On June 9, members of Springfield’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community and their allies gathered on the steps of City Hall with city officials. They were there for a flag-raising ceremony marking the return of Pride Week in the city.
Almost a month later, many of those same people gathered again, this time for a more somber purpose: to protest violence against LGBT people.
The July 5 stand-out at Barrows Park, organized by the Stop the Hate and Homophobia Coalition, was inspired by the vicious beating of a gay man on June 28. The 30-year-old man, who has not been publicly identified, allegedly was attacked by a group of teens as he walked past Barrows Park. He reported that the teens used homophobic slurs during the attack, with one saying, “That’s what we do to faggots.”
Police later arrested nine people between the ages of 12 and 19; they were charged with civil rights violations and unarmed robbery (for taking the man’s MP3 player).
The Stop the Hate and Homophobia Coalition formed earlier this year in response to the arrival in Springfield of Scott Lively, an evangelical minister infamous for traveling in 2009 to Uganda to give talks about efforts to outlaw homosexuality in that country, which included a bill that would make it a crime punishable by death. According to organizers, “The coalition deplores hateful messages and actions, and calls for community education about the impact of homophobia on our communities, as well as calling for community leaders, neighbors, co-workers, family members, etc. to speak out against homophobia whenever it is perpetrated.”
Holly Richardson, an organizer with the youth group Out Now and with Arise for Social Justice, said the June 28 incident presents an opportunity to consider anti-gay violence within a larger community context. “I believe it’s important to address homophobic violence (and oppression, in general) with a root-cause analysis, starting with asking ourselves what would cause a group of young people to act in such a way toward an openly gay man?” she said in an announcement of last week’s rally.
Ironically, the nine people charged in the assault are the contemporaries of the gay young people involved with Out Now. While conventional wisdom—backed by national polling—holds that younger people are more accepting of homosexuality, the homophobic nature of the Springfield attack makes it clear that hatred and intolerance are not becoming extinct fast enough. That point was also underscored by the 2009 suicide of Carl Walker-Hoover, the 11-year-old Springfield boy who killed himself after allegedly being bullied by classmates who used anti-gay taunts.
The Barrows Park attack, Out Now’s Michael Hall said in the announcement, “just really reminded me of how one incident like this, that is motivated by the hating of gay people, can leave us feeling afraid all over again. I just really believe there needs to be institutional education/curriculum that focuses on LGBTQ people, at every level of the public school system, for starters.”
