A California man who was viciously attacked by assailants uttering anti-gay epithets was left with a shattered eye socket and broken nose was reportedly informed that he won’t see the men who pummeled him charged with a hate crime--because he isn’t gay. The victim’s father was reportedly told that the fact that the victim is heterosexual would preclude bias crime charges. A district attorney’s office prosecutor disagrees.
The victim, Cory Case, a resident of Corona Del Mar, Calif., is a singer and songwriter. He fell asleep at a Halloween party and when he woke up, it was to discover that someone had scrawled the words "I’m Gay" across his arm, along with an obscene drawing, local newspaper the Orange County Register reported on Nov. 10.
That’s when two men attacked him, the article said, striking him in the face with the words, ""This guy’s a fag!" One of them struck Case in the head near the eye, knocking him unconscious; he did not see whether the blow came from a fist or a weapon, but authorities theorize that a baseball bat or something similar was used in the attack. Case came to about half an hour later, the article said, to find that he had been dragged out of the house and left on the lawn. No one had contacted the police or emergency medical services.
Police told Philip Case, Cory’s father, that hate crimes charges would only apply if Cory really had been gay. Deputy District Attorney Israel Claustro disputed that, telling the newspaper, "Courts have held that’s it’s the perception of the suspect that is punishable, and not whether a victim actually is homosexual or not."
No arrests have been made in connection with the attack, but Philip Case is a lawyer and is determined to secure justice for his son. Facebook photos of the men Cory thinks attacked him have already provided one possible lead.
The incident is a reminder of the prevalence of anti-gay sentiment and the violence it can prompt. It also illustrates an often-overlooked facet of hate crimes: the perpetrators may set out to attack a person they perceive is gay, but sometimes they get it wrong.
A March 31, 2009 EDGE article on straight victims of gay bashers noted that when straights are attacked by would-be gay bashers, it often leads to more media attention than when gays suffer violence at the hands of bias-driven attackers. The head of the Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, Sharon Staple, told EDGE, "Empathy for a victim whose innocence becomes all the more pronounced, considering they were chosen on a false premise, is part of the reason why cases where perception--and not actual sexual orientation--get the most attention."
However, Staple noted, when straights are attacked by mistaken homophobes, the impact on the wider community is that much deeper because it brings to light the sinister fact that violence, whoever it targets, affects everyone. Such attacks cause people to "stop and say this could happen to any of us, because it’s not about who we are," Staple said. "It’s about who the perpetrator thinks we are." On such occasions, "we can come together as a community and to say this isn’t right," added Staple. "This sort of violence shouldn’t happen to anybody."
One high profile case of an anti-gay attack that targeted straight victims unfolded two years ago, on Dec. 7, 2008, when two brothers from Ecuador, José and Romel Sucuzhañay, were assaulted by two men as they walked down a street in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The brothers had been out late following a church function; as they walked home in the frigid night, the brothers threw their arms around one another and drew close to keep warm. That, evidently, served as the cue for their attackers, one of whom chased Romel while the other beat José with a baseball bat. José later died.
In that case, the fact that José was heterosexual did not stop his killer, Keith Phoenix, from being found guilty of murder as a hate crime and sentenced to 37 years to life in prison. The other assailant, Hakim Scott, was sentenced to forty years.
Gender Public Advocacy Coalition executive director Riki Wilchins told the Associated Press at the time of Sucuzhañay’s murder that violence against gays is often carried out by groups of young men who select their targets based on a perception of effeminacy. They also target trans individuals. "These assailants are looking to eradicate and exterminate something that enrages them, and that is what makes them hate crimes," said Wilchins.
Stapel agreed, telling the Associated Press in a Dec. 12, 2008, article that anti-gay violence was spiking, in part, because 2008 was an election year that featured high-profile anti-gay ballot initiatives, including the extremely divisive Proposition 8 campaign, California’s voter-approved repeal of previously-existing marriage rights for gays and lesbians.
"Election years are always violent years for us because of wedge issues," explained Stapel. "With increased visibility comes increased vulnerability to LGBT stereotypes and violence. We’ve seen some of the most violent hate crimes that we’ve seen in a while" during the 2008 election cycle."
In Britain, another high-profile case of straights suffering anti-gay attacks was the result of two heterosexual friends on a reality TV program being mistaken for gay men by viewers.
A site dedicated to local news, thisisbristol.co.uk, reported on April 21 that the TV series, titled Coach Trip, often features couples competing against other couples during a journey to various European destinations. Each week, one couple is voted off the bus. The two men, Romane Hole and Nathan Evans, are both straight and are just friends, but they jokingly held hands when they boarded the bus at the start of the journey, which commenced in Athens.
"We had no idea how gay we were going to look by holding hands," said Evans. "Then all the way through the series, the [episodes] seem to have been edited to make us look as if we are a homosexual couple, rather than a pair of straight friends."
Though the men were on the bus through to the end of the program’s last season, that also meant that they are in every episode--and viewers saw them every week. Some viewers not only got the wrong idea about the men, but allegedly acted in violently homophobic ways based on that impression.
"Ever since that first episode appeared on the television, we have suffered name-calling and constant verbal abuse in the streets--mostly from gangs of teenagers, who seem to think it’s funny to call us gay," said Hole, adding that, "at its worst, the abuse has included physical attacks. I had a bottle thrown at me as I was walking down Park Street last week, while the attackers shouted homophobic abuse at me."
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