Tag Archives: TX

Multiple Gay Bashings Take Place In Austin, TX Over The Weekend

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Multiple Gay Bashings Take Place In Austin, TX Over The Weekend

 

Emboldened homophobes are becoming more violent.

In two separate incidents, three gay men were brutally attacked outside nightclubs in Austin, TX over the weekend.

Leaving the popular downtown club Barbarella on ‘Tuesgayz,’ Robert Foster and a friend, both drag performers were attacked.

Foster explained their attacker punched him in the head; knock out a tooth, and then running him over in a car. Resulting in a broken leg.

“What comes to mind is that this is like a pattern. This needs to be stopped,” Foster told KTBC-TV. “If it is a pattern we need better security around the bars and the clubs people need to know just because it hasn’t happened to you yet, it can.”

In a separate incident, across Austin, Oscar Zavaleta was assaulted by two men outside Bout Time II, an LGBT bar on Austin’s north side.

Zavaleta suffered a broken nose and a black eye.

With anti-gay hate crimes on the rise in America, Back2Stonewall.com urges members of the gay community to be diligently aware of their surroundings and take the proper care and action for their own personal safety.

Gay Bashing In Dallas TX Leaves Gay Man With Skull Fracture In Tenth Recent Reported Attack – Video

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hate crimes

 

A recent epidemic of violent gay bashings in the he Dallas gayborhood of Oak Lawn is leaving gay men in fear of their lives and Thursday night there was another one.

The Dallas Morning News reports:

Police are investigating after a bartender was beaten up while walking to his friend’s home in Oak Lawn Thursday night — the latest in a spate of attacks in the neighborhood in recent months. Geoffrey Hubbard reportedly left work at the Tap House bar on Cedar Springs Road to have drinks with friends. He was assaulted about 11 p.m. in the 3200 block of Knight Street while walking to a friend’s house, our media partners at KXAS-TV (NBC5) report.

He rolled under a SUV parked nearby to protect himself. “He grabbed my pocket and was trying to grab my wallet and I kicked him off and just yelled for help,” Hubbard told WFAA from his hospital room at Baylor University Medical Center. An off-duty police officer happened to be driving in the area and helped Hubbard. He remains in the ICU this morning with a skull fracture, according to WFAA. Oak Lawn’s LGBT community was already on edge because of at least 10 attacks on people since September.

Out of the 10 gay bashings so fat the Dallas police are only investigating one of the earlier attacks as a hate crime because the assailants used anti-gay slurs as they beat their victim with a baseball bat and robbed him.

In the FBI’s 2014 report of Hate Crimes against Americans over 56 percent of sexual orientation crimes are committed against gay men.

Back2Stonewall reminds all LGBT people to stay aware and be careful!

HRC Will NOT Help Defend Embattled Plano, TX Equal Rights Ordinance Over Transgender Restroom Exemption

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Trans bathroom

 

According to a report from The Texas Observer the Human Rights Campaign says it’s probably not going to help defend the embattled  Equal Rights Ordinance. ordinance recently passed in Plano, TX because according to HRC it’s transphobic citing that an exemption that would bar trans individuals from using restrooms, according to their gender identity but would provide protections for them and LGBT citizens in the area of housing and employment discrimination.

HRC’s Cathryn Oakley told the Observer:

“The language in Plano is very problematic and in terms of investing a lot of resources in an ordinance that has a lot of problems, it’s difficult to see why that’s necessarily the best use of resources. If we had been consulted in the drafting of this bill, we would have withdrawn our support, and given that, it’s hard to justify defending it as valid. ..

“I think the story coming out of Plano is about a city that really wanted to do the right thing, and I wish that this had unfolded differently, because I think that there were good intentions, but things fell apart. I think incremental process is important, I think municipal work is incredibly important, but incremental doesn’t mean leaving part of the community behind. That’s not an acceptable version of incremental.”

This week, opponents of the ordinance turned in over 7,000 signatures on petitions to repeal it — more than double the number needed to put it on the ballot.  Equality Texas a local LGBT group say they’ll defend the ordinance without HRC’s help despite the “bathroom exemption”  because  it is a step in the right direction.

The bathroom issue will always be touchy for many hetro-normative people.  Is HRC making the right decision not helping to fight for this EO that would help all LGBT citizens in Plano, Texas from being discriminated against for housing and employment because the trans community would not be able to use the restrooms of their current gender status?