Two teens charged with gay boy beating

(Portage, Mich.) A 15-year-old Michigan boy says two other teenagers beat him because he is gay.

The boy says the 15- and 16-year-old males called him slurs as they struck him about 20 times in the head and face Aug. 13 in the parking lot of a Portage apartment complex.

The Kalamazoo Gazette reports the two teens were charged as juveniles with aggravated assault. The 16-year-old pleaded guilty to the charge Tuesday and will be sentenced in Kalamazoo County Circuit Court Family Division on Sept. 14.

Police say the suspects may have targeted the boy for his sexual orientation. But Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Fink says the suspects aren’t charged with a hate crime because the state’s ethnic-intimidation law doesn’t address sexual orientation.

http://www.365gay.com/news/two-teens-charged-with-gay-boy-beating/

who include the likes of Einstein it should be noted, in a thread about intolerance.

Charged as juveniles. Slap on the wrist, sealed records. These two little monsters will never have to pay for their hate. Yet the victim will pay forever.

20 times. Damn, I wish I had been there.

Punishment.

orientation"

....Oh, OK.

Geez, you'd think Michigan would be a little more forward thinking.

Two words: Grand Rapids. Hell, most of western Michigan is saturated with fundies, even my old hometown of Battle Creek. Kalamazoo is an island of some semblance of sanity (due to the university) but the religious right is a powerful force in that part of the state, and wields a LOT of influence. There is almost no liberal voice on the airwaves in west Michigan, the closest you get is Public Radio and that's been slanting rightward for over a decade. Every time I go back to see friends/family now it feels really strange, like I'm entering a parallel universe.

in "A Christmas Story" Where Ralphie finally snaps and bloodies the local bully's nose. Swearing his cute little head off the whole time.

he wouldn't give them free chips, and one of them ended up shot. In that thread the bad guy was the vendor, because the young people can change.

In this thread, the young people are evil and deserve punishment.

Two beatings, five perpetrators (one of them now dead) - half of the four remaining are bad, the other half practically victims themselves. I really don't understand this. Is the difference in judging the perpetrators based on the person they were beating?

Link to the other thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x249145

sick and sad. i hate homophobia. it just sets me in a rage.

:sarcasm: but it gets posted all the time here.

And as ridiculous as it is, and even thought this is at least nominally a progressive site (though that's a whole other topic of discussion in itself), it gets posted all the time here.

Our struggle for equality is not really important... since we can "hide" the part of our lives that makes people hate us. It's our fault... glad to see you're getting with the program.
:eyes:

it doesn't matter that i wasn't gay. There wasn't much way to deny being fat.


This is a common part of many children's school years and in my case the principal endorsed and encouraged the beatings of outsiders.

in this country.

gay, straight, black, or white. The vast majority of hate crimes are racially based.


Anyway, teenage violence is rampant in this country and needs to be stopped. Day in and day out in the inner cities--Chicago, Newark, Detroit, Atlanta, Los Angeles----young teenagers (mostly black boys) are dying for nothing.

...most of those crimes are reported as intimidation. When you look at the number of hate crimes that result in the death of the victim you will find the gay community surges way ahead. Factor this with the states that don't classify violence against gays as a hate crime (like the OP) and the picture that emerges is rather disturbing.

Here are the 2007 statistics on hate crimes...
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/table_04.htm