Michael Dean Drewer is a 61 year old man from Loveland, Colorado was seen driving with “OPEN OUR GYMS F**GOT” written on the back of his truck to support a Reopen Colorado protest directed at Colorado’s (gay) governor Jared Polis on Sunday. pic.twitter.com/fJMQeZ5kKJ
— Colorado Springs Anti-Fascists (@COSAntiFascists) May 19, 2020
Is it a surprise to anyone that Drewer is pictured wearing a confederate flag shirt?
*NOTE: The dogs face in the above tweet has been blurred to protect the innocent.
Earlier this month Justin Olsen, 18, of Boardmoor, Ohio was arrested for allegedly threatening to assault a federal law enforcement officer. He’s also accused of making the threats on a meme website where he also allegedly discussed shooting Planned Parenthood locations and a gay bar.
The FBI raided the home of Olsen, which he shares with his father, confiscated a the large cache of weapons on August 7. Olsen had reportedly threatened a variety of targets on a Discord server and an online forum called iFunny, where he went by the username ArmyOfChrist.
“Thanking God that they put the gay bar and Planned Parenthood right next to each other,” he wrote in one post.
Olson also threatened to assault a federal law enforcement officers but later said his posts were “only a joke” and that the reference to shooting agents was “a hyperbolic conclusion based on the results of the Waco siege.”
Agents confiscated over 300 rounds of ammunition on a staircase, another 10,000 rounds in a bedroom, 15 rifles including AR-15 style rifles, and 10 semi-automatic pistols, and a machete in Olsen’s car. A search warrant reveals authorities searched Olsen’s property for “hate related literature.”
A grand jury has indicted Olsen on Wednesday for making threats against federal law enforcement and making interstate threats. If convicted he faces ten years in prison for for the threats on federal agents, and five for interstate threats.
Ohio law does not consider hate crimes to be stand-alone offenses, but bias can be considered during sentencing.
Gary Ray Bowles who started an eight-month serial killing spree of six gay men is set to be the 99th death row inmate executed in Florida on Thursday.
Six gay men were savagely beaten and choked. One was bludgeoned with a discarded toilet. In every case, the victims had something crammed down their throats — a towel, wads of toilet paper, a fistful of dirt.
Each man fought for his life, but lost.
Bowles, started his eight-month homicidal binge by killing John Hardy Roberts, 59, on March 14, 1994, inside the victim’s beachside home in Daytona Beach. He was arrested a few days after killing his sixth victim, Walter Hinton, 42, in Jacksonville on Nov. 20, 1994.
Bowles committed three murders in Florida — in Daytona Beach, Jacksonville and Hilliard. He killed two other men in Georgia — one in Savannah and the other in Atlanta. He also murdered a man in Wheaton, Maryland.
He would say to the world during a television interview years later how remarkably easy it was to kill someone.
Tom Youngman, a retired homicide and crime scene investigator with the Daytona Beach Police Department, was one of a battery of investigators who interviewed Bowles following his arrest. He asked Bowles why he chose gay men as his murder victims.
“He said they only perform an act on him and he never did (to) them,” Youngman said last week. “I said, ‘Well, that’s homosexuality,’ and he says, ‘No.’
“Then what are you if you’re not a homosexual?” Youngman asked Bowles.
“I’m a hustler,” Bowles replied.
In May 1996, Bowles stunned prosecutors when he pleaded guilty to killing to the murders. They still decided to pursue the death penalty, based on the facts of the case. One victim’s head was bashed with a 40-pound concrete block and he had been suffocated with toilet paper and a wash cloth, according to court testimony.
The Jurors recommended the death sentence in a 10-2 vote in July 1996. The judge agreed and sentenced him to death later that summer.
In August 1998, the Florida Supreme Court overturned Bowles’ death sentence, saying it was wrong of the prosecution to introduce Bowles’ hatred of homosexuals as evidence.
The following May, jurors heard evidence again on whether to recommend life or death. They were unanimous the second time. Bowles was transported back to death row in September 1999, where he has remained for 20 years.
