Posted on 10/28/2002 7:47:30 AM PST by chance33_98
Hundreds Mourn Death of Transgender Youth
By JENNIFER KLINE Daily Cal Staff Writer Monday, October 28, 2002
NEWARKApproximately a dozen UC Berkeley students joined a sea of nearly 1,000 somber faces Friday for the funeral of Eddie "Gwen" Araujo, a 17-year-old transgenderist killed earlier this month.
Despite plans by the UC Berkeley group Cal Queers for Social Justice to prevent known anti-gay preacher Rev. Fred Phelps from attending the funeral, neither Phelps nor any anti-gay protesters showed up.
Phelps, who works for a Kansas church that runs an anti-gay Web site, had planned an anti-transgender protest at the funeral with other church members, according to a church statement.
Cal Queers for Social Justice had planned to do whatever they could "to prevent Fred (Phelps) and his followers from attending and turning the funeral into a circus," according to an e-mail circulated among group members.
Newark police had also prepared for a possible confrontation between Phelps and mourners, said Newark police Lt. Tom Milner. More than a dozen police officers stood outside the church.
Though Phelps did not attend the funeral, his statements did not go unnoticed.
"Fred, you make me so sad," read one banner displayed at the funeral.
"I'm very touched but very sad as well that to get so much attention, you have to have someone dead," said Billy Curtis, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Programs and Services Coordinator at UC Berkeley.
Gay pride flags, flowers and banners with messages like "God bless this beautiful angel, Gwen Araujo" adorned the sidewalk near St. Edwards Catholic Church in Newark where the funeral was held.
With the church filled to capacity, many mourners waited outside. Some sang songs by No Doubt, reportedly one of Araujo's favorite bands.
Family members gathered around the coffin after the funeral procession and released 17 butterflies, one for each year of Araujo's life, as onlookers sang "Amazing Grace."
"It's so quiet and peaceful, (which was) not what we expected," said Araujo's aunt.
Members of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition spoke at the funeral, cautioning listeners not to forget Araujo.
"Please remember Gwen (Araujo), and don't forget this is not an isolated case," said Vanessa Foster, the board chair for the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. "This happens at least once a month in this country."
Araujo, who frequently dressed as a woman, was killed at a party Oct. 3 when an attendee reportedly revealed he was biologically male.
His attackers beat and strangled Araujo before driving his body 150 miles outside Newark. The body was discovered two weeks later.
Three men have been charged with murder, and the death has been classified as a hate crime.
"A community's heart is broken; Gwen's family's heart is broken," Foster said. "These kinds of tragedies have to stop immediately. We have to get the education out there so people stop lashing out against those they don't understand."
From the article...
Despite plans by the UC Berkeley group Cal Queers for Social Justice to prevent known anti-gay preacher Rev. Fred Phelps from attending the funeral, neither Phelps nor any anti-gay protesters showed up.
Nobody showed up and protested. Don't, however, let that stop you from your rant. BTW, in my experience from emergency services, homosexual men were much more likely to be attacked by their "lovers" than by "homophobes."
To borrow a page from the DU freaks, maybe Phelps is a disruptor bought and paid for by the gays. He has done nothing but aid (no pun intended) their cause. He may well be gay himself posing as a straight. It is all too convenient ...
There was no mistakenly about it and it's been reported that it went well beyond 'swapping spit'. The guy was passing himself off as a girl and, from pictures, I'd say he was quite convincing. He was a transvestite, not transgendered.
In my humble opinion, these creatures' mere existence is a circus.
There has got to be some kind of operation that can be done to me so that I can be "brought down to size."
"She" played a dangerous game, and got caught. Dead at 17.
You can get the one transgendered person a month killed figure, but you have to count the ones who let themselves get picked up in a bar or sex workers passing themselves off as real women who get discovered by the guys they hae sex with.
Gwen Araujo
'Gay panic' defense in Araujo case
...Defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully at a preliminary hearing to get charges scaled back from murder to manslaughter in the killing of Araujo. Alameda County prosecutors have asked the jury to convict Fremont resident Michael Magidson and Newark resident Jose Merel, who according to testimony had sexual relations with Araujo, of first-degree murder with a hate-crime enhancement, which could earn them 25 years to life.
Co-defendant Jaron Nabors pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and will be sentenced to 11 years in prison in exchange for his testimony. He told the jury his friends became suspicious about Araujo's gender in September, noting that her voice was scratchy and that during sex she had never allowed them to touch her genitals. On the night of Oct. 4, 2002, they forced the issue and learned the biological reality that sent Merel into a sobbing mantra: "I can't be ... gay."
The brutal attack that followed inside the Newark home amounted to "manslaughter in the heat of passion," Magidson's attorney Michael Thorman told the jury. He contended that Magidson's discovery that he had unknowingly engaged in homosexual sex ignited revulsion and rage.
Prosecutors contend there was premeditation in the men's actions. "They decided," said Deputy District Attorney Chris Lamiero, "that the wages of Eddie Araujo's sin of deception were death."...
On October 3, according to police reports, Gwen Araujo, an attractive 17-year-old with a radiant smile and a zest for life, went to a party in Newark, California, a suburban town in the San Francisco Bay Area. She drank a fair amount of beer. She flirted with 24-year-old Jose Merel, a boy she had something of a crush on. She had anal sex with him, and perhaps with Jose's friend, 22-year-old Michael Magidson, as well.
Maybe something about the sex suggested to Jose or to Michael that there was something different about Gwen. For some reason, Jose's brother's girlfriend, Nicole Brown, followed or took Gwen into the bathroom where she discovered that, biologically speaking, Gwen wasn't a girl at all...
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