THE TOPIC LATELY SEEMS TO BE ALL ABOUT JUSTICE

I know that it seems  lately that all I’ve done is talk about justice. Justice delayed, justice served, justice publicly perceived to not have been done. This tale is a little bit different.

 

During the summer of 1991, things were starting to look up, relatively speaking, for the GLBT community in Houston. While we were still pretty much sticking to the Montrose area for clubbing and so on, we were able to do it in relative safety. Other places in Houston, as in most big cities, we weren’t as welcome. Sometimes, it literally was as much as your life was worth to go into some of the other neighborhoods. That hot night in July, July 4th, 1991, we all found out just how very dangerous even our relatively safe club venue was.Paul Broussard, a 27 year-old Houston-area banker and Texas A&M alumnus, was beaten and stabbed to death in a gay-bashing outside a Houston nightclub on July 4, 1991 by ten teenaged boys. The youths had driven from the northern Houston suburb of The Woodlands to the heavily gay area of Montrose solely to “beat up some queers,” in the words of one of the convicted teens. All 10 of the young men (Jaime Aguirre, Javier Aguirre, Derrick Attard, Jon Buice, Chance Paul Dillon, Rafael Gonzales, Gayland Randle, Leandro Ramirez, Brian Spake, and Jeffrey Valentine) were the children of privilege. All but three of the attackers were under 17, and the eldest of them (Chance Dillon) was 22. All except Dillon attended McCullough High School in The Woodlands. The Woodland Ten, as they became known, had spent the two days prior to the attack binging on alcohol. Hours before the attack, they piled into two cars and cruised Montrose harassing men they presumed to be gay. They identified their targets by asking directions to Heaven, a popular area gay bar and threw rocks at men who answered with directions.

Paul and his two friends, Cary Anderson and Richard Delaunay, were just blocks away from home when the attackers asked them for directions to Heaven. When the kids got the directions, the 10 attackers jumped out of their cars, attacking all three men with their fists, with steel-toed boots,  with nail-studded two-by-fours, and a knife wielded by Jon Buice. Anderson and Delaunay escaped down a busy street, while Broussard headed down a dead end street where he was wound up cornered by the 10 attackers. Delaunay said the ten young men were cheering and yelling as they attacked Broussard, who suffered abrasions, puncture wounds, a broken rib, bruised testicles, and three stab wounds. As he lay on the ground, almost unconscious, two of his attackers rifled through his pockets and took a comb as a souvenir.

A pocket comb. As a souvenir. Wasn’t that a classy thing to do?

He died in St. Joseph’s Hospital 8 ½ hours later. All ten of these young men were arrested, tried and convicted of murder. It was determined by the Harris County Medical Examiner that John Buice had fatally stabbed Paul Broussard. He received a 45 year sentence. The others, with the exception of Paul Dillon, who received a 20 year sentence, were sentenced to 15 years-and-a-day. All of them, with the exception of John Buice, have been paroled, and in a couple of cases, deported.

Now John Buice is going to be paroled. He’ll be out sometime in October after serving 19 years of his 45 year sentence. NINETEEN YEARS. He hasn’t even been in prison for as long as Paur Broussard was alive. Biggest surprize yet, Buice’s chief advocate is GLBT activist Ray Hill, who has reversed his opinion of both the crime and the young man since Paul Broussard’s murder. Hill, who is also an ex-convict and host of “The Prison Show” on KPFT (Pacifica) radio in Houston, has been strongly advocating for Buice’s release. Hill developed empathy for Buice, he said, after he contacted the killers in an effort to assuage the prejudice I thought they had. “This was not a hate crime,” Hill said when asked about the parole. “We had a bunch of kids drunk and stoned and disappointed they couldn’t get into a gay bar. They drove around looking for trouble. It had more to do with immaturity. . . There never was any intent to hurt or kill gay people.”

WhatEVER, Ray. Whether there was conscious intent or not, that’s what happened, isn’t it?

Buice has said on numerous occasions that he is not homophobic, was not a homophobe on the night of the attack and has close friends and relatives who are gay. Buice also said that the attack had less to do with Broussard’s sexual orientation than with thrill-seeking, male-bonding, peer pressure, and the influence of drugs and alcohol. Almost all of the Woodlands Ten were intoxicated that night. Some, including Jon Buice, had also used marijuana and taken LSD. Buice claimed to have “blacked out” on the night of the attack, and only remembers riding home with Broussard’s blood on his clothes.

WhatEVER, John.

