Criminal Minds

Criminal Minds

I was casting around for my top GLBT news story of the week, when I found myself drawn to a lengthy headline that shouted “Read Me!” on a sidebar near some important article about, say, the decision by the Ninth Circuit to deny immediate en banc review in the Golinski DOMA challenge.

Here it is from the New York Daily News: “Man who beheaded, ate, fellow passenger on Greyhound bus believed he was attacking alien, mental health advocate says.” Woah, Nelly! 

Like you, a barrage of questions flooded my mind. Could this be true? How do you behead someone on a bus without being restrained by fellow passengers? How then, do you have time to eat your victim? If you had to kill an alien, why would you then eat him or her? And of course, why haven’t we heard about this horrific incident?

Well, the story seems to be true. Vince Li, a Chinese man who immigrated to Canada with his wife in 2001, was riding along the highways of Manitoba back in 2008. His doomed seatmate, 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean, was listening to music with his eyes shut when the voice of God told Li to, ah, take lethal action.

As Li started stabbing McLean, the bus stopped and the other passengers fled, leaving our deranged hero to his own devices. While waiting for authorities, Li managed to carve up parts of his victim and eat them. He also sawed off McLean’s head (with a knife!) and “displayed” it through the window. 

Mr. Li has since been treated for schizophrenia at a Canadian mental hospital and has reportedly recovered. He is back in the news now that a judge has given him permission to wander around on chaperoned trips to the nearby town of Selkirk. According to the referenced “mental health advocate,” Li “now understands that schizophrenia is a mental illness which plays tricks on the brain. He knows that the medication works to keep the voices away.”

Hmmm. I’m a rational human being and I recognize that mental illness could strike any one of us. But I’d still like to see Mr. Maniac locked up nice and tight for the indefinite future. Plus, doesn’t every psychotic killer have his or her share of loose screws? We don’t give them a few pills and send them over to Main Street for a day of shopping and a strawberry milkshake. Yet apparently, Mr. Li is expected to gain more freedom as time goes by, and may even be released one day. Yikes.
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Bad God, No Virgin

I see I’ve spent far too much time belaboring this irrelevant, albeit captivating, subject. I was struck by the fact that Li was a Christian, and that “God” was the one who ordered the grotesque hit on Tim McLean. 

Few would suggest that Li’s actions were an example of religious expression, but to return to a recent theme, there’s not a whole lot of theoretical difference between God-ordered murder and some of the other muffin-headed efforts to cloak hatred in religious garb. 

Consider Mississippi state representative and Baptist minister Andy Gipson, who recently told his Facebook friends that gay men are unnatural and disease ridden, citing the numbers of a Leviticus verse that suggests that men who have relations with other men “are to be put to death.” 

In response to the ensuing outrage, Gipson said that he could not, and would not, “apologize for the inspired truth of God’s Word,” adding that he does not actually believe gay men should be executed.

Hey, Gipson has every right to believe that both testaments of the Bible contain the literal word of God. But there’s no reason for everyone else to bow and scrape before his “constitutionally protected right to freedom of religious expression.” The man’s a nutcase bigot. Not as bad as Vince Li, I admit. But he deserves no more respect for his disturbed notions than does the man who beheaded a sleeping bus passenger in the name of God. 

The same premise applies to the Catholic bishops who are suing the government for ordering insurance companies to offer contraception without a co-pay to all female employees. 

“But but but, it’s our faith!” 

Nonsense. It’s your policy. It’s your schizophrenia. It’s your bigotry. It’s whatever. There’s nothing sacred about it.
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Prison Camp, Anyone?

Let’s take one last example. (Please!) A Baptist minister in North Carolina, the Rev. Charles Worley, told his flock the other day that gay men and lesbians should be rounded up and separately quarantined behind electric fences. Food should be dropped into the pens, and in due time, all the gay people will die out because they can’t reproduce.

By the way, does this man believe that all the gay people in the world were conceived by gay men impregnating gay women? Now there’s a scenario that would truly kill us off in a generation. 

Worley has not commented since his Mother’s Day sermon, but one of his parishioners, Joe Heafner, told the local press that Worley “takes a strong stand on the Bible and what it says, but he loves people. I’ve never seen a man who cared more for his people, cares for all people, whether they were members here or not.” 

Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on Heaven’s Gate when some of these fools come strolling up to St. Peter’s lectern?  

But let’s be honest. Would it really be so bad to live for free on a massive lesbian compound? Build a nice cocktail lounge, parachute in a case or two of vintage Champagne every few days, install a few pools and hot tubs, and it would work for me. 
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Tedious Court Schedules Await

I think I mentioned earlier that the Ninth Circuit has declined to move directly to a full appellate court hearing on one of our main challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act. Well, that was a long-shot motion by the Obama Administration (who is on our side in this case) and its defeat is not such a big deal. All it really means is that our excellent lower court ruling in the case of federal attorney, Karen Golinski, will be considered by a three-judge panel, as is the norm. Oral arguments will be scheduled for September.

