Well, i can speak for neither African Americans nor gays, but i completely agree with you.
While i think it’s completely inappropriate to use racial and homophobic epithets to insult someone, or to refer to someone in general conversation, i don’t think we should shy away from using the words in cases where their use is appropriate to a proper understanding of an event, or a discussion of racism or homophobia. The guy in this case called his victim a faggot. We shouldn’t shy away from that by writing f----t. It doesn’t really change anything, because anyone who reads it knows what the word is anyway.
Similarly, when i teach about slavery, or about ideas of racial supremacy in America during the Civil Rights era, i refuse to use the term “the ‘n’ word” in place of nigger. Plenty of people in American history, north and south, have been very comfortable referring to African Americans as niggers, and i think that making this clear to students is better than papering it over with euphemisms. The students themselves are always a little shocked the first time the word comes out of my mouth, but i think that historians have an obligation not to censor the reality just because it makes some people uncomfortable.
As a semi-related aside, i feel the same with writing profanity like “s–t” and “f–k.” If you’re too precious to write the whole word out, then omit it altogether.
The evidence must exclude all reasonable hypotheses other than one that support guilt.
It’s in this second area that the new dialog is key. The first dialog might let the jury think that the victim was selected because he was gay, but it didn’t eliminate the alternate reasonable inference that the pair simply chose a bar and waited in the restroom for a victim, with no thought of gay or straight. They may have commented on his sexuality after they saw him, in other words, but incidentally to the robbery attempt.
The revised version eliminates that possibility. If believed, that shows that they KNEW they were in a gay bar and removes the reasonable inference that they were simply picking a bar restroom.
One can be well aware that one is in a gay bar without having chosen that bar specifically because it was a gay bar. I’ve been in Irish pubs in New York City, even on occasions when i did not go out specifically seeking an Irish pub.
Similarly, if i wanted to rob someone in a bar, and chose to scope out the bar first, i would probably be well aware of what type of bar it was. It could be a gay bar, an Irish pub, a stock-broker’s bar, or whatever. But it would not necessarily follow that i had chosen that bar because of its particular clientele. It might, for example, simply be the closest bar to the subway where i intend to make my escape, or the closest bar to the West Side Highway where my accomplice is waiting in our getaway car.
Maybe, but i still really don’t see how that slightly new circumstances allow you to make such a confident shift in your conclusions.
I understand the distinction you’re drawing, i simply don’t agree with you. I find the first scenario just as convincing regarding the thug’s motivations.
But that’s not the right question to be asking. Sure, a reasonable jury COULD find either scenario convincing.
Before, though, a reasonable jury couldn’t point to any evidence that let them exclude the innocent explanation. Before, it wasn’t “competing evidence, and we believe this version.” It was, “There is no evidence that lets us make the leap.”
B) The Stonewall Riots were precipitated by a gay bashing - in this case, by police against the patrons of the bar. The Stonewall Inn, therefore, is specifically famous due to violence committed against homosexuals. So another act of violence committed against a homosexual there is not remotely ironic, even in the most degraded sense of term.
My sentiments precisely. It’s fair to call it a gay bashing and it’s enough to prosecute them for attacking a guy for his money. I’m just glad the victim is going to be okay.
Not seeing either the joke, or the seriousness, of this reference.
The link is a clip of In Living Color featuring Jim Carrey as a patron at a fast food restaurant who announces repeatedly to the staff and other patrons that he’s gay, to their general indifference.
So… not sure I see the humor, if you meant it as a joke, and not sure I see the relevance if you meant to make a serious point.
It’s an idle non-sequitur to be sure and one purely provoked by word association, but since there was already an ongoing Alanis Morrisette thing happening I didn’t think it would derail the serious discussion much.
Although if you’d like to discuss how dated it is in terms of gay-themed humor I’m happy to start a new (serious) thread on it.
Although it’s not really ironic according to the strict definition of the term, I can see what the OP was getting at.
The Stonewall Inn, the site of a riot that was the start of the movement towards gays demanding their rights, including the right not to be subject to violence and other persecution for being gay, is still the site of violence and persecution for being gay40 years later.
