Showing posts with label homophobia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homophobia. Show all posts

Monday, March 14, 2016

Why I'm voting for Bernie Sanders in the New York primary

I've been trying to figure out who to vote for in the New York primary, which is coming up on April 19. I had been leaning toward Hillary Clinton, but her recent statement on the supposed contribution the Reagans made to fighting AIDS in the 1980s had changed my mind. I'm going to vote for Bernie Sanders.

A couple of days ago, Hillary Clinton said this about Nancy Reagan, who has just died:
It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan - in particular Mrs. Reagan - we started a national conversation. When before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that too is something that I really appreciate with her very effective, low key advocacy but it penetrated the public conscious and people began to say, "Hey, we have to do something about this too."
This statement is a lie. Both Reagans did their best to ignore HIV/AIDS, and thousands of people in the US, mostly gay men, died while Reagan was president and did nothing to try to stop the epidemic.
Though the World Health Organization was holding meetings about AIDS by 1983, the White House offered little support for awareness of the epidemic. Reagan, who first took office in 1981, didn’t publicly address AIDS until well into his second term. According to ABC, more than 20,000 Americans had died from the disease by the time he first spoke about it....
The Reagans were eventually swayed to react to AIDS by the death of a close friend. Rock Hudson, at the peak of his career, was Brad Pitt-level famous — and beloved by women internationally. He was also gay, but famous at a time when being publicly gay could ruin a successful career (even if you weren't a star) so he stayed silent about his sexuality. In the mid '80, however, he developed AIDS, becoming one of the most prominent American figures to suffer from the disease, and bringing it to the forefront of the nation’s news cycle. 
As his condition deteriorated, Hudson, in France at the time, reached out for help from the White House in getting treatment from a specific French doctor and hospital. The first lady rebuffed him, saying it would be inappropriate to offer such a favor for Hudson and “appear to favor personal friends” and felt, instead, it was a matter the United States Embassy in Paris should address. Hudson died from the disease only a few months later.
For several years, whenever the issue of AIDS was raised at press briefings in the White House, the typical answer was homophobic jokes and laughter.

Clinton has apologized for her ahistorical lie (Why on earth did she say it? Is she really so ignorant that she didn't know how the Reagan administration reacted to the AIDS epidemic?), first in a short statement and then in a longer essay published on Medium.

Her first statement, via Twitter:

In her essay in Medium, she wrote, "To be clear, the Reagans did not start a national conversation about HIV and AIDS. That distinction belongs to generations of brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, along with straight allies, who started not just a conversation but a movement that continues to this day."

Notice that she was still unable to say the truth - that President and Nancy Reagan obstructed the treatment of AIDS and research into AIDS and thereby led to the deaths of thousands of people in the US. 

Why does this matter to me personally?

In the early 1980s I was working for a typesetting and graphics company in Cambridge, Mass., owned by a gay man named David Stryker, called Xanadu Graphics. For several years he had typeset Gay Community News (the weekly gay and lesbian newspaper in Boston), and then they started doing it in-house, while he ran his own business. When I worked for him we typeset a wide range of publications, including books for Beacon Press, a weekly newsletter about pollution and environmental issues, the newsletter for Career Services (or whatever it was called at the time) for Harvard University, a Christian newsletter (they clearly didn't know David Stryker was gay), a publication on Islamic art also from Harvard, and many other things. 

David Stryker got AIDS, and died of it, very early in the epidemic - on November 18, 1984. (I found his date of death on a list of "our faerie ancestors" published by http://www.radfae.org). I knew that he was sick and that he died, but our new boss didn't tell us (at least he didn't tell me) that Dave had died of AIDS - I was furious when I finally found out. 

Unlike a lot of other people I knew about AIDS pretty early on because GCN covered it extensively from the beginning, back when people talked about Kaposi's Sarcoma as the symptom and called it Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disorder (link is to a 1982 article in the New York Times, published before it was known how HIV/AIDS is spread).

Last year I started trying to get more information about Stryker online, but I wasn't able to find very much, and what I did find was fairly derogatory, so I'm not going to reproduce it here. But Dave Stryker was very important for the gay liberation movement in Boston in the 1970s and early 1980s. He got GCN on its feet as a real typeset newspaper, not simply mimeographed sheets. He was also the typesetter for Fag Rag, a radical gay men's journal. More people should know about his work.