You can read more details of the case at Daytona Beach News-Journal.
WARNING: Graphic details of violence.1. LINK 2. LINK
In the second case of homicide against a gay man in three day, 28-year-old Anthony Brock and 30-year-old Darnell Wilson have been charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in the killing of Diano Johnson.
On June 19, Brock arranged to meet Diano Johnson after the two men met on Facebook. Prosecutors say it is alleged that Brock locked Johnson in the trunk of the victim’s car and drove to pick up Wilson. The two suspects then allegedly got a firearm, drove to the city’s east side with Johsnon still in the truck of his own car, where they dragged him from the car and shot him multiple times.
The next morning, Brock allegedly set Johnson’s car on fire, burning his legs in the process, prosecutors say.
Detroit Police officers discovered Johnson’s body on June 21. An investigation by the Detroit Police Department resulted in the arrest of Brock on June 25, 2019 and Wilson on July 12, 2019.
Brock and Wilson were charged with one count each of first degree murder, felony murder, armed robbery, carjacking, unlawful imprisonment, felon in possession of a firearm, and six counts of use of a firearm.
In both cases the murders were planned and executed using social media.
Due to the rise of hate crimes against the community Back2Stonewall advises anyone using social media to “hook-up” to always plan to meet in a public place like a bar or a restaurant first where you can be seen by others and talk before anything else occurs.
PLEASE be diligent and aware of your surroundings and the people you meetup with for your own safety.
Three teenagers have been arrested for an attack on a gay couple in Washington, D.C., early Sunday morning.
One of the victims, Karl Craven, stated that he and his boyfriend — whom he did not name — encountered the suspects when they stopped to talk to each other while walking from Hawthorne’s restaurant to Nellie’s, a popular gay sports bar.
“He was leaning against me and a few guys started yelling ‘faggot’ at him and started to swing at him. It was all a quick blur but next thing you know there was literally a mob of 15 guys beating him. They came out of nowhere and I was powerless to stop them, all I could do was jump on him to try to protect him and scream help.”
The suspects include Marcus Britt, 19, and two juvenile males, ages 15 and 16, according to a statement released by the Metro Police department. The three suspects, all from Fort Washington, Maryland, were charged with robbery by force and violence after allegedly assaulting at least one of the victims and fleeing with his property.
Over the past year, multiple attacks against gay men have been recorded around the U Street area in D.C. . Last September, two gay men were beaten by a violent group using homophobic slurs, and in April 2018, two other gay men were hospitalized following an assault
At least four gay bars in Nashville, Tennessee have received anonymously sent intimidating pro-Trump flyers. Each flyer features the letters “LGBT” with images of the Statue of Liberty, a beer bottle, an assault rifle, and Donald Trump over each letter.
“They chose to use an image of the weapon that was used in one of the largest massacres in American history at the Pulse Nightclub,” Melvin Brown, who owns and operates the Stirrup Sports Bar in Nashville, told FOX 17 News.
“Was it somebody that is sending it from a hateful place? Was it somebody trying to use it as a motivating factor with the midterm elections coming up, which is a huge possibility.”
Each of the flyers have Trump’s “MAGA” slogan on the reverse side. Police have traced the return addresses to a vacant lot. They have yet to identify the senders.
Some think that the flyers are meant as an intimidation tactic ahead of the mid-term elections, just a few weeks from now. Others believe that in the current political climate that they have a much darker meaning.
MP Ryad Abdel Sattar on Wednesday introduced to the parliament’s speaker Ali Abdel Aal a draft law entailing five main articles of the criminalisation of homosexuality.
The draft law would pave the way for strict punitive measures against the LGBT community in Egypt, in addition to restricting the presence of LGBT People inside Egyptian society, Abdel Sattar said in media statements dedicated to local outlets.
The ‘Criminalisation of Homosexuality’ law has received approval from a number of the parliament’s members who asserted their readiness to approve it — the draft law is expected to be discussed inside the parliament after being reviewed by the speaker Ali Abdel Aal. – Pink Sixty
The “Arab Spring” uprising that toppled Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak in 2010 brought some respite for the city’s embattled LGBT community, whose members were able to socialize more openly at house parties and bars. And while homosexuality is not at this time a criminal offense in Egypt gay men and lesbians have been arrested at an alarming rate and charged with the crime of “Debauchery” at an alarming rate over the past year.
