[1] It has been awhile since we gave thought to the torture issue—beyond my pay grade, to quote President Obama.

Yet the thought of torture is never far from my mind. Eleven and a half years ago, a slight, innocent gay college kid named [2] Matthew Shepard died after being tortured and left, tied to a fence in Wyoming, to bleed or freeze to death. His brutal torture and murder is different than the waterboarding and other brutalities of the late Bush administration, of course. Shepard’s torturers did it for the sport of it, many people might think, even if they believed that he represented some kind of a threat to them.

(The “homosexual panic” defense of course did not originate with [3] the trial of his murderers Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney, who are serving life sentences. But [4] Wikipedia has an article which discusses this at length and explains the attempted use of this defense at their trial. Later Henderson and McKinney tried to recant this defense by saying it was a robbery gone awry.)

I think there is an evil parallel with what American troops, under color of authority, have done to prisoners from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. In reverse order, we are told that these prisoners represent some kind of threat to American security which, presumably, justifies torture. And secondly, many people may privately believe, the soldiers did it for the sport of it. Stripping a man naked and turning dogs loose on his genitals, clearly seen in [5] Abu Ghraib photos originally published by the Washington Post in May 2006, would seem to be the kind of thing you have to have the sick mind, not just a sick legal brief, to think up.

[6] [6] [6]

“And the LORD said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!’”— Genesis 4:10

I applaud President Obama’s decision to release the Justice Department memos which now appear to have been written as (ludicrous and erroneous) legal rationalization for torture for the late Bush administration. Whether high officials —who justified the torture or who gave the orders or consent to carry it out— are ever investigated or charged with criminal behavior is anybody’s guess.

We know the new President wants to put the excesses and evils of BushCo. behind America. But when something is so heinous and disgusting as torture, murder, holocaust, etc., it cannot simply be removed with a wave of the political wrist. We will never forget [9] My Lai in Vietnam, for example, or the heinous [10] murder of James Byrd Jr.

To its credit, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling for that same Justice Department [11] to appoint an independent prosecutor with the authority to investigate the Bush Torture matter. And the Obama administration needs to halt any torture methodology, regardless of when and where conducted.

Many have tried to excuse or forget the behavior of the Church’s atrocities committed against “faggots,” or dispense with it as irrelevant to contemporary issues about sexuality and homosexuality. But what was the capital punishment of suspected homosexuals in the Dark Ages but torture?—burning someone alive for a sin against religious doctrine?

If you have the stomach for it, a thorough description and brief history of such burnings from 1222 to the late 18^th century can be found at [12] capitalpunishmentuk.org. And [13] Colbert Nation has an instructive little article as well (which relies on [14] this Wikipedia article)! [15] Rictor Norton has an article I assume is fairly accurate tracing this atrocity as far back as a.d. 390. Apparently some in the Church favored capital punishment by burning because it did not involved shedding blood, (see Genesis 4:10!!). I wonder who penned that legal brief!

I rely on the work of Dr. John Boswell ([16] Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality), who carefully explained that gay people were not burned for homosexual conduct per se but for heresy when they refused to repent. In other words, this method of torture and murder was used to exterminate those who held different views of religious doctrine. Boswell once commented, in a lecture here in west Hollywood, about the enormous doctrinal squabbles of the ancient church, such as the fight against Arianism which was finally settled by an ecumenical council, that “before the vote is taken, there is a majority and a minority.  After the vote, the minority is dead wrong.”

It is so emblematic of American cultural arrogance that the word “fag” or “faggot” has become universal as a pejorative slang word used against homosexuals, males in particular. Maybe the ACLU should call for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the Phelps machine for advocating torture and violence against homosexuals, because that is what the word “faggot” has come to represent.

[17]

Third generation hate monger Benjamin Phelps.  But what is this Romans 9:13 citation?  Do they even read the Bible, or just make this stuff up?

But why would I spend time reading and writing about such stuff, let alone exhibiting graphic photos? Do LGBT people today take the threat of violence against us seriously? Do we report hate crimes and attempted hate crimes to the police? Do we think that a few civil rights victories will somehow erase torture, violence, atrocity and homophobia from the American lexicon of behavior? It is always time to wake up and be prepared to defend not only our alienable rights but our very humanity against anyone who dehumanizes us or anyone else.

— Dan Hooper, Los Angeles