This past weekend, police arrested eight of the nine suspects who allegedly carried out what is certainly one of the worse hate crimes in recent memory. On Oct. 3, nine members of the Latin King Goonies gang (a Latin-American gang from the Bronx) abducted and tortured three men because they were gay.
The first victim was a 17-year-old the gang initially thought of as a potential recruit. They supposedly discovered the boy was gay and lured him to an abandoned apartment before severely beating and torturing him for hours.
Following this initial savagery, the gang members lured a 30-year-old man and his 17-year-old lover into the building and tortured them in a similar fashion.
Along with being beaten, slashed with box cutters and other atrocious acts, the gang members forced the 17-year-old to punch and burn the older man with cigarettes. As their bigoted cruelty wore off, the gang moved to the apartment of the older man’s brother, where they beat him, stole a TV, and took more than $1,000 in cash and debit cards.
What makes this senseless tragedy all the more terrifying is its proximity to the suicide of a homosexual Rutgers student in late September.
Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers freshman, plunged to his death off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate posted a video of him engaged in a sexual encounter.
This is, however, merely another example in a recent wave of suicides of gay children that has being sweeping across the country.
Seth Walsh and Asher Brown, both 13-year-olds, hung and shot themselves following brutal harassment by classmates for their homosexuality.
In a similar fashion, high school freshman Billy Lucas reportedly hanged himself in his grandmother’s barn following savage harassment by classmates questioning his sexual orientation.
As these cases indicate, hate crimes targeting gays are becoming a more noticeable element of the criminal activity in the United States.
The level of brutality people are able to execute against their fellow men never ceases to amaze me. We consistently reflect on the crimes of our fathers, looking into the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the slave quarters of the U.S., and we quietly state to ourselves “never again.”
We praise ourselves for our own progression and evolvement, stating pompously how far we have advanced or how tolerant of a society we now live in.
These arrogant claims crash into oblivion, however, when our society is able to produce such a level of hatred as to propel college, high school and middle school students to kill themselves because of harassment, or when three innocent men are savagely tortured because of their sexual orientation.
Bigotry and intolerance are, of course, not new phenomena. Along with all other hurdles to social greatness, such as greed and ignorance, they stalk us through our progression, mockingly glaring at our achievements as they plummet into insignificance in the face of such unbridled hatred.
We are able to conquer the air, sea, mountain ranges and deserts, yet we are not yet capable of conquering our own sadistic decadence.
We construct colossal structures and ideas as monuments to our will for success.
These structures do not serve to elate our spirit of greatness, however, but our vision may be brought above the hate and agony of our brothers suffering in the slums beneath their foundation.
We hear of the brutal attacks made against our gay brethren this past month and feel sorrow over their struggle, what they deserve is not our sympathy but our attention.
If we are to purge intolerance and hatred from our society, it will not be through an emotional sense of pity or sorrow, but through an active attention to the suffering of our fellow men.
If we are to establish our species in the plane of greatness it should be and is capable of reaching, it will only come through the abolition of social indifference.
As long as there are differences within our race, there will be antagonisms. I understand there are some who feel as though homosexuality is a sin, a cancer on our society and a force of debauchery threatening our social fabric.
But my understanding exists insofar as recognition of its existence, not understanding of how a person is even capable of thinking such disgustingly inhuman thoughts about their brothers.
Instead of stalling in incomprehension of our differences, perhaps embracing these differences as points of diversity and opportunities for learning is the best mode of bringing ourselves to our deserved greatness.
Whatever the solution may be, I hope we may at least try to see our greatest enemy is our own personal hatred and indifference.
This is a plague that has existed throughout the history of our species, and I am not so idealistic to think these recent hate crimes will bring about its eradication, but “I may be a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
Collegiate Times
