Posted on 08/21/2003 4:47:51 AM PDT by JesseHousman
A 13-year-old boy in Arkansas dies after a horrific sexual crime but much of the national media ignore the story. Conservative columnists and other critics think they know why — because the boy's accused killers are gay.
"[The media] doesn't want the public to think about homosexuality and pedophilia and torture and the murder of children," says Don Feder, a conservative columnist at the Boston Herald. The boy, Jesse Dirkhising, was bound, drugged, tortured and raped for five hours before he died in 1999.
Last month, a jury convicted Joshua Brown, 23, of rape and murder. Brown was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the maximum sentence. Brown's lover, Davis Carpenter, 39, goes on trial next month.
But the case received little attention in the national media. Critics say that is evidence of pro-gay bias, noting that news organizations gave extensive coverage to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man who was hung on a fence post by two straight men and left to die.
Protesters outside Brown's trial in Bentonville, Ark. held signs that read, "Pro-Gay Media Shame." Conservative and anti-gay groups have made the same argument for months on their Web sites and in their publications.
Their argument was given more weight when it was embraced by one of the country's most provocative gay writers, Andrew Sullivan, in The New Republic.
Sullivan compared media coverage of the two cases, and found what he described as a "staggering" discrepancy. He concluded that the media "hyped" the Shepard case to build support for the inclusion of gays under federal hate crime protection, and ignored the Dirkhising case for fear of feeding anti-gay prejudice.
"I think there is clearly evidence that many in the media decided we're not going to go there because we know it will feed anti-gay prejudice," Sullivan told ABCNEWS.
Editors at the television networks and major newspapers have responded that they covered the Shepard crime because it was part of a national issue — hate crime legislation.
"For a crime story or a murder story, even a horrific and sad one like [that of] Jesse Dirkhising, to be covered by the national press, I think there has to be an issue of larger social significance attached to it," says Martha Moore, a media reporter for USA Today.
Editors say that while it may seem cold, countless rapes and murders — gay and straight — regularly go unreported in the national media because they are not part of a larger issue.
Editors also say that the horrific details of the Dirkhising case made it hard to report.
According to an account Brown gave police after his arrest, he and Carpenter had tied Dirkhising to a bed with duct tape as part of a "game." Then they gave Dirkhising an enema of urine that they had dosed with amitriptyline, an antidepressant and a sedative.
Jesse was gagged with a pair of dirty underwear while Brown raped the boy and Carpenter directed the scene, according to Brown's account. The boy died of suffocation, which Brown said was an accident.
Brown told police he was acting on instructions that Carpenter wrote and drew for him on a pad of paper. Prosecutors plan to use the notes and diagrams as evidence at Carpenter's trial.
Another charge prosecutors intend to make at Carpenter's trial is that the men were planning on other rapes. Prosecutors intend to to submit handwritten short stories that police found in Carpenter's apartment, which were explicit writings envisioning future rapes and tortures, mentioning one local girl by name.
Umm, no, you didn't. Unless, God forbid, you're proffering an unsolicited confession about your private life.
Oh, brother. That's a pretty ironic statement coming from someone who consistently seeks to discredit any scientific conclusions over the last 30 years regarding homosexuality unless it's from NARTH.
This makes them a safety threat to me and my children (and to my genetic survival upon this earth). If they stopped all recruiting activity, that is, returned to the closet totally, then they threat would not be so large.
'Homosexuals' are attacking and trying to destroy the fabric of this society. They are attacking the churches, the boy scouts, the schools etc in an effort to get their perversion normalized. Hate crime laws are a direct attack on me as my religion condemns sexual perversion.
'homosexuals' due to their chosen sexual practices are a public health threat. You don't know what you may catch from them as they are a breeding ground for new deadly diseases (GRIDS etc)
'homosexual' activist pressure to spend scarce research dollars looking for a cure for the self inflicted disease of GRIDS resulting in less dollars being spent on real threats to our health (heart disease cancer etc)
And of course the increased tendency for 'homosexuals' to be serial murderers has already been covered. There's a few for starters.
Of course I'm also in favor of cutting all funds for GRIDS research. GRIDS is a self curing problem.
What’s funny about this statement is you don’t have a clue what “scientific conclusions” you’re talking about. You’re just assuming there are some. Quick, why don’t you Google some up and see if you can defend ONE!
Oh…One more thing, show me ANYWHERE I’ve ever cited NARTH. I’ll save you the trouble, I haven’t. Yet another wrong assumption you take for granted, you are a lemming and shill for things you don’t understand. Grow up and read, there’s more to life than homosexual propaganda.
And of course the increased tendency for 'homosexuals' to be serial murderers has already been covered.
LOL! Correlation, please? How many serial killers have been heterosexual? Their sexual orientation, sorry to say, has nothing to do with it. You're really reaching here. But I'm not sure why that's up for discussion. There's no one here saying we shouldn't lock up murderers.
Now, once again, how do homosexuals cause you any actual harm (not more of your contrived socialistic "health of society" crap)? I'm hard pressed to think of anything.
Sure. But unless you're having sex with someone who's infected, you've got nothing to worry about.
You mean like bisexuals who sleep with your boyfriend and then you get it or syphilis or gonorrhoeae or Chlamydia or any of the other STD’s homosexuals have higher rates of having? Asked and answered, stop digging a bigger hole for your self, you look silly enough. Or is the CDC equal with NARTH too?
And YOU have just won the 'San Francisco Bath-House Soap Retrieval Award' as most tolerant and indifferent FReeper towards pedophilia rape/murder cases.
You'll have to excuse some of us for having the gall to post such cases that the agenda-driven media for the most part FAILS TO REPORT...
Why would you post such a ridiculous statement?
I'm an ultr-conservative and you, sir, are no ultra-conservative.
My blood pressure and physical condition is excellent.
Thank God for that because my "fixation," as you term it, is not unhealthy. Only the practitioners of homosexual thought and behavior are the unhealthy ones.
When someone fails to see the inherent evil in this "movement" they are adherents and promoters of this most dangerous threat to our nation and children.
Read his posts is you don't think he is fixated, you have a comprehension problem.
Ahh yes, anyone who disagrees with you is an adherent and promoter
Careful, your fixation is showing again.
I think you're the same one.
Exactly, go back and read some of your nearly incoherent ranting.
you, sir, are no ultra-conservative.
I certainly am not, and have never claimed to be. I think ultra conservatives are just as likely as lefties to be intransigently and blindly loyal to fringe beliefs and refuse to consider perspectives outside of their own social circle. I do not subscribe to that.
I am a common sense, pragmatic, classic liberal/libertarian and have never claimed to be anything but.
Omitting the "common sense" part of your self-description makes sense.
There should be a website for people of your ilk...Oh, but then there is.
Instead of wasting everyones' time here, trying to reason with your pragmatism, join your like-minded buddies.
Why is it that Libertarians continue to wave the homosexual banner?
By the way: take The Other One with you as it appears he is your alter ego.
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