News
2007-01-06
Shooting at
Chicago gay house a "tragedy"
Chicago police
may not be ready to label the December 31 shooting of
a group of black men at a "gay house" party as a hate crime,
Chicago police
may not be ready to label the December 31 shooting of
a group of black men at a "gay house" party as a hate crime,
but that doesn't mean the issue of antigay violence
shouldn't become part of the discussion, said the
chairman of the city's commission on human relations
on Friday. In a press statement titled "Shooting of Six on
South Side Is a Tragedy, Hate Crime or Not," Clarence Wood
said he was appalled by the attack.
But even more
appalling, he said, "is that some people interviewed by
the media saw an attack on gay people as something that was
bound to happen and was essentially only a matter of
time." In a report by the ChicagoSun-Times, Wood noted that a man from the
neighborhood was quoted as saying, "We always be seeing
them, and they always be looking at people.... They give you
that gay look, like you're a female or something. That
ain't cute. People be ready to fight.... I knew
something was going to happen to that house."
Six men were
injured in the shooting, two of them seriously, when two
masked gunmen forcibly entered a first-floor apartment and
opened fire during the party early last Sunday. "They
came in and started shooting. The motive is unknown,
and we haven't determined if it is gang-related or
not," police spokeswoman Monique Bond told the
Chicago Tribune. "The difficulty is that the gunmen were
masked."
"While the police
have not yet determined the motive of the shooting, it
is extremely disturbing that anyone could believe that the
victims somehow deserved to be shot because they were
gay or 'acted gay,' " Wood said in the statement.
"Let's not take a step back in our thinking to a time
when violence against gays and lesbians was acceptable
behavior. I fear what group would become the next target if
this kind of thinking becomes commonplace." (The
Advocate)
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