Austin, TX Gay Bashing
Apparently even the most liberal city in Texas isn't immune to a good old fashioned gay bashing. Two friends were leaving Oilcan Harry's (a bar I've spent many a night at) last weekend when they were followed and subsequently attacked by 4 men. Check out
Queerty for pictures of the victims.
As the college-aged gay guys were getting beaten up, the attackers called them fags. They weren't robbed, so the message of the beating seems pretty clear.
Let me go off on a slight tanget here. Just in case there is any question--had these 4 men run up to them and called them "fags" and not beaten them up, no crime would have been committed. Those people that try to claim that hate crimes are "thought crimes" or restrict freedom of speech are either ignorant on the law or are outright lying. These guys were beaten up because they were gay, in Texas' most liberal city, no less. The fact that this still happens sickens me (and scares me all at the same time).
My Thoughts Exactly
From Box Turtle Bulletin comes a
message from a member of Britain's conservative party to the
US's own conservative party--don't alienate certain of society for short-term wins at the ballot box. Well, those weren't his exact words, but that sums it up pretty nicely.
My favorite part of the speech warns the GOP that anti-gay laws and tactics don't just drive away gay people, but they also affect other fair-minded individuals that see such laws as "divisive and unpleasant sign of state intolerance."
It's pretty clear that support for gay people in our society is on the rise. Whether it's support for full marriage rights, civil unions, opposition to
DADT, etc., gays are seeing real gains in support for their cause. But let's face it--it's not because we have more gay people now than we used to (in spite of what some in Uganda and the extreme American right would have you believe), it's because straight people out there are realizing that gay people actually deserve these rights, and slowly but surely, they are also getting sick and tired of seeing one party scapegoat a group of people for their own personal gain.
Britain's conservative party paid dearly for such tactics and had to do a lot of digging to get out of the hole they eventually put themselves in. Let's hope
their American Republican party heeds the advice.
