Update 2004-03-29: Please read my additional comments about this story below.

I've rarely felt this sad or this angry, and never this sad and angry at the same time. I feel like the gay community, to some extent, is like one big extended family, my friends even moreso. So when a friend of a friend is attacked, it's personal; it's an attack on my family. This site is often very much a reaction to continual attacks on my family. And I'm sorry to say this article is a very specific reaction to a very real physical assault on a "cousin" if we use the family analogy.

The young man in question, who has asked not to have his real name used for the sake of his privacy, is a talented and accomplished artist with a keen eye for activism and provocative expression. One of his works which depicts President George W. Bush as the grand wizard of a KKK rally complete with burning cross with rainbow smoke rubbed some pathetic cowards the wrong way.

So they stalked him using information they gathered from LiveJournal, attacked him outside an Atlanta restaurant, cut his hand so as to inflict nerve damage (apparently to prevent him creating any more art their found offensive), sexually assaulted him with a sawed-off broom handle and left him naked and bloody in an alley.

All this because they were so weak and pathetic that they just couldn't cope with a Photoshopped jpeg image. And they had a gang of them against one small guy, hitting him over the head first so he couldn't fight back.

From what he could remember, authorities were able to locate a van that had been stolen from a used car lot in Topeka, Kansas in which his blood was found. If Topeka sounds familiar to you, it may be because that's where Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church who bring us GodHatesFags.com are located. It's far too early to say whether Phelps and his clan had anything to do with this assault, but detectives have found his name posted on several sites of similar ilk.

Because the van is from Kansas, the FBI is briefly involved to transfer the case to that jurisdiction. Now if you're like me, you're now imagining some redneck Kansas cop sitting there on his arse with more motivation to read parking meters than to work on a case of a young gay man who's been assulted in another state by good-ol-boys from your own podunk town. Fortunately, his godfather is a Maryland district attorney; he's cleared his calendar and is flying down to Atlanta and bringing a private investigator with him. I don't even know the man, but by what he's doing, I have the utmost respect for him already. What an amazing guy.

So what do we take away from all of this? For one, yes, attempted murder of gays for their being gay and daring to express themselves still happens in this country. Don't let the American "Family" Association or Focus on the "Family" or the "Family Research" Council lie to you otherwise (and they should know better, since they are responsible for inciting a lot of this violence). Gays are assaulted for being gay and unashamed. They're assaulted by gangs of cowards with knives and blunt objects; so cowardly and subhuman are they that they stalk in the shadows and attack in packs like wild animals, because they are wild animals. (And they're wild animals with some repressed issues; why are these anti-gay hate beasts abducting men, stripping them naked and sodomizing them with objects exactly?)

More importantly, because these are wild animals we're dealing with, it's important to remember to be safe. Creatures like this aren't human beings; they don't reason; they don't know right from wrong. They stalk and attack from the shadows. We can't count on law enforcement to be there to protect us. As he said in his LiveJournal, please don't ever post online where you're going to be at a particular time. It's a damn shame that we have to self-censor and watch our backs, but these are wild animals we're talking about. They have no qualms about using that information to plot an attack.

I know I've got a whole new motivation at the gym now.

Lastly, if anyone in Atlanta has any information or saw anything at all, even the slightest detail that you may think insignificant, please contact the Atlanta Police Department. If you're not comfortable doing that, contact us and I'll pass the information along for you. Please include your contact information if you're comfortable doing that, though I will pass along anonymous information if necessary.

Please keep him in your thoughts (and prayers if applicable). I can't even begin to imagine how traumatizing this experience has been for him. When a member of the family is attacked, the rest of us pull together to support him. That is what love commands us to do now.

---Nick

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