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Of the many comments on the post, Burn Their Churches to the Ground, commenter Tom gave us an interesting post today. He posted a litany of crimes committed against GLBT people and said, quote, “here is a list of murders on gay people by people of the “christian” faith. I challenge anyone to compile a similar list of gay people killing straight people for coming on to them.” His argument is that these “hate” crimes were all committed by people claiming Christian faith as the basis for killing gays and lesbians. Of course, I’ve done some studying. What I’ve found may (or may not) surprise you. I’m going to answer each one in turn, starting with the first six.

The Upstairs Lounge–on June 24, 1973, 29 people were found dead and numerous others were seriously injured by a fire at a gay bar in the French Quarter in New Orleans. The cause of the fire was officially undetermined; it is known that the fire started in the wooden stairwell that led to the bar. The taxi buzzer sounded, and when the inner door was opened the near-dying fire exploded in a backdraft, trapping more than 60 people inside. Three injured victims died in the hospital in the days that followed, leaving a total of 32 fatalities. Even though some gay bloggers–all of them too young to really know what happened and unwilling to do the research–are now claiming that a firebomb was thrown by an anti-gay bigot, more level-headed gay columnists have admitted the truth that a patron of the bar who’d gotten drunk and been thrown out earlier that night had come back to start the fire and later bragged about doing it before committing suicide. The most that can be claimed is that the New Orleans police and fire departments showed a callous lack of concern by leaving the corpse of Rev. Bill Larson half out a window for two days while they investigated the crime. Verdict: HYSTERIA.

Harvey Milk–on November 27, 1978, San Francisco city supervisor Dan White loaded his old police revolver, dumped 10 extra rounds into his jacket pocket, and went to City Hall to confront mayor George Moscone about his pending termination. He had a friend drive him to City Hall, climbed through a window to avoid metal detectors, and confronted Moscone in his office. He demanded to know why Moscone had appointed Don Horanzy to his position, and when Moscone refused to cave in to pleas to allow him to keep his job, White pulled his revolver and shot him twice in the abdomen, then twice more in the head. He re-loaded his weapon and headed for fellow supervisor Harvey Milk’s office. He confronted Milk about the very vocal charge he made to have Horanzy appointed in his place, and when Milk said, “too bad,” White shot him three times in the abdomen, once in the back, and twice in the head. After his parole due to his diminished capacity defense (the legendary “twinkie defense”), White admitted to a police coworker that he’d also marked Carol Ruth Silver and Willie Brown, also supervisors, for death that day. No claims of homophobia were made, and Christianity never came into play. White murdered the mayor and his coworker because he was about to lose his job. Verdict: HYSTERIA.

Terry Knudsen–little is known about this crime.  Many searches turned up only the information that he was beaten to death on June 5, 1979 by three men in the Loring Park area of Minneapolis.  A phone call to the Minneapolis police department didn’t turn up any definitive copy of a report, though if I want to fly out there and look it up myself I’m welcome to.  Verdict: UNDETERMINED, though due to a remarkable lack of evidence at least partially HYSTERIA.

Declan Flynn–this one is an enigma to the gay community at large, because the details are difficult to find.  The most you’ll find on gay hate crimes websites is one simple phrase: “Decan Flynn (they can’t even spell his name right), beaten to death in 1983.”  Actually, it happened on September 10, 1982.  Five teenage thugs in Fairview Park in Dublin, Ireland–two of them members of the Irish Aer Corps–deliberately went to the park to drink cider (yes, it is a beer) and go “queer bashing.”  At the time, this was popular among violent teenage punks in Ireland and Great Britain.  It was part of the culture then; homosexuality has only been officially legal there for around fifteen years.  The teens later told the gardai (Irish police) that they’d done it, and said that it was because Flynn had come onto one of the boys by grabbing his crotch (you also have to remember, this park was and still is a popular place for gay people to find casual sex).  The same group of boys admitted to gardai that they’d beaten at least twenty gay men in the same park.  The teens were given suspended sentences, and while some of their immediate family and neighbors were thrilled, the public outcry was more intense than expected.  Today, nobody knows what’s come of the five teens who committed the crime; they are believed to be living in relative secrecy.  As it was a hate crime, not one of the thugs, who all had previous criminal records for violence and theft, claimed they killed the man because of their faith or because they thought God told them to do so.  Verdict: both TRUTH and HYSTERIA.

James Zappalorti–on January 22, 1990, Vietnam Veteran Zappalorti invited two acquaintances over for dinner at a small house he’d built on the edge of his family’s property on Staten Island.  Once they arrived, 20-year-old Michael Taylor and 26-year-old Philip Sarlo told Zappalorti to hand over his wallet; he was being robbed.  Zappalorti tossed his wallet out into the yard to get the men to leave.  Instead, they beat and stabbed him to death with a large hunting knife.  When cornered by detectives, Taylor attempted to claim animosity towards homosexuals, but Sarlo admitted they’d talked about robbing Zappalorti before going to the house, and his orientation never came up in the conversation.  Again, Christianity nor religious bias were NEVER claimed.  Verdict: HYSTERIA.

Teena Brandon–at a Christmas party in 1993, two ex-cons in Falls City, Nebraska–John Lotter and Tom Nissen–dragged their newest acquaintance into the bathroom of a friend’s home, dropped her pants, and forced a friend to look at the reality: the person they’d been introduced to as Brandon Teena, a man, was actually a woman.  Brandon had been arrested for forging checks and “his” girlfriend, Lana Tisdale, bailed Brandon out of the women’s jail.  When the paper printed the arrest, it listed her actual name as Teena Brandon and the fact that she was female.  Lotter and Nissen forced Tisdale to look at Brandon’s naked body to prove that “he” had been fooling everyone.  They drove Brandon to a factory lot where they raped her and let her go with a warning not to call the authorities.  When Brandon made her way, shoeless, back to Tisdale’s home, Tisdale persuaded her to go to the police and she did so.  Six days later, on December 31, Lotter and Nissen, after an exhaustive search for Brandon, found her hiding under a blanket in a friend’s farmhouse.  They shot and stabbed Brandon and shot the other two occupants of the house–Lisa Lambert, killed with her baby next to her in bed, and Phillip DeVine.  They attempted to toss their gloves, knife and gun into the river, but the items were merely preserved on the frozen surface; the knife was branded with Lotter’s name.  Today, Lotter is on death row while Nissen serves three life sentences.  Both admitted to being there though they argue to this day about who was the shooter and who wielded the knife.  Both admitted they were after Brandon.  However, while the crime was originally motivated by Brandon’s sexual expression, it ended in murder because the perps wanted the witnesses dead.  Sheriff Charles Laux enabled the men to commit the crime with his own bias; the rape kit was conveniently lost, and equally conveniently the end portion of the interview tape of Brandon’s complaint was erased (though Laux’s extreme prejudice is evident throughout what is there).  Laux refused to arrest the perps and let evidence be destroyed, giving them time to commit murder.  Yet again, no mention of religious bias.  Verdict: partial TRUTH, mostly HYSTERIA.  (Sidenote: while I think Hilary Swank was incredible as Brandon in the movie Boys Don’t Cry, I did not necessarily care for the content of the film, nor did I believe the story worthy of being immortalized in such a fashion.)

So far, not a single claim of so-called “Christian bigotry” is standing up to the test.  Though some of these crimes were, indeed, committed out of an anti-gay bias, not one of the crimes listed so far was committed out of some religious motivation.