Hillary Clinton's little billet-doux to Nancy Reagan erased David Stryker's life and death, and the lives and deaths of so many gay men, injection drug users, and people of color who suffered from HIV/AIDS in those years. It was despicable, and her apology is no apology - it continues the same deception as her original statement.

If she ends up getting nominated by the Democrats I'll vote for her in the general election, because she's better than any of the Republicans running for president - the whole pack of pathetic, gay-hating, racist, hypocritical Bible-thumpers who exploit the real suffering of so many Americans - but I'd much prefer a candidate with a spine who really does stand up for human rights and working people.


Monday, May 27, 2013

Moscow's Gay-Bashing Ritual

When will the "Pinkwashing and Homonationalism" crowd get around to condemning the beatings and arrests of gay activists in Russia simply for trying to have a demonstration? 

Moscow's Gay-Bashing Ritual (New York Times)
A concerted effort by Moscow activists to secure a legal permit for an L.G.B.T. pride parade resulted, after several years, in a 2010 European Court on Human Rights ruling that directed the city authorities to allow the event to be held. Though Russia usually complies with E.C.H.R. decisions, this time the Moscow City Court responded by banning gay pride events for the next 100 years. That, and the pending legislation against so-called propaganda of homosexuality — passed in a number of Russian municipalities and likely to face a final vote in the national Parliament as soon as this week — have pushed L.G.B.T. issues to the foreground of Russian politics and L.G.B.T. organizing deep underground.  
Earlier in the day, a young woman stood up in front of Parliament with a poster and was attacked by a self-identified Orthodox believer before she had a chance to turn the poster to face the onlookers; she was then detained by the police. Then another woman unfurled a poster with the words “Love Is Stronger Than Hate” and had barely had time to say, “This is a legal one-person picket to protest the homophobic laws” before two policemen grabbed her and dragged her away. In all, at least 25 people were detained by the police in the early afternoon. Because what they had been doing was legal, they were eventually released without charge — but not before the 5 p.m. rally was over.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Israeli Conservative Movement finally approves ordination of gay rabbis

Finally - the Israeli Conservative Movement approves ordination of gay rabbis
Israel's Masorti (Conservative) Movement decided to approve the ordination of homosexual rabbis, in a dramatic vote on Thursday. The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, affiliated with the movement, will admit gay and lesbian students for training as spiritual leaders as of the upcoming school year.

In doing so the Israeli Conservative Movement is joining the American branch of the movement, whose rabbinical seminaries have been admitting gay students for some years.

The question whether or not to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis has been rattling the Conservative Movement in Israel and the U.S. for the past decade. Unlike the Reform movement that took to the question with ease, deciding firmly on the acceptance of gay rabbis. The Conservative Movement, whose rabbis see themselves bound to Jewish law, has been caught up in heated debate over the subject.

Years of discussion led to two contradictory religious rulings in 2006, one requiring the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis and another banning any such act. The two rabbinical seminaries affiliated with the movement in the U.S. move the ruling allowing the ordination, while the seminaries in Jerusalem and Buenos Aires adopted the ban on ordination. The issue nearly caused a rift in the movement.

The debate continued to wage at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, with two female rabbis quitting the institute, one in opposition to the ordination of gay rabbis; the other over the hesitation shown by the organization in accepting gay and lesbian students into its ranks.
I don't know who the rabbi was who quit over the hesitation of Schechter to ordain openly gay students, but I think the rabbi who resigned was Einat Ramon, who opposed the ordination of openly gay and lesbian students, and who even thought that there was no place for gay and lesbian Jews in the Masorti movement in Israel.
On Thursday, the institute’s general council held another vote on the subject. Out of the 18 rabbis that attended, all voted to admit homosexual students, with one rabbi abstaining.

Rabbi Mauricio Balter, President of the Israeli Conservative Movement Rabbinical Assembly expressed his support of the move.

“I see it as a very important development in Jewish law,” Rabbi Balter told Haaretz, adding: “It is the right thing to do. We were all made in the image of God, and as such we are all made equal. For me this is a very important value. I always said we should admit gay and lesbians into our ranks.”

“I’m glad we had the vote and that it went the way it did,” Rabbi Balter continued. “The decision to hold a vote was correct as can be seen by the fact that there wasn’t a single dissenting vote,” he said....