Meanwhile, recall that the Prop 8 case has already been heard by a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel, and that the bad guys have asked the full court to hear an appeal of our February victory.

So, we’re all just sitting around waiting to find out whether or not the court will empanel an 11-judge group to reconsider the constitutional status of California’s ban on marriage equality. I have no idea how long it will take for the active judges on the Ninth Circuit to make this decision. And of course, if they decide to go ahead, we’ll then have to sit through a year or more of additional litigation.  

As for Golinski, once the three judges rule early next year, that case is also likely to make its way to the full Ninth Circuit. 

Over in Boston, oral arguments were heard in early April on another federal DOMA challenge, so we’re waiting for a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Assuming that this decision is also sent to the full First Circuit, it may be quite a long time until any of our marriage-related suits reach the Supreme Court.

I know that the media keeps suggesting that marriage equality will reach the nine justices in short order. But at this rate, that short order could easily turn out to be 2014 at the earliest.
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It’s Raining Penguins, Alleluia

Now, what else do we have on our list, you wonder? For one thing, we have a zillion more confusing polls on whether or not Americans support same-sex marriage. Without repeating last week’s rant about polls, let me just say that these surveys remind me of the Romney v. Obama polls announced by breathless pundits on what feels like a daily basis.

Hello Pundits! It’s May for God’s sake. These polls are one rung up from meaningless on the long ladder to Election Day. Report them if you will, but spare us the excited commentary. 

As for the marriage polls, as I said last week, they too are all over the map, although the general trend in our favor is welcome. Frankly, as long as voters from California to North Carolina continue to reject marriage equality at the ballot box, I will continue to reject their alleged majority support. When voters in Maine, in Washington, in Maryland and in Minnesota cast their ballots in our favor, I’ll be impressed. 

We also have news in Gay Penguin Land, where kindly zookeepers in Spain have given a fertilized egg to a same-sex couple who builds an empty nest every year. I should look up their names, which as usual, are cute. But the upshot of the story is that the penguins are very happy and taking very good care of their egg. 

Why penguins? I know we have the occasional gay sheep or lesbian monkey, but I think we can agree that penguins are the gayest of all God’s creatures with the possible exception of women’s basketball fans.

And a federal judge in Ohio has ordered the Wayne Local Schools to let students wear T-shirts that say: “Jesus Was Not A Homophobe.” The district will also shell out $20,000 in damages and costs to the activist student, Maverick Couch, who settled his First Amendment case last month for that amount with the help of Lambda Legal.   
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Crab Dreaming

I probably should have led this column with a unanimous decision out of the high court of Maryland, where the justices ruled that same-sex marriages from out of state should be recognized for the purposes of divorce. The court did not address any constitutional issues, nor did the justices take the matter beyond the narrow context of divorce. But still, it was another step in the right direction.

As for marriage equality itself in the Soft Shell Crab State, all the articles I stumble upon are assuming that antigay groups will indeed gather enough names to let voters decide whether to repeal the state’s new marriage law before it even comes into effect. So, barring any surprises, the future of marriage rights is in the hands of the electorate. If the repeal fails, marriage will become legal on January 1.

Over in Washington, the antigay Preserve Marriage Washington says it has 116,000 names, and needs another 20,000 or 30,000 by May 31 in order to qualify a marriage repeal for the November ballot in the Starbucks State. I think they actually need 120,000 qualified names by the first week in June. But that means they have to amass a cushion, and they have to collect the petitions in time to organize the submission.  

You know, I would give a small fortune for someone to grill me a fresh soft shell crab, slap it on a floured roll with a touch of tartar sauce and a squeeze of lemon, turn on a soundtrack of screeching sea gulls and pour me a cold glass of Muscadet. 
 
Why is that so much to ask? 
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One Month in Jail for Rutgers Mean Boy

Did I mention that the nasty piece of work who spied on his gay Rutgers roommate was handed a 30-day-sentence, plus fines and community service? Dharun Ravi was facing up to ten years behind bars for his abuse of Tyler Clementi, a gay student who committed suicide after Ravi used a web cam to spy on him while he was alone in the room with another man.

But despicable as this Ravi guy appears, his behavior does not merit a decade in prison and he cannot be directly blamed for Clementi’s decision to jump off the George Washington Bridge. Ravi was an immature jerk. Clementi, an insecure loner only recently out of the closet. Both were college freshmen however, a fragile status and a time in our lives when tragedy can lurk just around the corner for any one of us.
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A new version of Ann’s column is available every week at sfbaytimes.com. You can reach her at arostow@aol.com.