The first article defines homosexuality as any person engaging in sexual intercourse with someone of the same sex.
The second article clarified that any person engaging in homosexuality in a public or private place should be subjected to punitive action that should be no less than one-year and not exceeding three years in jail. It added that in case those jailed homosexual people repeated having sex after being freed, then the punitive action should be five years in jail.
The third article highlighted that any “supporter” of homosexuality or someone who calls for the acceptance of homosexuality, even if he or she is not a “practitioner of homosexuality,” should be jailed for no less than one year or no more than three years.
The fourth article paid attention to media coverage to parties organized by homosexual people, stipulating that any representatives of the media that “promotes” LGBT parties would be jailed for three years.
The United Nations has said it is worried over the growing trend of arrests of LGBT people across the Muslim world.
“We are deeply concerned about a wave of arrests in Azerbaijan, Egypt and Indonesia of more than 180 people perceived to be lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender,” said Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
A Russian newspaper has reported that it has uncovered information that police in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya have rounded up more than 100 men suspected of homosexuality and that at least three have been killed according to the New York Times, which cites the Novaya Gazeta. The Russian newspaper says it confirmed the news with government officials and an analyst of the region also confirmed the news to the Times with her own sources.
The report has been denied by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov’s spokesman, who suggested there are no homosexuals in the Muslim-majority region. Ali Karimov said, “It’s impossible to persecute those who are not in the republic. If there were such people in Chechnya, the law-enforcement organs wouldn’t need to have anything to do with them because their relatives would send them somewhere from which there is no returning.”
Three men are known to have been murdered, although the real number is likely to be higher. The newspaper claims authorities have been specifically seeking out closeted gay men by posing as men looking for dates on social networking sites.
The Kremlin-backed Kadyrov is widely accused of extensive human rights violations. He has brought Islam to the fore of Chechnya’s daily life, including opening what is called Europe’s biggest mosque.
A Seattle business owner is speaking out after becoming the target of a hate crime.
“I’ve never had to hide for one minute who I was in this neighborhood,” said Aaron Amundsen, co-owner of Emerald City Tattoo and Supply in the Lake City neighborhood. OF Seattle Washington.
One morning, a week after the election, his business partner, Tony Johns, found a note on Amundsen’s windshield.
The note read, “Hey faggot . We won, so you better watch you’re [sic] back. You’re [sic] days are numberd [sic]. Make America STRAIGHT again to make it GREAT again. You will see, you cocksucker.”
“It was like someone punched me in the gut,” said Amundsen, “because I had never experience in my life and I’ve been out since high school. I’ve never experienced something so threatening.”
The Seattle Police LGBT liaison, Officer Jim Ritter, who started the Safe Place program, calls it malicious harassment, a hate crime.
“It is clearly a threat based on a threat of the victim’s sexually identity,” said Ritter. “It’s pre-meditated and the victim was targeted.”
Amundson felt a responsibility to speak out.
“I believe it’s my absolute right as a citizen, and as an upstanding person, to say wait a minute – this is not acceptable and don’t let anyone tell you it is,” he said..
After news of the incident started spreading on social media, Seattle Police decided to host a community discussion about it later this week.
A horrific hashtag has begun spreading across Arabic-language social media: “#اقترح_طريقة_لقتل_الشواذ” which literally translates to “#suggest_a_way_to_kill_the_faggots.”
The hashtag appeared to have been born a gay wedding was posted online on January 25 with the hashtag “زواج_للشواذ_في_جدة#” which means “faggots’_wedding_ in_ Jeddah”:
There was mass outrage on Twitter in Saudi Arabia. With some saying it was part of a gay conspiracy against the country, which is the home of Islam’s holiest city, Mecca.
Twitter has been contacted but at the time of this posting has not responded.
