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.
This is a surprisingly candid piece on the disgusting murder of young Jesse Dirkhising by ABC.
I'm certain there are some out there that would like to forget this, but I believe this story about how young Dirkhising was murdered by two sodomites to be poignant and certainly germain to the topic of homosexuals today.
I believe that in a large majority of killings the perpetrator was a homosexual who went from one unnatural way to achieve orgasm to an even more sinister one. In many cases, the homosexual killer murdered large numbers of young boys and in some cases ate his prey.
Being narcissistic, these deviates saw nothing wrong in murdering innocents, because it was to their greater glory to do so.
The more information that the public has available to them, the more they will begin to realize the inherent evil in homosexuals, their acts and their agenda.
Their agenda, of course, is to get their hands on as many of our children as possible.
As a Libertarian, Adams, you should appreciate that.
I would have to disagree. While I don't argue that this crime was as egregious as they come, seeing it posted and re-posted and re-posted is a bit tiresome. Just because you're late coming to the news doesn't mean you should bore the rest of us with another re-post.
I'm also more than weary with the anti-gay zealots here who want to post every story like this ad infinitum just to smear gay people as murderous child molesters.
I searched and saw it hadn't been posted. Please see my comment #7.
There are many, and I'm not saying you're one of them, that would like to see this story dead and buried with young Dirkhising. That being the case, I want to resurrect it.
Many of us get sick and tired of hearing about poor Matthew, hung out to dry on a barbed-wire fence to die of overexposure. It was, in the new PC terminology a Hate Crime. This case is a Hate Crime that will continue on and on because homosexuals are potential killers.
That is indeed what they are and they deserve to be smeared again and again. They are, in fact, potential killers who have murdered thousands over the years for the sake of extreme perversion.
Incidentally, I've said it before, but I posted this because ABC had released it, which I thought most unusual.
Thanks! In the war against the Homosexual Agenda For America, I'm proud to receive this.
Since you must believe that homosexuals constitute a new race of people, you no doubt socialize with homosexuals from time to time and no doubt, on occasion, at home.
Under no circumstances should you allow one to prepare dinner. Occasionally the main course is a shocker.
I believe we are facing the Wrath of God if this nation doesn't repent!
Coming from a True Libertarian, I consider that insult an honor, sir or madame.
"you're gay, Gray, right? Feel like a steambath?"
Here's something to cut out and put under a magnet on your refrigerator.
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