Gay
is the New Black
The
Blacks
Emmett Louis Till (July
25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American boy who was murdered in
Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till
was from Chicago, Illinois, visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi, in
the Mississippi Delta region, when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the
married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Several nights later,
Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam arrived at Till's
great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him
and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and
disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound
(32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His body was
discovered and retrieved from the river three days later.
The
Gays
Matthew Wayne Shepard
(December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University
of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming in October 1998.
He was attacked on the night of October 6–7, and died at Poudre Valley Hospital
in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12 from severe head injuries.
The
Blacks
The fatal shooting of
Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman took place on the night of February 26,
2012, in Sanford, Florida, United States. Martin was a 17-year-old African
American high school student. George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old mixed-race
Hispanic,[Note 1] was the neighborhood watch coordinator for the gated
community where Martin was temporarily staying and where the shooting took
place.[4][5][6] Following an earlier call from Zimmerman, police arrived within
two minutes of a gunshot during an altercation in which Zimmerman fatally shot
Martin, who did not have any weapons. Zimmerman was taken into custody, treated
for head injuries, then questioned for five hours. The police chief said that
Zimmerman was released because there was no evidence to refute Zimmerman's
claim of having acted in self-defense, and that under Florida's Stand Your
Ground statute, the police were prohibited by law from making an arrest.[7] The
police chief also said that Zimmerman had had a right to defend himself with
lethal force.[8] As news of the case spread, thousands of protestors across the
country called for Zimmerman's arrest and a full investigation.[9] Six weeks
after the shooting, amid widespread, intense, and in some cases misleading
media coverage,[10][11] Zimmerman was charged with murder by a special
prosecutor appointed by Governor Rick Scott.[12][13]
The
Gays
During the trial, it
was widely reported that Shepard was targeted because he was gay; a Laramie
police officer testified at a pretrial hearing that the violence against
Shepard was due to how the attacker "[felt] about gays", per an
interview of the attacker's girlfriend who said she received that
explanation.[1] Shepard's murder brought national and international attention
to hate crime legislation at the state and federal levels.[2]
Suspected Al-Qaeda
gunmen on Thursday shot dead a Yemeni man because they believed he was a
homosexual, a security official told AFP.
“Armed Al-Qaeda suspects on a motorbike opened fire on 29-year-old Salem
Ahmed Hasan in a market in Huta,” capital of the southern province of Lahj, the
official said, adding the man died immediately.
He said the man was targeted because the attackers thought he was a
homosexual. Another four men have been
killed in similar attacks on supposedly gay men in Huta this year. The latest such attack was in July when
suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen shot and wounded a man only days after they killed another
in similar circumstances. Al-Qaeda in Yemen
is active mainly in the southern and eastern parts of the country. The army, also backed by US drone attacks,
managed to retake control of the country’s south, of which large swathes had
been seized by Al-Qaeda militants. Although
weakened, the terror network still carries out hit-and-run attacks against army
and police targets. During their control
of areas in southern Yemen, the Islamist militants imposed a strict version of
Islamic law on residents, executing or lashing those they accused of various
crimes. Those accused of theft had their hands severed.
The
hatred cycles back and forth throughout time and our media, but what has it
proven? When reading the essay Gaga’s
feminism it sparked an interest between my daily life of an EMU student
observing the “National coming out Day” currently reading the Black Automaton
by Douglas Kearney, learning about the death of Matthew Wayne Shepard. It sucks that so much time has gone by since African
American’s endure freedom along the war of gay rights and how people chose to
live their lives yet these tragic events appear inevitable. Either way it goes gay, straight, race, or
cultural backgrounds we are all humans and the violence needs to stop. Is death the only way reality of these
problems can reach mass media?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin
Weekend's assignment.
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