[chance33_98]

"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."

Great. Education. Why don't we also educate people on whites and christians, seems to me they are pretty well misunderstood and hated too. Christians, like gays, are not all perfect. Just like there are lots of types of gay people there are a lot of different sects of religion, and different groups/cultures of whites.

I say we need a white pride flag - we can hang them from our houses, wear them to work, have white pride parades, and fly the flag all over the place.

And while we're at it we will have 'white money' (see earlier article on gay money), white plays where the focus is not on the people in the play but their whiteness and how important it is, etc

[Blood of Tyrants]

Isn't it funny how people who choose to live as if there is no God turn to Him for comfort at times of tragedy? Phelps is a disgrace to the whole idea of "Hate the sin but love the sinner" and I have no doubt that he will be judged just as harshly as God haters/ perversion lovers of UC Berkley.

[ikka]

Yes we need education. Moral education. This poor kid never had someone in a position of authority tell him that what he was doing was just plain wrong. Instead, they let him do his own thing and now he is dead.

[SkyPilot]

-"We need more education"

Read: indoctrination and bullying tactics by homosexuals

[FormerLurker]

Araujo, who frequently dressed as a woman, was killed at a party Oct. 3 when an attendee reportedly revealed he was biologically male.

I wonder if Araujo had been mistaken for a hot chic and was making out with "one of the guys"? Not saying that it would justify a lethal beating, but I could see why someone might get upset if they just found out that they were swapping spit with another man...

[FreeTally]

"This happens at least once a month in this country."

A cross-dresser is brutally murdered once a month? Yeh, ok.

[ellery]

It makes me absolutely sick to my stomach to see Christians protesting at funerals -- especially of those who were brutally murdered. If people like Phelps can muster no compassion for the victim, you would think he could at least respect the sorrow of the victim's loved ones. Or does their bible say only SOME humans are God's children? Good Christians should condemn funeral protests as strongly as good Muslims should condemn celebrations of terrorist acts.

[Paul Atreides]

However, no fanfare and calls for education concerning the two homos who raped and murdered that little boy, Jesse.

[foolscap]

This happens at least once a month in this country."

Ok for the heck of it let's say this factoid is true. That means there are 12 people per year killed by screaming bigoted homophobes. How many millons of people are there in this country? And of them how many are transgender? Does it not seem to you that if killing people for being transgender was a widespread social problem there would be more than 12 dead per year? Does this really reqiure more eduaction or can we just add this up to the fact that some people don't know how to act right may well have killed them even if they were not transgender.

[montag813]

Three men have been charged with murder, and the death has been classified as a hate crime.

I guess all other murders must be "love" crimes.

[headsonpikes]

"A community's heart is broken..."

And their brain ain't in such great shape, either.

[weegee]

I have not seen any reports that he took hormones or surgically altered his appearance so he is not "transgendered" (a false notion in and of itself); he was a transvestite. A man who got a sexual thrill out of the fetish of dressing up in the culturally designed manner of dress of a woman.

We are born naked. There is no genetic characteristic to choose to wear a kilt, a mumu, a dress, a skirt, pants, overalls, a suit, shorts, etc.

He had psychological issues. That he tried to spring his sexual kink on complete strangers added to the allure for him. No one deserves to be assaulted but by the same token, if "she" had performed oral sex on a straight male at the party, would it be considered an act of rape or is it "consensual"?

There are numerous accounts of adults who dress as members of the opposite sex and attend high schools in such guise. But we can't question such predatory action.

[MEGoody]

I'm certainly glad Rev. Phelps and his church members did not protest this funeral. I am quite bold about saying that homosexuality, transgenderism and all such 'activities' are sin in the eyes of God. But protesting a funeral is a sin of another sort. Let the family grieve.

[verity]

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,"

In my humble opinion, these creatures' mere existence is a circus.

[SamAdams76]

Hi. I'm a short person trapped inside the body of a tall person. What can be done for my self-esteem? Are there any government programs out there that can help me? Mean-spirited people go around asking me "how the weather is up there." You people just don't understand just how cruel that is, especially since I go to bed fantasizing everynight about how it would feel if I were 5'6" instead of 6'3".

There has got to be some kind of operation that can be done to me so that I can be "brought down to size."

[WaltStringer]

Maybe "Gwen" would still be alive and have gone on to eventually have "her" sex change operation some years down the road if "she" had not engaged in casual anal sex with guys who didn't know "her" true status...

"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."...

R.I.P. GWEN ARAUJO

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...