24 year old Hakeem Ahmed Musa was sentenced Friday to five months in jail after admitting to beating and robbed a man in Seattle, Washington after he verbally attacked the man for being gay, the Post-Intelligencer reports. The attack took place in the early hours of August 2nd in the city’s Capitol Hill area, and according to police records the man told police that Musa approached him and asked if he wanted to have drink. When the man declined the offer, Musa yelled “This dude is gay,” and punched in the face. It is alleged that Musa continued to kick the man until he lost consciousness, then took the victim’s cell phone. He was arrested short time later, blocks away, in another altercation with two men. Musa was charged with malicious harassment, Washington State’s hate crime status, and he pleaded guilty to first-degree theft and fourth-degree assault.
Constance McMillen – named one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year – tells the Associated Press that when she read that 18 year old Tyler Clementi and 13 year old Seth Walsh committed suicide precipitated by anti-gay bullying and harassment, their struggles and their suicides resonated with her own thoughts. “I read it on Facebook, the 18 year old says. “I was so upset about this that I could not sleep. I knew it had to be terrible for them to choose death as a way to escape what they were living in,” adding that she had her own thoughts about suicide, “But I never really considered it to the point where I almost did it. Everybody thinks about it when times get hard.” McMillen, openly gay, and native of Fulton, Mississippi, successfully challenged a rural state’s school district’s archaic ban on same sex prom dates, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, which forced the district to amend its policies and follow a non-discrimination code. She says that without the support of her family, the fight for equality would have been harder. “It seems like gay students catch a lot. It’s already a rough time in high school. Everybody wants to be accepted. The family’s acceptance is 100 times more important than people they go to school with. Whenever the family doesn’t accept them, they feel like nobody’s going to.”
The New York Times on the religious right’s reaction to the new numbers of school districts that are strengthening their anti-harassment rules with early lessons in tolerance, illustrated by education that some children have two mothers or will grow to be attracted to members of the same sex. Educators argue that bullying is most effectively fought with a combination of non-discrimination policies and honest discussions from kindergarten through high school about diversity and sexuality. However, predictably, religious zealots contend that gay rights advocates and politicians are manipulating the anti-bullying campaigns to further the dreaded “hidden homosexual agenda,” overtly endorsing same sex marriage, as an example. The Times reports on an attempt by school officials in Helena, Montana last summer, implemented new curriculum guidelines for teaching about sexuality, that included a proposal to teach first-graders that “human being can love people of the same gender,” and fifth-graders that sexual intercourse can include “vaginal, oral or anal penetration.” A local Christian, Pastor Rick DeMato told the congregation at the Liberty Baptist Church that “We do not want the minds of our children to be polluted with the things of a carnal-minded society.” The Times adds that among the religious indignation “Barely heard was the plea of Harlan Reidmohr, 18, who graduated last spring and said he was relentlessly tormented and slammed against lockers after coming out during his freshman year. Through his years in the Helena schools, he said at another school board meeting, sexual orientation was never once discussed in the classroom, and ‘I believe this led to a lot of the sexual harassment I faced.’”
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