12 Crimes That Changed The LGBT World
The Advocate has covered the LGBT community for 45 years, and these crimes won’t soon be forgotten.
Last March, when gay 24-year-old Daniel Zamudio was beaten so severely, after having swastikas carved into his skin, that he died in the hospital three weeks later, the brutal murder shocked Chileans and spurred the government there to fast track anti-LGBT discrimination legislation. A lawyer for Zamudio’s family, Jaime Silva, told the Christian Science Monitor that the crime was “the most brutal attack we’ve seen since the days of the dictatorship.” As soon as news hit American shores, Zamudio was being called South America’s Matthew Shepard, and his murder a stark reminder of the crimes that have shaken LGBT folks, especially in the U.S., over the last 50 years.
As more than 70 countries prepare to memorialize the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia on May 17, criminalists, activists, and survivors in many cities been discussing ways to deal with crimes against — and occasionally by — LGBT folks. There have been more than 600 reports of murdered trans people in almost 50 countries since January 2008 (including killings this year in Detroit, D.C., Florida, and California), and there was an overall 13% increase (in 2010, the most recently recorded year) in violent crimes committed against LGBT or HIV-positive people, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Some murders are so iconic they’re steeped in popular culture: Brandon Teena, murdered by his rapists in Nebraska in 1993; Angie Zapata, a trans woman killed by a transphobic boyfriend (Zapata’s murderer was later tried on hate crime charges, a first for a transgender victim). But there are others who slip under the radar; some in which victims’ families never find justice — like Martha Oleman, a lesbian killed in Sugarcreek Township in 1997, her murder part of Ohio’s cold case files — and others in which police action is swift but resolution remains murky.
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/advocate-45/2012/05/07/12-crimes-changed-lgbt-world
