his speech setting the revenue-sharing “benchmark” Mr. Bush consciously avoided any hint of it.

The legislation pending now in Washington requires the President to certify to Congress by next October that the benchmarks have been met-specifically that the Iraqi hydrocarbon law has been passed. That’s the land mine: he will certify the American and British oil companies have access to Iraqi oil. This is not likely what Congress intended, but it is precisely what Mr. Bush has sought for the better part of six years.

It is why we went to war.

Looking for Answers in Ryan Skipper Mystery

Trish

All three of us at Pensito Review are drawn to the story of Ryan Skipper.

I was attracted by a headline, “Winter Haven Man Killed for Being Gay,” maybe because I have an inordinate number of gay friends. If it’s true the population at large is about 10 percent gay, my immediate circle is at least three or four times that. I feel like I could have known Ryan Skipper. I can see his face among my friends.

We have made a decision at Pensito Review to follow this story wherever it might lead

Buck spent childhood summers in Polk County, Florida, where the vicious crime recently occurred, and serves as our ambassador to an area neither Jon nor I know well.

Jon’s combined sense of justice and mind like a screenwriter/detective won’t take the official version of the killing at face value. And the fact he is himself gay might help him smell rats that would rustle past straight people unsniffed.

In my initial post on Ryan’s murder, I noted that the local newspaper report, in turn repeated by other news outlets, summed up a story with i’s that don’t dot and t’s that don’t cross. As postulated: Ryan was out cruising for a pickup late one night and made a move on two straight guys. They rebuffed his advances by stabbing him 20 times, dumping his body on the side of a road, and stealing his car but later torching it and abandoning it on a dock one town over. Another angle was of a criminal alliance by the three, involving check forging and drugs.

One of those six degrees moments came for me as I read all this. Years ago, a friend of mine was married to a guy who went on to play the squirrelly preacher in the movie, “The Laramie Project,” Michael Emerson. Because Mike was in it, I saw the movie more than once, and the story of the murder of a Wyoming man, Matthew Shepard, allegedly for propositioning straight men, is a bit ingrained. When I read about Ryan, it was deja vu all over again.

After my post, people who knew and loved Ryan came forward to refute the for-publication version, adding many more questions to a growing list compiled by the three of us at PR.

We have made a decision at Pensito Review to follow this story wherever it might lead. So far, little has been written about the suspects, currently jailed without bail, and awaiting the start of a first degree murder trial whose outcome could be death. Please check back if, like us, you want to know what really happened. And why.

Ryan Skipper: Media Statements Disputed in Murder of Gay Man

Jon Ponder

As the two rural Florida men who allegedly stabbed Ryan Skipper to death two weeks ago await trial in a local jail, questions are being asked about how the events leading up to the murder were described in the press.

At one point, Matthew Shephard’s killers tried to assert the “gay panic defense,” saying they were driven to temporary insanity by their victim’s alleged sexual advances. Later, they said they only wanted to rob him and never intended to kill him when they lashed him to a fence and bashed his head in.

The sequence of events that night as reported seemed not to add up from the start, when a Polk County Sheriff’s Dept. spokesman was quoted as saying:

Skipper was driving around Wahneta on Tuesday night when he found [21-year-old Joseph] Bearden walking along Sixth Street in Eloise about 11 p.m. Tuesday, and offered him a ride. The two went back to Skipper’s house, where they smoked marijuana and discussed using Skipper’s computer to copy checks, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The problem with this statement is that it appears to come from a single source: Joseph Bearden, the alleged murderer.

However, there was at least one other witness who was apparently not consulted by investigators. Ryan had two roommates, one of whom, Kelly Evans, disputes Joe Bearden’s story:

Evans was home the night of the murder and disputes what has been reported in the news. “Ryan went out and never came back,” Evans said. “They keep saying he was here with those two guys, smoking marijuana and taking his computer when they left. I was here. That never happened. He wouldn’t do that.”

Did early reporting get this wrong or did investigators base their timeline solely on the word of a young man whom they suspected of murder?

One investigator also made this odd declaration: “What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening.” How could the police “know” this? They might suspect it, especially if that’s how the young alleged murderer characterized Ryan’s motives. Similarly, investigators appear to have accepted without scrutiny the alleged murder’s claim that Skipper was conspiring with him in a forgery scheme.

The reality is, only one person could have actually “known” for certain what Skipper’s intentions were that night, or whether he conspired to forge checks with someone he’d only just met. That would be Ryan Skipper himself, and the fact that he can’t defend himself against these slurs compounds the tragedy of his death.

Bearden and William Brown, 20, whom Kelly Evans describes as a relative of her landlord, are accused of stabbing Skipper 20 times and dumping his body on the shoulder of a road. Brown later told someone that Ryan Skipper was “messing with him,” that Ryan Skipper was a homosexual, so [he] killed him.

All of this brings to mind memories of the murder of college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming a decade ago. Like Ryan Skipper, who was 25 years old, Shephard was killed violently by two young men and left to die on the side of a rural road.

As the Shephard case advanced, the killers tried to assert the “gay panic defense,” saying they were driven to temporary insanity by their victim’s alleged sexual advances. Later, they said they only wanted to rob him and never intended to kill him when they lashed him to a fence and bashed his head in.

Reports say Skipper’s murder is being treated as a hate crime. But what remains to be seen is whether entrenched homophobia will prevent this heinous crime from being investigated and tried objectively.