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Profile:
Nancy Lynch
Taking Names
Taking Names
GLBT Groups
Are Tracking Those Who Hate Us
by Euan Bear
Burlington
– Dorothea Brauer is usually a cheerful soul in her job as the director
of LGBTQA Services at the University of Vermont. Two things get her steamed:
administrative foot-dragging on issues of protecting human rights (see
"Silenced Minority," March, 2005, OITM), and anyone
threatening the lives of the students she is charged with assisting.
At last month's Translating Identity Conference,
a protester appeared to do just that. Michael Sweeney stood outside the
University's Billings Student Center carrying a large cardboard sign.
On the sign, according to those who witnessed it, were a photo of Ethan
Fechter-Leggett, the vice-president of Free to Be, which sponsored and
presented the conference, and a message reading, "You might be here
now, but you won't be for long." Another transman's photo was on
the poster as well. The photos were reportedly obtained from images posted
on the World Wide Web.
Another man, John Long, was identified
as the protester at the Queer Liberation Army's "Kiss-In" demonstration
on the Church Street Marketplace on Valentine's Day. The sign he held
read "Queers + Meth = AIDS = Death." Brauer has two emails from
Long, one sent to the QLA before the demonstration, and another sent afterward,
to the weekly publication Seven Days. The first he signed "D.T.Q."
Dot Brauer says it means "Death to Queers." Seven Days
declined to publish the letter it received, but sent it to the QLA, who
shared both letters with Brauer in response to her call for information
on potential threats to members of the LGBTQ communities. Members of the
QLA include students and faculty at the university.
Long has two public access television
programs on Adelphia cable – How Do You Like Me Now and
Kartoon Klonopins – where he has broadcast such things
as a drawing of Hillary Clinton with a buzz saw between her legs. The
access channel's board last month declined to remove or censor the violent
content of the shows when teachers and parents objected to his broadcast
of hostage beheadings by Iraqi insurgents. According to R.U.1.2? Queer
Community Center staff member and long time lesbian activist Peggy Luhrs,
Long pinned a "nasty" cartoon drawing of her and another woman
to her house a few years ago. "I didn't feel good with him knowing
where I live," Luhrs said. "But he's been around a long time
without having done anything too violent."
According to SafeSpace Program Coordinator
Hannah Hauser, Long burned a rainbow flag at the Transgender Day of Remembrance
last November. "Burning a flag is 'you could be next,'" Hauser
said. "'Death to Queers' is very specific. Free speech is not the
same as hate speech. It sends a message to the community: 'you should
be afraid.'"
Both Long and Sweeney are known to the Burlington
Police, according to Mary Ann McAllister, the police department’s
victim advocate. But, she added, the police can do nothing until a crime
occurs. She said that now that the same officers patrol the same areas,
it’s much easier to be alert for troublemakers, and that officers
share such information at roll call. She recommended that event organizers
pass along names of known anti-gay protesters when they apply for their
permits.
Brauer has received other materials she
has identified as potentially threatening from Michael Johnson of Fairlee,
Vermont. Publishing in "The Geopolitical Strategist," Johnson
argues, among other assertions, that the homosexual agenda is a Stalinist
plot that led to the rise – and ultimate defeat – of Nazism
in Germany and will destroy the United States as well.
"The gay community does not recognize
that it will be double-crossed, ambushed, and undergo a bloody slaughter
that will be directly proportional to the degree of its successful advancement
of the homosexual agenda," Johnson writes in a commentary from volume
20, number 3, dated in October of last year.
" What raises flags is when they take
action to interfere with others' lives, and how important [opposing LGBTQ]
is to them, how much they feel like they are 'saving the world,'"
Brauer explained. "Using Ethan's photograph crossed over a line.
We have an obligation to respond to a person who is creating a hostile
climate or harassing" someone.
Lluvia Mulvaney-Stanak is no stranger to
hate mail. The co-director of Outright Vermont says the agency has received
plenty. "Our archive project is just getting started, so I can't
exactly tell you how many boxes. But it's not so much the amount but the
intent of these letters," Mulvaney-Stanak said.
She said that each time a gay event makes
national news, a fresh crop of hate arrives via letter or email. When
Gene Robinson was ordained as an Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire, "we
got a ton of hate mail." Nonetheless, Mulvaney-Stanak said, Outright
Vermont "is not feeling more threatened than usual."
Switching to her Queer Liberation Army persona,
Mulvaney-Stanak said that anti-QLA protester John Long "is on our
agenda." The QLA's strategy, she said, is "to ignore, to not
engage, or to incorporate protests into our street theatre. We want to
do a lot more as the weather gets warmer, and nobody ever wants to play
the role of 'hate.' But if we have a volunteer..."
The QLA's other strategy is to document
incidents. The organization sent their information on John Long to SafeSpace.
Asked whether they have any free-speech qualms about tracking and reporting
on anti-gay protesters, Mulvaney-Stanak said no. "The difference
is the intent. These people are not like people protesting for peace,
or equal rights or even pro-choice for abortion. Those [protesters] are
not advocating anything hurtful, they're not using words like 'evil' or
being hateful. They're not being threatening.
"There's a big difference," Mulvaney-Stanak
continued, "between someone who says 'Death to All Queers' and someone
who says 'Leave the Bible Out of the Classroom.'"
SafeSpace documents incidents
of public harassment and hate-motivated incidents as well as public and
private violence and sexual assault. Contact them at 802-863-0003 or www.safespacevt.org