It’s almost always an excuse of some sort for all sorts of atrocious behaviours, from theft to rape to murder: I was immature, I was drunk, I was high, I was bonding, I was (fill in the blank here). Paul Broussard did not die an easy death. His death was horrendous, and he died in terrible pain. This bunch of “immature” kids drove from The Woodlands specifically to beat up, in their own words, “a bunch of queers”. They were organized, they deliberately set out to do exactly what they did – kill a queer – and it’s only because Paul Broussard deliberately ran away from his friends that the two of them are alive right now. The horror of Paul Broussard’s death still lingers in the GLBT community, and there is still a lot of fear, even if it mostly remains unspoken.

I moved to the southwest Houston subdivision where I still live in 1995, and, for a good 10 years, the Camp Fire girls selling candy and the Girl Scouts selling cookies only came to our door on the weekend, in broad daylight, with an adult with them. Now, if one of the moms in the neighborhood can’t find their kiddo/kiddos, they call me and WonderWife first, because the kids are usually here, and, if they aren’t, we usually know exactly where they are – and it is NOT in our beds, either. That’s what they were all afraid of: that we, as out lesbians, were lurking in the bushes, just SLAVERING to debauch their children.

Does John Buice deserve to be paroled after serving less than ½ his sentence? I don’t think so. Yes, I believe in redemption, and I also believe that, given the right impetus, a person IN prison can learn, grow, and change for the better. The “want-to” has to be there, but, yes, I do believe that a person can effect positive changes in their own lives, in or out of prison. O’course, being IN prison does have the wonderful faculty of truly concentrating one’s attention. Do I think John Buice, who is a confessed murderer, has changed and grown and learned? Yes, I do. He’s earned several degrees, including a bachelor’s in psychology. He’s currently classified as a State Approved Trustee, which is a pretty hard thing to earn. He wrote an open letter to the GLBT community when Matthew Shepard was murdered, apologizing for what he did, and seeking forgiveness. Still, I have real reservations about this particular person and this particular case that go beyond the case itself.

Murders like Paul Broussard’s, and Caylee Anthony’s, and the family in Somerville that Anthony Graves was arrested, tried and wrongfully convicted of, leave wounds in a community’s psyche that never really heal. So, do I think that John Buice should be denied parole? Absolutely. Do I think that his only serving 19 years is an abomination? Absolutely. Did the justice system work in this particular case? Both yes and no.

In my own, personal opinion, John Buice’s 19 years is not nearly enough.

A BOMBSHELL, ALL RIGHT – AND JUSTICE WAS SERVED, MOSTLY

I’m just like everybody else in the country, in that I followed the Casey Anthony murder trial just as thoroughly as I and the rest of us – followed the O. J. Simpson murder trial in 1995. Geez, it had ALL the elements that we all love to slobber over, right? Cute little dead 2 year old, slutty-appearing young mom, clueless parents, body thrown out like so much trash, claims of sexual abuse by the young mom, allegations of an accidental drowning and a cover-up, twaddle-dee-dee, twaddle-dee-dum. It was the same kind of situation that makes us all slow down, stop and gawk at accident scenes. And, oh BOY, did the press and all the rest of us WALLOW in it.

Well, today Casey Anthony was acquitted of all charges except 4 misdemeanor counts of making false statements to the police. The jury of five men and seven women, who heard testimony in the month-long trial and deliberated for nearly 11 hours, had a differing viewpoint than the prosecution’s. The relatively quick not guilty verdicts are, to all outward appearances, a rebuke of the government’s case, which lacked any direct evidence of Anthony’s involvement in the death of her daughter, Caylee. In other words, the prosecutors couldn’t prove their case.

Defense Attorney Jose Baez called it a bittersweet victory. “We are happy for Casey; there are no winners in this case. Caylee has passed on far too soon,” he said, referring to Ms. Anthony’s daughter. He’s done his job, which was to create enough reasonable doubt in the juror’s minds that a lesser charge or even an acquittal was possible. He added: “Casey did not murder Caylee. It is that simple, and today our system of justice has not dishonored her memory by a false conviction.”

So, was justice served? Well, yes and no.