People working at the seminary admitted that over the years, members of the American Conservative Movement have been applying pressure to accept gay and lesbian students, as the American seminaries have been doing for some years now.

The institute also stressed that the decision was mostly a formality since it had never checked for the sexual orientation of its applicants.
When Einat Ramon was dean of the rabbinical school, I have my doubts that Schechter didn't check people's sexual orientation. Her opposition to the ordination of gay and lesbian students was loud and clear. When she was dean, in 2007, she wrote in an article in the Washington Jewish Week (April 12, 2007):
As dean of the Schechter (Masorti) Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem, I recently announced my decision to accept only students who believe in the importance of the intimate relationship between a man and a woman in the confines of the Jewish institution of marriage and to serve, to the best of their ability, as role models in that regard.
Ynet also reports about the policy statement she made in March, 2007, forbidding the ordination of openly gay students:
Rabbi Einat Ramon, Dean of the Conservative Movement's Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem, announced that there will be no change in the admissions policy of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in response to a recent decision by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) of the Rabbinical Assembly in New York that would permit the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian rabbis and pave the way for the sanctification of same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The CJLS, the Conservative Movement's North American halachic authority, voted to endorse two proposals on this issue in December 2006: The decision that ordination of practicing gay and lesbian rabbis is not permitted by Jewish Law (Rabbi Joel Roth,), and the decision permitting the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian rabbis (Rabbi Elliot Dorff and two colleagues).

Since Conservative Judaism is a pluralistic movement, when the CJLS votes to approve two conflicting opinions in this way, each local rabbi is authorized to choose which opinion to follow.

Although the Israel branch of the Conservative Movement has long asserted its independence in matters of Jewish Law, Rabbi Ramon felt that in light of the discussions in North America generated by the split CJLS decision, it was important to clarify the policy of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary.

In doing so, she was acting on the authority vested in her by the school's Executive Committee, chaired by Rabbi Hanan Alexander, Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at the University of Haifa. In upholding the status quo, Ramon is in agreement with Rabbi Roth's opinion, which was also endorsed by Rabbi David Golinkin, President and Professor of Jewish Law at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

In a position paper that Rabbi Ramon distributed to the Executive Committee, she called attention to the historic centrality of heterosexual marriage in Jewish life.

“Jewish theology regards the union between a man a woman who are sexually and emotionally different from one another as a complementary covenant of friendship and intimacy, which forms the basis for procreation and childrearing. This is why Jewish law has so fervently opposed sexual relations between members of the same sex”, she explained, “and why the heterosexual family has played such a vital role throughout the ages in the transmission of Jewish values and the survival of the Jewish people.”

"I have great respect for Conservative rabbis who have chosen to follow a different opinion," said Rabbi Ramon, "and for the Reform Movement in Judaism which has long admitted candidates to its rabbinical schools who are practicing gays and lesbians or who favor same-sex commitment ceremonies. However, Jewish Law has traditionally prohibited homosexuality and only sanctifies sexual relations between members of the opposite sex."
I wonder if Rabbi Golinkin (with whom I studied Talmud in the late 1980s at Midreshet Yerushalayim, housed at Schechter) has changed his mind, or if he was the one person who voted to abstain in the vote that just happened this last Thursday.

In an article in the Forward, December 7, 2009, "Uncertain Territory: Conservative Movement's Pioneering Gay Rabbinical Students Tread Carefully in Israel," two students from JTS are quoted about their nervousness at having to go to Schechter for their third year of rabbinical studies.
Chesir-Teran, a former attorney who entered the seminary at the age of 36, recalled one meeting that he, Weininger and Nevins had in New York with Rabbi Einat Ramon, then dean of Machon Schechter’s Rabbinical School. Upon being assured gay students would be treated equally when they came to Schechter, Chesir-Teran said he told Ramon, “I’m assuming that means we’re going to be allowed to lead services and read from the Torah like everyone else,” Her answer, he recalled, was, “I don’t know. I have to get back to you.”

Ramon later confirmed in an email to Nevins that the gay students would, indeed, be allowed to do so. But the equivocation, said Chesir-Teran, was another “red flag” that made him leery about going there.

