This scares me.
It scares me, it makes me feel alone, and it reveals how much misunderstanding and hate there is in the world.
Also, read the interview with his sister Kathy and with Derek Henkle, the gay rights activist.
"On February 19, 1999, Billy Jack Gaither, a thirty-nine-year-old gay man who worked at the Russell Athletics apparel company near Sylacauga, Alabama, was brutally beaten to death. His throat was cut, and his body was bludgeoned with an ax handle before being thrown on top of a pile of tires and set on fire. In the weeks following the killing, two men came forward to police as the killers: Steven Mullins and Charles Monroe Butler. Butler, the younger of the two, came forward to police first. He described the night of the murder in great detail: how he had never heard of Billy Jack Gaither prior to the night of the killing; how his friend Steve Mullins found him at a bar playing pool and asked him to take a ride into the woods with himself and Billy Jack; how Billy Jack started "talking queer stuff" that set off a violent reaction in Butler; and then how he stood by as Mullins beat Billy Jack to death. In June of 1999, Steven Mullins pled guilty to capital murder; Butler stood trial and was found guilty of the same charge by a jury. In August of 1999, both Mullins and Butler were sentenced to life in prison without parole."
PBS Frontline:: Billy Jack Gaither
posted by Patrick @ 9/17/2004 04:40:00 pm
1 Comments:
I suppose it was really the comments from Derek Henkle that really shocked me more. Hate-crimes I can comprehend, I can sort of 'get it'. What I really couldn't, and still can't fathom is how someone could be the victim of a hate-crime and know that the perpetrator of these crimes was not going to be officially punished, was not going to see justice. That was scary - to think that a teacher of all people might stand by and allow physical bullying to take place is abhorrent; teachers being the original bastions of civility and morality within society.
This wasn't the last of these types of incidents. Didn't you transfer to another school and run into some of the same problems?Yes. It was a real rough school. The school police officer told me that they would just cite someone for assault, which is the same as getting a parking ticket, because there was too much paperwork involved in taking him down to jail and arresting him. It was very clear that they were not willing to do anything; that even the law enforcement officials at that school were not willing to arrest someone who had just attacked me. . . . They did as little as possible. I later dealt with the D.A. and had those charges upgraded to a hate crime. The person who attacked me was the first person that I've ever heard of that has been convicted of a hate crime and never been arrested. Never been in handcuffs, never been in jail. . . . Then what happened?I got a very clear message that I wasn't safe . . . and that I probably wasn't going to be safe at any of the traditional schools. I realized that no one was going to step in and protect me. So I said, "I want to go back to the non-traditional school. At least I know that I'm not going to be beaten up every day. At least I know that people aren't going to spit on me. At least I know that."
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