There can be no justice for Caylee, just as there really isn’t any justice for Casey. Yes, I know – she was acquitted of all of the major charges, and she’ll probably serve a minimum sentence with the time she’s already been in jail taken into account and deducted from the sentence that she’s going to get for lying to the police. The criminal justice system got this one right, in my NON-lawyer opinion. Yes, the child is dead, and somebody ought to pay for that. However, there really wasn’t any way to make anybody pay for it because the cause of death could never be established. Did Casey Anthony chloroform her kid so she could go out and play? Probably. Did the chloroform cause her death? Again, probably. Was the prosecution able to prove that? Nope. Was the prosecution able to pin the crime on anybody? Again, nope.

The wild accusations of molestation, of accidental drowning, of Grandpa scaring Casey into going along with disposing of the dead child in a garbage bag in a swamp, the wilder insinuations that maybe her brother was really the father of the child, or maybe Grandpa was, or maybe the next-door neighbor’s Martian cellar-dweller – all were laid out for the public’s view. The dueling experts were stunningly stupid, and obviously jealous of their own territories. The parents and the brother were obviously devastated by the death of the baby, their daughter’s arrest for that death, this very public trial, and absolutely flattened by their daughter’s wild accusations against them all. This is, of course, the collateral damage that this sort of circus engenders. This family will never be the same again. All of their lives ended the day that Caylee died, no matter how it happened, or who actually did it. The cover-up and their daughter’s willful lies ended that.

The standards of proof in a felony death penalty case are, as is necessary, high. There can be no i not dotted, no t not crossed, there must be proof far beyond a reasonable doubt, and that was not attained in this case. The prosecution, due to decomposition of the body, couldn’t even prove how Caylee died, just that she was dead and dumped like garbage. The jury had a very tough job to do, and they did it well. Whether or not I personally agree with the verdict has nothing to do with whether or not it was the right one. The state couldn’t prove its case, and the jury obviously agreed with Mr. Baez. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have voted to acquit.

This brings me to another point, one that everybody seems to have forgotten about. Yes, it’s a tragedy when a child – ANY child – is murdered, whether by the parent(s) or by persons unknown. Yes, when this happens, just about every caring, responsible parent in the world wants the state to find and PUNISH the bastard, preferably by removing body parts as painfully as is possible. That’s where all the death penalty hysteria comes in. As I’ve said before and doubtless will say again, I am NOT an advocate of the death penalty. Once upon a time, a LONG time ago, I was; I was a real devotee of “KILL THEM ALL, and let *their* version of god sort them out.”

Well, that’s murder too, isn’t it? And where is the justice in an eye for an eye, if you profess to be any sort of Christian?

The point is that Casey Anthony is now living in a prison that is tighter and more restrictive than anything that the worst nightmares of mankind could ever devise. Regardless of whether or not she actually did kill her child, that child is still dead, and she was still accused of the murder. Remember, “acquittal” is NOT the same thing as “innocent”, and the world around her has already, rightly or wrongly, judged and condemned her as guilty. She’s going to have to live with that for the rest of her life. She’s going to have to live with the knowledge that her child is dead. No matter how many other children she may or may not have, her first-born is dead. No matter how much any of the rest of us might wish for it, there is no justice for either Caylee or her mother – or the rest of the Anthony family. The system worked right this time. Justice was served, this time.

Poor little girls.

WEASELS ON PARADE

WOW, gangers, it’s been an interesting week – AGAIN. I started to title this “STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES”, but that would be an insult to stupid people. So, once again, here is an installment of an ongoing series.

WEASEL OF THE WEEK, #1: Mark Halperin, who made a remark that he knew in advance he shouldn’t, based on Joe Scarborough’s assurance that the 7 second delay was on. Now, calling the President a body part isn’t all that unusual, except that Mr. Halperin is a highly-regarded political analyst who ought – who REALLY ought – to know better. There ain’t no sich thing as a dead microphone, as Jesse Jackson Sr. (and various others) have found out to their cost.

WEASEL OF THE WEEK, #2: Joe Scarborough, who, for whatever reason, assured Mr. Halperin that, yes, the 7 second delay was in force. I guess that both of them were expecting Mr. Halperin’s remark to be bleeped – and, when it wasn’t, eek. Don’t know what Mr. Scarborough is up to, but this wasn’t a good thing. What he should have said was, yes, the 7 second delay is in effect, but if you think you’re going to be bleeped, DON’T SAY IT. Silence, after all, is almost always golden – plus, keeping your mouth shut doesn’t out you as a fool to the general public.

