SMOLLETT: HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED?
Jussie Smollett
My partner of sixteen years, Peter, is admirable. He has survived AIDS and cancer, but what makes him most admirable is the way he has coped with being attacked and nearly knifed to death by a Black Latino gang in 1990. He fights his post-traumatic syndrome every day. And wins. He gets out of bed and functions as well as, or better than, other 69-year-olds.
Peter's attack was a hate crime before that legal designation assigned to gay-bashing became misused by pop culture. His attack is not listed in Wikipedia, like so many others which have been ignored by the sanctimonious archivists of victim history.
Peter and his domestic partner at that time were attacked in the bright light of an early summer evening in Boston's South End, which was a diverse neighborhood, as the saying goes today. In other words, it was a lower-income neighborhood where Black people, Latinos, Whites (mostly gay men) and Asians lived closely packed together. The knife attack by six young gang members was prolonged and was witnessed by many neighbors who were escaping the heat on their front stoops. None intervened.
Peter was rushed with his partner to the nearby city hospital after a long delay in calling police or ambulance by the witnesses. The two unconscious gay men, simply returning home from an ice cream shop, nearly bled to death on the sidewalk as Black and Latino neighbors gawked passively. Eventually the police and ambulances arrived. It was miraculous that the two men survived their multiple stab wounds and internal damage from being kicked after passing out.
When Peter and his partner came out of induced coma days later, they were asked by Boston Police what they had done to provoke the attack. They had been eating ice cream. Peter's partner had simply turned around after the gang of Black Latinos from a nearby housing project (owned by the Catholic Church) had hurled anti-gay insults at them in passing. Mind you, Peter's partner at that time is about 5'6" tall and slim.
The teen-aged attackers were wearing hoodies, despite the heat. These hoodies apparently signified that they belonged to a local Latino gang. Peter and his partner were unable to pick them out from mug shots. The police became irritated by this. They told the two victims that the neighbors refused to give statements and were suspected of shielding the attackers. One could speculate that the same witnesses may have implied that Peter and his partner provoked the attack.
No arrests were made. No gang members were apprehended for questioning. No follow-up coverage by gay media or mainstream press.
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Jussie Smollett's case, nearly twenty years after Peter's real attack, shows that things have indeed changed. But not in a good way.
The rush to give laudatory coverage to Smollett by media because he is gay, Black and a celebrity is the other end of the disgusting spectrum from the Boston Police's response to Peter's attack. Why? For one thing, Smollett received that attention and belief because he is a non-White television personality.
Contrast this with Peter's subsequent appearance on local media after his recovery. Peter once appeared on a local TV panel to discuss gay-bashing. The host all but ignored his input about anti-gay violence and directed her questions almost exclusively to the two gay politicos on the panel, neither of whom had ever been attacked. Both of them steered the conversation away from the specifics of Peter's case. One had the audacity to ask Peter off-camera why he thought he should appear on the panel (about gay-bashing).
Black, White, Brown and Asian gay boys and men are attacked all the time, statistically most often by known peers and their families. Their stories are rarely aired. Those ignored brutalities will be covered in darker shadows because of Smollett's despicable exploitation.
Today's Leftist LGBTQI movement has corroded solid gains made by earlier political efforts to diminish prejudice and violence against gay men in particular. These activists, and those in media who exploit them, are pushing an agenda in favor of emasculating gay boys and men, just as much as emasculating heterosexual boys and men. This is not a gay movement, or a movement to further the human rights and dignity of homosexual individuals as part of general society. This is a movement of exploitation by way of victim status.
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