Author | Doug Greco |
---|---|
Language | English |
Subject | Murder of Norma and Maria Hurtado, American LGBT movement |
Genre | True crime, non-fiction |
Publisher | Gaudium Publishing, an imprint of Histria Books |
Publication date | June 6, 2023 |
Pages | 136 |
ISBN | 9781592112982 (Paperback) |
To Find a Killer: The Homophobic Murders of Norma and Maria Hurtado and the LGBT Rights Movement is a 2023 book by Doug Greco. [1] [2] In 2011, Norma and Maria Hurtado, a lesbian woman and her mother, were shot and killed by Jose Aviles in a homophobic hate crime. [3] [4] Greco was a high school teacher to Norma Hurtado in Austin, Texas ten years prior to the killing, and applies his experience as an organizer with groups including Equality California to explore the crime and its context. [5]
The book received generally positive reviews from critics, [6] [7] distinguishing it from much of the true crime genre for its detailed history of LGBT movements in the United States. [8]
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people frequently experience violence directed toward their sexuality, gender identity, or gender expression. This violence may be enacted by the state, as in laws prescribing punishment for homosexual acts, or by individuals. It may be psychological or physical and motivated by biphobia, gayphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, and transphobia. Influencing factors may be cultural, religious, or political mores and biases.
Matthew Wayne Shepard was a gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He was taken by rescuers to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries received during the attack.
Mary Flora Bell is an English woman who, as a juvenile, killed two preschool-age boys in Scotswood, an inner suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1968. Bell committed her first killing when she was ten years old. In both instances, Bell informed her victim that he had a sore throat, which she would massage before proceeding to strangle him.
Brian Williamson was a Jamaican gay rights activist who co-founded the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG). He was known for being one of the earliest openly gay men in Jamaican society and one of its best known gay rights activists.
Lenford "Steve" Harvey was a Jamaican activist who campaigned for the rights of those living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaican society. In November 2005, he was abducted from his home and murdered in a robbery that some commentators believed was also a homophobic hate crime. Harvey, an openly gay man, had worked for Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL), since 1997 becoming the group's coordinator for Kingston. In this position, he focused on distributing information and services surrounding HIV/AIDS to the most marginalised sectors of Jamaican society, among them prisoners, sex workers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. In 2005, he was selected as Jamaica's project coordinator for the Latin America and Caribbean Council of AIDS Service Organizations. Harvey was praised for his work. According to Peter Tatchell of the British LGBT rights organisation OutRage!, "It is thanks to the efforts of Steve and his colleagues that many Jamaican men and women - both gay and straight - have not contracted HIV. They have helped save hundreds of lives."
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in Jamaica face legal and social issues not experienced by non-LGBT people. Consensual sexual intercourse between same-sex partners is legally punishable by imprisonment.
In the Russian Federation, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people face significant challenges not experienced by others. Although sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex is legal, homosexuality is disapproved of by most of the population and pro-LGBT advocacy groups are deemed extremist and banned. It is illegal for individuals to "promote homosexuality" and same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are ineligible for the legal protections available to opposite-sex couples. Russia provides no anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and does not have a designation for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Transgender people are not allowed to change their legal gender and all gender-affirming care is banned. There are currently no laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression, and recent laws could be used to discriminate against transgender residents.
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, may be based on irrational fear and may sometimes be related to religious beliefs.
Paul Broussard (1964–1991), a 27-year-old Houston-area banker and Texas A&M alumnus, died after a gay bashing incident outside a Houston nightclub in the early hours of July 4, 1991. Nine teenaged youths, ages 15–17, and one 22-year-old were intoxicated on drugs and alcohol when they left a high school party in the suburb of The Woodlands and headed for Houston's heavily gay Montrose area in an attempt to gain admittance to dance clubs located in the vicinity.
Dana Sue Gray is an American serial killer who murdered three elderly women in 1994. She was caught after a fourth intended victim survived and identified her. Gray says she committed the murders to support her spending habits. She is serving her sentence in the California Women's Prison in Chowchilla.
Corrective rape, also called curative rape or homophobic rape, is a hate crime in which one or more people are raped because of their perceived sexual orientation, such as homosexuality or bisexuality. The common intended consequence of the rape, as claimed by the perpetrator, is to turn the person heterosexual.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United Kingdom is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex individuals (LGBTQI), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United Kingdom. Those targeted by such violence are perceived to violate heteronormative rules and religious beliefs and contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBTQI may also be targeted.
The history of violence against LGBT people in the United States is made up of assaults on gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender individuals (LGBT), legal responses to such violence, and hate crime statistics in the United States of America. The people who are the targets of such violence are believed to violate heteronormative rules and they are also believed to contravene perceived protocols of gender and sexual roles. People who are perceived to be LGBT may also be targeted for violence. Violence can also occur between couples who are of the same sex, with statistics showing that violence among female same-sex couples is more common than it is among couples of the opposite sex, but male same-sex violence is less common.
Dwayne Jones was a Jamaican 16-year-old boy who was killed by a violent mob in Montego Bay in 2013, after he attended a dance party dressed in women's clothing. The incident attracted national and international media attention and brought increased scrutiny to the status of LGBT rights in Jamaica.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a 2023 American epic western crime drama film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese. Eric Roth and Scorsese based their screenplay on the 2017 non-fiction book by David Grann. Set in 1920s Oklahoma, it focuses on a series of murders of Osage members and relations in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered on tribal land. The tribal members had retained mineral rights on their reservation, but a corrupt local political boss sought to steal the tribal members' wealth.
On January 10, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was found dead in a park in Orange County, California, eight days after having been reported missing. He was visiting his family in Lake Forest, California, when he was killed. He had been stabbed nineteen times. Two days later, Samuel Woodward, one of Bernstein's former high school classmates and a member of neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division, was arrested and charged with murdering Bernstein. As Bernstein was both openly gay and Jewish, authorities declared that Bernstein was a victim of a hate crime. Five deaths had links to the Atomwaffen Division over eight months from 2017 to early 2018.
The gay gang murders are a series of suspected anti-LGBT hate crimes perpetrated by large gangs of youths in Sydney, between 1970 and 2010, with most occurring in 1989 and 1990. The majority of these occurred at local gay beats, and were known to the police as locations where gangs of teenagers targeted homosexuals and trans individuals. In particular, many deaths are associated with the cliffs of Marks Park, Tamarama, where the victims would allegedly be thrown or herded off the cliffs to their deaths. As many as 88 gay men were murdered by these groups in the period, with many of the deaths unreported, considered accidents or suicides at the time.
On 12 October 2022, two people were killed, and a third person was wounded, in a shooting outside of the front enterance of Tepláren, a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, a well-known spot frequented by the local LGBT community. The shooting claimed two victims,: Juraj Vankulič, a non-binary person, and Matúš Horváth, who was a bisexual man. The perpetrator was found dead by a self-inflicted gunshot, the morning after the attack.
There have been two recorded fatal shootings at gay bars in the U.S. state of Virginia which contribute to the history of violence against LGBT people in the United States.