My life as a target
This UC Davis site "covers the territory" -- Dr. Gregory Herek, internationally recognized authority on anti-Gay violence.
His recapping of individual's tales of harassment makes my experiences minor when compared to beatings and death.
Anti-Gay Harassment and Violence
In the fall of 2002, after another anti-Gay assaultive incident (this time on a residential street in Scottsdale, AZ),I decided to try to recall how many times I have been a target.
Leaving aside for the moment any incidents before I was 21 (like My Military Experience), here are the ones I remember.
The New Millennium
In October, 2002, while driving southbound on Casa Blanca Drive in Scottsdale, AZ, (an upper middle class area) the most humorous incident occurred and gave me cause for hope -- except that the incident occurred at all.
I have a rainbow sticker on my car, an unusual site in the Phoenix area, and two teenagers began honking the horn in their sub-compact car from behind me. Realizing quickly that the potential was bad from seeing their body language and their expressions, I immediately checked the street for others I might turn to for assistance but realized I was alone.
The approaching car pulled around me and in front blocking me. Nevertheless, the passenger in the car got out, raised his fist and yelled at me, "Fuck Gay people."
I think my amused and confident look had some impact on them -- and also how unwise they were since my vehicle easily outweighed theirs by tons.
By this time the driver must have been more observant and saw that I had my headset from my cell phone on and that my vehicle could easily run over theirs. He urged his homophobic friend back inside and they sped away.
It was another one of those interminable periods of seconds.
The 90's
Similarly, a few years earlier a similar incident occurred a few blocks away at the corner of 68th Street and Indian School Road in Scottsdale.While stopped at the traffic light, a gentlemen in a car two cars behind me got out of his car and began to boisterously shout while approaching my car, "I know what the rainbow means."
I assessed the intersection and saw that I could run the red light and escape, and so I did.
While living in downtown Scottsdale, I have been burgled once, the lone target in the neighborhood in what must have been a Gay targeting. Two teens came over one night, one being the son of a friend in the neighborhood. A woman they brought with them methodically cased my apartment, surveying closets and rooms we were not in.
She was so brazen that I asked if she had seen everything.
On the day of the burglary, I arrived home unexpectedly early in the afternoon and saw a woman sitting in front of my complex, apparently sketching on a white pad. By the time I parked and reached my door, her alert had apparently warned the intruder.
My car has been trashed by food, broken into, and otherwise vandalized.
And, a few years ago my license plate was stolen, or actually replaced with another valid one, in what was not an overtly anti-Gay incident.
I've pieced together later that this theft occurred about the time that a local street person targeted me -- with early morning serenades outside my window, early morning seances with candles on my patio, as well as rearranging the pool furniture. When challenged by my dog and me, this woman left and shortly apparently left the neighborhood. She was identified to me as a resident of a local residential treatment home and was known as a habitue on various street corners.
Nevertheless, she targeted me and came to my home.
In the mid 1990's, I was chased by three members of a local hate group after seeing them walking on the street in downtown Tempe. Later they saw me in my car leaving the area and followed. Their uniform that night was black shoes, white socks, blue pants, white tee shirts, red suspenders and shaved heads. That night I also ran a red light while they pursued and escaped into a local Gay bar parking lot and told the bouncer to call police. The bashers, realizing they would be outnumbered, left before entering far into the lot.
While living in Los Angeles in 1994, I avoided contact several times with bashers by being vigilant, seeing them on the street and changing course. I avoided them once on the way to the Detour, a Silverlake bar. The bartender there, a tall sissy named Brent (aka Brenda), heard my report and jumped the bar in one leap and was out the door to stop them. They were gone but other bar customers came in reporting harassment.
I sped away from two other potential incidents on Santa Monica Boulevard in Boystown (aka West Hollywood) before I was targeted individually.
Another incident with a different outcome while on a visit to San Francisco is described here.
Since the homophobe's targets are sometimes random, cruising a Gay area like Boystown can backfire on them.
Los Angeles County Sheriffs Deputies had to rescue a car load one night who brazenly and stupidly displayed their pre-occupation at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Robertson. They were lucky that night to be saved because their vehicle was quickly surrounded by their targets.
The 80's
I won't count the first attempted burglary before I even moved in to my first home in Phoenix, an old development named Palmcroft but which had an 80's Gay reputation. But I will count the subsequent two after I lived there. One burglar stole pornography and cold beverages from the refrigerator.
The home (in as Gay a neighborhood as Phoenix has) was also the location for a drive-by baseball bat bashing of cars parked along my street, including one of my vehicles. Those assailants also bashed cars at a nearby Gay bar that night.
I felt threatened after a Gay man who owned a house two doors down was murdered in his home by someone he brought home. His car was also stolen and found abandoned in San Diego.
A drunken man in downtown Phoenix began hurling rocks at me one evening -- large decorative landscaping stones around the Hyatt Regency Hotel. A quick run into a local restaurant where I was known, brought more large rocks on the windows of the restaurant, but the staff went outside and gave chase.
Teenagers stole front yard items while pretending to be caroling one Christmas at a subsequent home. No other homes in the neighborhood were targeted. Others bashed my roadside mailbox several times, but other homes were targeted in this recurring spree. I happened to be in my front yard one night shortly after dusk when this happened and got to scare the shit out of them at the corner. They ran.
The 70's
Before moving to Arizona, I vividly recall two incidents of harassment on the street in Greenwich Village where I lived for several years. Both incidents included anti-Gay slurs and items being thrown -- including a large boot once. There were several other incidents where I ran and avoided harassment when car loads of teens came cruising up Washington Street in the Village.
There were a couple of other minor incidents in the Village where I was not targeted individually, but the epithets were more threatening than, "Fuck Gay people."
I was also threatened and assaulted twice in separate incidents by a single man and a small group on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea.
Fuck Gay People!
Given other epithets hurled at me over the years, this one made me sorta proud.
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