Ramon’s public pronouncements against gay ordination also stoked the two students’ concerns. In a Washington Jewish Week opinion piece shortly after the committee’s historic vote, Ramon, explaining her opposition to the change, avowed, “Judaism has always been clear and unambivalent toward the centrality of the heterosexual family.” And in a September 2007 policy statement, Ramon wrote, “If we permit [gay marriage and ordination of gay rabbis], we should, in all intellectual fairness, permit also all other forms of prohibited sexual activity and allow the marriage of brothers to their sisters.”

Ramon, who still teaches at Schechter, left her position as dean this past September. And though no one claims the move was connected to her pronouncements on gay ordination, supporters of the historic change say Ramon’s departure has eased the atmosphere for gay and lesbian students at Schechter considerably.

Ramon declined to comment for this article. “I have written and said what I had to say,” she told the Forward.

Nevertheless, during her tenure, the relationship between the two schools was sometimes strained. For example, Schechter put its foot down in March 2008, when several JTS students studying there sought to mark the one-year anniversary of the change in JTS’s admissions policy. The students invited Yonatan Gher, then the incoming director of the gay community center Jerusalem Open House, to speak about his experience as a gay man in the Israeli Conservative movement. But after a dispute with Ramon and others in the administration, the students were forced to hold the event off campus.

Nevins cringed when asked about this event. “That was an incident where no one was at their best,” he acknowledged. “It was a very painful moment.”
Ynet wrote about the March 2008 incident:
A group of 10 visiting American rabbinical students studying at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies (SIJS) in Jerusalem asked to hold a special event marking the one-year anniversary of the groundbreaking decision by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement's flagship rabbinic school in New York, to accept gay and lesbian rabbinical and cantorial students.

Israeli students at the school objected, however, noting that holding such an event would contradict a halachic ruling stipulated by the Conservative movement in Israel. Rabbi Dr. Einat Ramon, dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, met with the students and asked that the event also be sensitive to the Israeli Conservative movement’s point of view.

The American students refused, however, and ultimately a decision was reached to hold the event outside the school. Ramon assured the students that no other school activities would take place at the same time.

The anniversary ceremony eventually took place last Wednesday at the Valley of Rehavya in Jerusalem, and included not only the American students but some of their Israeli counterparts as well. Also attending the event were the director-general of the Jerusalem Open House For Pride and Tolerance, and member of Kehillat Tiferet Shalom, affiliated with the Masorti movement, Yonatan Gher, who spoke about the unique problems faced by Conservative gays and lesbians.

Gher viewed the Schechter’s Institute’s insistence in presenting both the viewpoints of the American and Israeli contingents of the conservative movement during the ceremony as utterly preposterous. “`Would one invite the (vehemently anti-Zionist) Satmar Hasidism to a ceremony marking Israel’s 60th anniversary?” he mused.

Some, however, harbor a far more positive view of the compromise offered by the institute.

“The Schechter Institute, its leadership and most of its student body adamantly object, purely from a halachic point of view, to the ordination of gays and lesbians,” said Dubi Hayun, one of the teachers at the school. “The American students' request is thus utterly disrespectful. It is tantamount to coming to a vegetarian’s home and eating a big, fat steak.”

Hayun also stated that he has nothing against gays and lesbians, and objects to their ordination purely from a halachic point of view. “Gays should, and must, receive equal rights from the state, it is wrong not to do so. However, one cannot circumvent halacha, or Jewish law, as painful as that decision may be.”

The SIJS noted put out a press release stating that “the institute decided to grant equal forum to the perspectives prevalent within the Conservative movement in the true spirit of the school, and our Jewish sages who respected each other’s rulings and opinions in spite of conflicts and disagreements.

"The Schechter Institute wants to provide a warm and welcoming environment for all of its students, but also adheres to the moral-halachic principle of 'a person should not deviate from the set ways of a place because of argument' (Mishna Pesachim 4:1). This means that one is obligated to respect the religious customs of a place that hosts him in order to preserve peace and harmony.”

Although Schechter has now voted to ordain gay students, I wonder if there will still be problems with faculty members or fellow students who still oppose it. (Although I suppose the same issue might have arisen at the other rabbinical schools that have begun to admit gay students - JTS and the Ziegler School in Los Angeles).

