Last night in my city a man had his head bashed against the ground until he died because he was a homosexual. He was well liked and respected in the community at large and will be missed as both a leader and a person.
Today, twitter has been abuzz with discussion about this…
This actually happened in my city, which has a huge gay community. People are saying now that he may have been mentally ill and unstable, which could have had something to do with the incident. But it is a goddamn tragedy.
The murderer was apparently a paranoid schizophrenic with a history of violence who seemed to be receiving little to no follow-up care SURPRISE SURPRISE, NOVA SCOTIA……
His illness likely did have something to do with the murder, however considering that he was screaming homophobic slurs as he beat the guy, I think it’s p. fair to say that if it was motivated by delusion, it was motivated by a really homophobic delusion.
I am really worried people are going to use the suspect’s illness to downplay the role sexuality and hate plays in this case. I’ve already seen people all over being like “People use homophobic slurs allllll the tiiiiime on people who are not gay, so they are actually not homophobic, especially not when aimed at a gay man. ~It’s just part of the culture~.” I can already smell the protests of “Well, he was CRAZY and CRAZY people cannot possibly have or act on prejudice because what’s going on inside their head is just so CRAZY. So there is NO PREJUDICE here at all!!!”
It’s nasty all around.
Remember that trans woman who was beaten and they refused to call it a hate crime? What an outrage.
Terrifyingly, the biggest objection I see from everyday people towards the concept of “hate crimes” is: “That’s just the way things are.”
I mean, yeah, what a fucking un-reflective statement. I wish people who said it would sit down and think for three seconds about how statements like “that’s just the culture” or “the way things are” don’t actually say anything about whether or not crimes like this and that were motivated by hate. What it says is that hatred and mistreatment of minorities is so commonplace that it’s probably not worth pointing out.
And of course, I’ve already read a comment at the openfile article about how you can’t blame individual people for their prejudice because it’s the fault of ~society as a whole~. WOW OK A Y…………..
I hope this shit gets prosecuted as a hate crime. And I hope the extenuating circumstances opens up discussion again about how really honestly shitty and irresponsible the province’s mental health care programs are.
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