WEASEL OF THE MONTH, #1: Eric Cantor, who is the (Republican) House Majority leader, for walking away from the debt ceiling talks. According to him, he quit the negotiations because he couldn’t agree to tax increases Democrats were pushing despite both parties agreeing on $2 trillion in spending cuts. I don’t get it, I really, REALLY don’t. HOW can you cut spending without RAISING revenues somewhere? What President Obama wants to do is let the Bu$hit regime’s tax cuts expire, and the rates go back to what they were: 35% all the way up to (GASP!) 39%. The Gipper’s rates were about 20 points higher than that, and he’s the Patron Saint of the Republican Party, fer cry-yi-yi!

WEASEL OF THE MONTH, #2: John “I CRY IN PUBLIC BECAUSE I LIKE THE ATTENTION” Boehner, who is not in control of either his caucus or his minions. Unfortunately, he’s just as much of a bottom feeder as Mr. Cantor is, and he’s now “in a relationship” with Mitch McConnell, the minority leader of the Senate. This is really pretty creepy. Ordinarily, the two of them hate each other not-so-cordially, so I’ve got to wonder just what the two of them are up to, given that they’re both afraid of the Tea Party “Patriots”. Fear and politics DOES make for some pretty strange bedfellows.

WEASEL OF THE MONTH, #3: Dr. Marcus Bachman, who is Presidential candidate Michele Bachman’s husband. Apparently, he’s calling himself her “strategist”, and he doesn’t like queers. Of any kind. Dr. Marcus Bachmann runs a Christian-based counseling center in Minnesota that has been rumored to offer reparative treatment for those looking to “ungay” themselves. Last summer, Dr. Bachmann explained his position on homosexuality while offering theoretical advice to parents concerned that one of their children was gay. You can find the rest of his rant here: http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/06/29/257646/bachmanns-husband-calls-homosexuals-barbarians-who-need-to-be-educated-and-disciplined/
Barf bags are optional, and are NOT provided by this writer.

WEASEL OF THE YEAR, #1: Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas. Obviously, he’s not a Federalist, and equally obviously he hates women. Kansas has gone from being the only abortion provider in the US before ROE v WADE, and now they’re one of the states with some of the worst and the stupidest prohibitions on abortions in the nation. Is there really any doubt in anybody’s minds that womens’ rights – ALL womens’ rights – are under attacks that are actually being successful? First Planned Parenthood, and now gynecologists that also do abortions are under attack. Also included in these bills was this nasty little nugget: ANYBODY in the government that wants to can review the medical records of any woman that goes to a gynecologist OR an abortionist. Isn’t that just SWELL?

WEASEL OF THE YEAR, #2: Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. So far, he’s cut funding for all sorts of women’s health initiatives. 7.5 million dollars worth. And this is the second year in a row that he’s done this. I’m not even going to address all the other things that he’s cut, such as education. Mental health services, assistance for the blind, The Children’s Health programs – all of them have come under the knife. Yes, I know that everybody has problems paying their bills – but cutting programs like these is just plain stupid. O’course, Gov. Christie can afford terrific health care for his family, so what does he care if other folks and their families don’t get it?

WEASEL OF THE YEAR, #3: Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser. THIS silly bastard has lost his temper several times, cursing out the Chief Justice, getting a chokehold on one of his colleagues, and violently grabbed a microphone from a local TV reporter seeking to interview him about the prior incident. Funniest damn thing: ALL of them are women. Clearly, this man is deranged and he really, REALLY needs to be removed from the bench. Preferably in a straitjacket.

Y’all have a happy holiday weekend.

WONDERWIFE AND THE COOKIES

My wife, who is normally a rational and intelligent woman, decided the other night that she wanted to make some chocolate chip cookies for herself. I need to explain to you all that she is a wonderful engineer, a terrific electrician, a designer and constructor of structures par excellance – and a not-so-great cook. Not that she’s afraid of the kitchen, oh, NO – but, by mutual decision, we split up the household chores a long time ago, and cooking is not something that she normally does (although, I must say, she makes the best chicken-fried steak in the world – but I digress). I do all of the easy and mundane stuff, like housework, cooking, balancing the checkbook, formulating plans for world peace – y’all know, the inconsequential stuff – and she does all the hard stuff, like designing and building machines that are 50% more energy-efficient and 40% less polluting, holding down an engineering job in a male-dominated profession, starting and successfully running an engineering consultancy that builds factories all over the world – and changing light bulbs.
So, on this eventful evening, we went into the kitchen, took down 60 or so cookbooks (out of the 3 bajillion or so that I’ve collected over the years), and set out to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe that we could find. She finally decided on the one that’s on the back of the chocolate chip package (what a surprize), and we got the ingredients all gathered together, and I left her to her own devices. I went into the living room for some quiet, philosophical time alone (read serious Nintendo playing), and, about 20 minutes later, she came into the living room in tears. Something wasn’t working right and her cookie dough was not turning into cookie “dough”, and she wanted my help.

