Lowlights & Highlights: December 1, 2012

 An Alabama woman was beaten by her girlfriend's brother literally to a bloody pulp on Thanksgiving in what was an apparent hate crime. This is not the first time the man had assaulted her. If that were not bad enough, the Alabama official who was on the case said there was no reason to treat this as a hate crime. Seriously?

What makes this even sadder is that I am sure no one was surprised to hear this from an Alabama official. It is, after all, Alabama. The state at large (or for that matter the South in general) is not known for being LGBT-friendly. The state does not cover gender identification of sexual orientation in its hate crimes law (it actually DOES cover race, which is an honest shock to me).

The attacker is out on bond, which is galling. He has a history of beating this woman TWICE, and he gets let out. Nothing about this case makes sense. It is almost as if the "justice" system is going out of its way to act as though what happened here did not matter. My guess is that when he goes to trial, if he ends up convicted, he will end with a light sentence (think Dharun Ravi). I seriously hope that guess ends up wrong, but if I end up being correct, I will not be surprised in the least. Justice for LGBT people in places like this is illusive at best.

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If you have been on the Facebook page for this blog, you will have noticed I changed the avatar to an anti Salvation Army picture. I did the same thing on my personal page. A couple of people asked me why I am against the Salvation Army including one of my oldest friends. When they asked me this, I simply gave them a link to a blog post from earlier this week which gives an overview of the organizations homophobic stances and history. When my friend found out about this, she told me that she donates to them every year but she no longer would. Despite this friend of mine being a practicing Catholic, she still is very much for LGBT equality. She has lived primarily in New York City and was thrilled when the state legalized marriage equality.

I'm not setting out to tell people what to do. I am merely disseminating information of which some people may not be aware. In so doing, every once in a while, some tells me that this (whether explicitly or implicitly) that I am making at least some positive difference. That is pretty much the point of this whole blogging endeavor. When my friend let me know that she would no longer support this anti-gay organization, it let me know that getting the word out about such things is well worth the work and the effort. I could not help but smile.