In any case - Kol ha-Kavod!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Gay men are being brutally murdered in Iraq

This is an incredibly disturbing article about the killings of gay men in Iraq ('Emo' Killings Raise Alarms in Iraq):
BAGHDAD (AP) — Young people who identify themselves as so-called Emos are being brutally killed at an alarming rate in Iraq, where militias have distributed hit lists of victims and security forces say they are unable to stop crimes against the subculture that is widely perceived in Iraq as being gay.

Officials and human rights groups estimated as many as 58 Iraqis who are either gay or believed to be gay have been killed in the last six weeks alone — forecasting what experts fear is a return to the rampant hate crimes against homosexuals in 2009. This year, eyewitnesses and human rights groups say some of the victims have been bludgeoned to death by militiamen smashing in their skulls with heavy cement blocks.
This is in stark contrast with the lives of gay and lesbian people in Israel, which are steadily getting better. There is certainly homophobia here in Israel, but you can live openly in a same-sex relationship, raise your children, and be accepted by almost everyone you meet. There are gay members of Knesset and local city councils. You can enlist in the IDF without being harassed.

And to think that some people believe that to point out this stark difference between Israel and any Arab country is "pinkwashing"!

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Fascists Still Want to Kill Jews - Al Qaeda bomb plot

As Shiraz Socialist says, Fascists still want to kill Jews. The Al Qaeda plot to bomb two synagogues in Chicago is unnerving - although fortunately only that, since the bombs were found on cargo planes a long way away from Chicago.

One of the targeted synagogues is a GLBT synagogue, Congregation Or Chadash. It's certainly not the biggest or most prominent synagogue in Chicago, so I wonder how or why it was picked. Did someone in Al Qaeda in Yemen used to live in Chicago? (Anwar al-Awlaki, who is one of the leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen, is an American and used to live in the Washington area; his side-kick is Samir Khan who is also an American).

Some bizarre articles have come out about this in the Jewish press online already. Lee Smith published an odd one in Tablet whose point I really cannot figure out (it seems to be blaming President Obama for doing something bad - but since all the president has done is to work as hard as possible against this threat, I don't understand what he's done wrong). And the Yeshiva World website headlined their story "Bomb was addressed to Chicago 'Toeiva Synagogue.'" This is an ultra-Orthodox website that apparently cannot bring itself to utter the word "gay." (The word "toeiva" means "abomination"). Disgusting.

Friday, October 22, 2010

It Gets Better

Ithaca College participated in the "It Gets Better" campaign initiated by Dan Savage, and I was one of the people who volunteered to appear in the Youtube video. The Trevor Project works against the epidemic of suicides by young LGBT people, which is much higher than among heterosexual youth. I participated in the project because of a series of recent suicides, some of them provoked by anti-gay bullying, and also because of the horrible gay-bashing hate crime that just occurred in New York City, where a gang called the "Latin King Goonies" set upon and tortured three gay men.



Hillary Clinton and President Obama have also just made videos for the "It Gets Better" campaign: ClintonObama - It Gets Better.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Carl Paladino: our homophobic gubernatorial candidate

Carl Paladino, the rich nutcase who is running on the Republican ticket for governor in New York, just blasted forth some more hate speech - this time about gay people. He was addressing an Orthodox Jewish audience at Congregation Shaarei Chaim in Brooklyn (source: Paladino Attacks Gays in Brooklyn Speech).
“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address.
And then, to applause at Congregation Shaarei Chaim, he said: “I didn’t march in the gay parade this year — the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that’s not the example we should be showing our children.” Newsday.com reported that Mr. Paladino’s prepared text had included the sentence: “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual.” But Mr. Paladino omitted the sentence in his speech.
One of the rabbis accompanying Paladino is named Yechezkel Roth, who is quoted on the "Jews Against Zionism" site with virulently anti-Zionist remarks (in Hebrew) on this page: Jews Against Zionism. Rabbi Roth also participated in a demonstration this summer in New York against the building of a new emergency room for the hospital in Ashkelon (on the pretext that it was being built on a Jewish graveyard from late antiquity, which it isn't - the archaeological remains clearly show it was a non-Jewish cemetery because a pagan temple was also found there). See VosIzNeias for a photo of him at the demonstration: Anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim Protest.

Is this a man that Carl Paladino really wants to be associated with? It certainly won't endear him to the New York Jewish community, which is mostly quite Zionist.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Another gay teenager commits suicide

When is the hatred going to end?