I went into the kitchen, and looked at the gooey, sticky mess in the bowl, and said ECH, YUCK, and various other wifely sounds of absolute disgust, and asked her how on earth she had managed to concoct such a mess (and a very gooey, slick, oily, nasty-looking mess it was, too). She told me then that she had used cooking oil, like the recipe said to do, and that this was the result. I just looked at her, completely dumbfounded, and asked her if she’d read the recipe. She said that, yes, she had, and since she couldn’t find the solid shortening (or the butter, which was sitting smugly in the butter compartment of the ‘fridge), she’d used what she could find, which was the liquid cooking oil, and that she did not understand why it had turned out so badly. I didn’t laugh in her face – which, believe me, took a lot of doing – and pointed out that solid shortening or butter was required, found the solid shortening for her, and beat a very hasty retreat from the kitchen while she was dealing with the mess and starting over.

So, I can hear you asking, what on earth was the problem? After all, don’t all little girls learn how to cook when they’re very small? Well, yes, under normal circumstances, they do – but there’s a joker in this deck that y’all aren’t aware of. Let me explain:

My wonderful, feminine wife, you see, didn’t start life out as a girl. She is a male-to-female transsexual and started life out as a male – and everyone “knows” that “boys don’t cook”, unless, of course, they’re one of those fags on the Food Channel.

Oh, and the cookies? The second batch? Best darned cookies I ever ate!

 

WONDERWIFE AND THE COOKIES

My wife, who is normally a rational and intelligent woman, decided the other night that she wanted to make some chocolate chip cookies for herself. I need to explain to you all that she is a wonderful engineer, a terrific electrician, a designer and constructor of structures par excellance – and a not-so-great cook. Not that she’s afraid of the kitchen, oh, NO – but, by mutual decision, we split up the household chores a long time ago, and cooking is not something that she normally does (although, I must say, she makes the best chicken-fried steak in the world – but I digress). I do all of the easy and mundane stuff, like housework, cooking, balancing the checkbook, formulating plans for world peace – y’all know, the inconsequential stuff – and she does all the hard stuff, like designing and building machines that are 50% more energy-efficient and 40% less polluting, holding down an engineering job in a male-dominated profession, starting and successfully running an engineering consultancy that builds factories all over the world – and changing light bulbs.
So, on this eventful evening, we went into the kitchen, took down 60 or so cookbooks (out of the 3 bajillion or so that I’ve collected over the years), and set out to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe that we could find. She finally decided on the one that’s on the back of the chocolate chip package (what a surprize), and we got the ingredients all gathered together, and I left her to her own devices. I went into the living room for some quiet, philosophical time alone (read serious Nintendo playing), and, about 20 minutes later, she came into the living room in tears. Something wasn’t working right and her cookie dough was not turning into cookie “dough”, and she wanted my help.

I went into the kitchen, and looked at the gooey, sticky mess in the bowl, and said ECH, YUCK, and various other wifely sounds of absolute disgust, and asked her how on earth she had managed to concoct such a mess (and a very gooey, slick, oily, nasty-looking mess it was, too). She told me then that she had used cooking oil, like the recipe said to do, and that this was the result. I just looked at her, completely dumbfounded, and asked her if she’d read the recipe. She said that, yes, she had, and since she couldn’t find the solid shortening (or the butter, which was sitting smugly in the butter compartment of the ‘fridge), she’d used what she could find, which was the liquid cooking oil, and that she did not understand why it had turned out so badly. I didn’t laugh in her face – which, believe me, took a lot of doing – and pointed out that solid shortening or butter was required, found the solid shortening for her, and beat a very hasty retreat from the kitchen while she was dealing with the mess and starting over.

So, I can hear you asking, what on earth was the problem? After all, don’t all little girls learn how to cook when they’re very small? Well, yes, under normal circumstances, they do – but there’s a joker in this deck that y’all aren’t aware of. Let me explain:

My wonderful, feminine wife, you see, didn’t start life out as a girl. She is a male-to-female transsexual and started life out as a male – and everyone “knows” that “boys don’t cook”, unless, of course, they’re one of those fags on the Food Channel.

Oh, and the cookies? The second batch? Best darned cookies I ever ate!

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