Pam's House Blend: Oklahoma: 19-year-old commits suicide after week of 'toxic' comments

We have a long way to go

BBC News - Serb anti-gay protesters attack political party offices
The BBC's Mark Lowen: "It has got very nasty"
Serbian police have clashed with protesters trying to disrupt a Gay Pride parade in the capital, Belgrade.Police used tear gas against the rioters, who threw petrol bombs and stones at armed officers and tried to break through a security cordon. A garage attached to the headquarters of the ruling Democratic Party was briefly set on fire, and at least one shot was fired at the building. At least 50 people were injured, most reported to be police officers. A number of people were arrested.
This was the first Gay Pride parade in Serbia since a march in 2001 was broken up in violent clashes provoked by far-right extremists. While the Gay Pride parade was moving though the city, several hundred protesters began chanting at those taking part as they tried to get close to the march.
"The hunt has begun," the AFP news agency reported them as saying. "Death to homosexuals." Reports told of gangs of skinheads roaming the streets, throwing petrol bombs and setting off firecrackers as police battled to hold them back.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Hate Crimes - FBI report for 2008

The annual FBI report on hate crimes for 2008 has been posted to the FBI website, and once again it is interesting to see what the most common hate crimes were (among those reported to law enforcement agencies, which certainly doesn't include all hate crimes committed in the U.S. in 2008).

The FBI reports:

Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:
  • 51.3 percent were racially motivated.
  • 19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias.
  • 16.7 percent stemmed from sexual-orientation bias.
  • 11.5 percent resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias.
  • 1.0 percent were motivated by disability bias.
Of hate crimes motivated by race (total 4,704), 3,413 were motivated by anti-Black prejudice (72.5% of the total). This means that 37% of all hate crimes reported were motivated by anti-Black prejudice. The percentage of the American population which is African-American is about 12%.

Hate crimes motivated by bias against people of a particular religious group break down as follows:
There were 1,606 hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008. A breakdown of these offenses shows:
  • 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.
  • 13.2 percent were anti-other religion.
  • 7.7 percent were anti-Islamic.
  • 4.7 percent were anti-Catholic.
  • 4.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
  • 3.7 percent were anti-Protestant.
  • 0.9 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.
Therefore, 12.8% of all hate crimes were motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice and 1.5% of all hate crimes were motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice. I wonder what the "other religion" category includes. Jews are about 2% of the American population, while Muslims are less than that (when I looked this up a couple of years ago, the best figure I could come up with was about 2 million Muslims in the U.S. - claims that there are up to 6 million Muslims in the U.S. do not seem supportable by the evidence).

If we break down the statistics by type of crime, it's also interesting. Fortunately, in 2008, there were no reported murders on the basis of religion, and one rape.

For the remaining crimes against persons, these are the statistics:

Aggravated assault - total crimes 47
• anti-Jewish: 25 (53%)
• anti-Catholic: 1 (2.1%)
• anti-Protestant: 3 (6.3%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (10.6%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 1 (2.1%)
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Simple assault - total crimes 114
• anti-Jewish:58 (50.8%)
• anti-Catholic: 3 (2.6%)
• anti-Protestant: 3 (2.6%)
• anti-Islamic: 30 (26%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 1
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Intimidation - total crimes 311
• anti-Jewish: 201 (64.6%)
• anti-Catholic: 3
• anti-Protestant: 1
• anti-Islamic: 46 (14.7%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Statistics for crimes against property:

Lumping together robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft - total crimes 83
• anti-Jewish: 23 (27%)
• anti-Catholic: 12 (14%)
• anti-Protestant: 8 (9.6%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (6%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 5 (6%)
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Arson - total crimes 13
• anti-Jewish: 4 (30.7%)
• anti-Catholic: 0
• anti-Protestant: 2 (15%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (38%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Destruction/damage/vandalism - total crimes 1029
• anti-Jewish: 742 (72%)
• anti-Catholic: 0
• anti-Protestant: 2 (15%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (38%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Even though, according to polls, there is more prejudice against Muslims in American society (for example, the percentage of Americans who would not vote for a Muslim for President is far higher than the percentage who would not vote for a Jew), there are more actual crimes committed against Jews based on anti-Jewish prejudice.

The total number of victims of hate crimes in 2008 were reported as 9,683 (single-bias incidents). They included (among others):
3,596 Blacks (37%)
1,145 Jews (11.8%)
1,672 gay men, lesbians, or bisexuals (17.2%)
792 Hispanics (8%)

This means, just as I said in 2007, "From these statistics, we can see that the hatreds rampant in the United States are really the old tried and true ones - anti-black racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments."

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Nir Katz and Liz Trobishi buried today

Gay center shooting victim laid to rest.
Nir Katz, one of the two people killed during Saturday night's shooting attack at a gay and lesbian youth center in Tel Aviv, was laid to rest in Modi'in on Sunday....

Relatives and friends, as well as representatives of various gay organizations and Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel all arrived at the cemetery to pay their last respects to Nir.

His mother Ayala said during the service, "Nir always had a smile on his face; and endless love for every living creature. He always had respect for himself, his life and those around him."

Nir's father, Rami, was killed in the first Tze'elim Disaster in 1990, in which five soldiers were killed by a shell during training, when Nir was only seven years old. His mother, Ayala remarried, raising Nir and his other five siblings.
I just heard on the radio that the second victim Liz Trobishi was also laid to rest today. Some memories of her from her friends:
Friends and relatives flocked until the early hours of Sunday morning to the home of Liz Trobishi, 16, who was killed Saturday night in a shooting attack at a Tel Aviv gay center.

As they struggled to digest the news, the mourners told of a happy girl who loved to write poetry....

Trobishi's friends said she participated regularly in activities held by the gay youth organization Igy, even though she herself was not a lesbian.

"Although I am not a part of the Igy community I really love being with them," the 16-year-old wrote on the youth organization's online forum a few months ago.

"I connected with a lot of people, met a lot of nice people and am not sorry for any moment," she added.

According to her friends, whenever somebody would announce online that they had come out of the closet, Trobishi would post a message of support on the forum.

"I am so happy to know it went well," she wrote to one of her friends....

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar attended her funeral, and told the mourners that it was hard to believe there could be such evil as that which cut short Trobishi's life.

"I have to say that I felt yesterday and I feel today shame for a society that is turning into a violent, cruel, inhumane society. Week after week, we hear and read about things that our brains cannot process, and I really hope that together we can create in the future a better society and protect our children."

Trobishi is survived by her parents and three brothers.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

2006 Hate Crime Statistics

The FBI has released the report on 2006 Hate Crime Statistics, and it is very interesting to examine those hate crimes based on the religious identity of the victim. Of the 9080 hate crimes, 1597 were motivated by religion, and of those 1027 were anti-Jewish (64% of crimes based on religion of victim; 11% of total hate crimes). 191 were anti-Muslim (11%; 2% of total hate crimes).

Specific crimes against persons:

aggravated assault
anti-Jewish: 22
anti-Muslim: 24

simple assault
anti-Jewish: 58
anti-Muslim: 30

intimidation
anti-Jewish: 244
anti-Muslim: 79

Specific crimes against property:

robbery
anti-Jewish: 1
anti-Muslim: 1

larceny-theft
anti-Jewish: 13
anti-Muslim: 0

destruction/damage/vandalism
anti-Jewish: 672
anti-Muslim: 51

Thus, in the most serious category of crimes against persons (aggravated assault), the number of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim offenses is almost identical, but in all other categories, especially intimidation and destruction/damage/vandalism, the number of incidents directed against Jews is far larger. It strikes me that these figures belie the claim that Islamophobia is a much greater danger than anti-semitism in the United States. If that were true, it would mean that far more Muslims than Jews would be victims of hate crimes.

Of all groups in the American population, blacks are the group with the highest number of hate crimes against them: 3136 (34%), then whites (1008; 11%), then Jews (11%), then gay men (881; 10%), and then Hispanics (770; 8%). From these statistics, we can see that the hatreds rampant in the United States are really the old tried and true ones - anti-black racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Update:

I was just looking again at the FBI statistics - they are by no means complete, because some cities and states have no reporting of hate crimes. Look, for example, at the state of Alabama. There is only one hate crime reported for the entire state for 2006. For comparison, compare the reporting for New Jersey: a total of 759 hate crimes. There are no statistics whatsoever for Mississippi, for another example. According to the FBI website, however, the agencies reporting on hate crimes in their jurisdictions represent 85% of the U.S. population (255 million people).