What a hate crime looks like

This week a lesbian couple were attacked outside an Oshawa elementary school as they waited for their children.

The man who attacked the women is being charged with assault, but the women want him charged with a hate crime.

Canada’s hate crime laws only apply when people are advocating genocide or inciting pubic hatred.

To publicly inciting hatred a person must:

* communicate statements, (Does yelling “F------ dyke bitches,” count?)

* in a public place, (Outside an elementary school just as classes are letting out, couldn’t get much more public.)

* incite hatred against an identifiable group, (Against one of few lesbian parents at the school because he thought one of the women talked to his kid.)

* in such a way that there will likely be a breach of the peace. (Hitting people and screaming homophobic slurs doesn’t sound very peaceful.)

Police probably went ahead with the assault charges because that would easily stick. Hate crimes are a lot harder to prove, but there seems very little doubt that this attack was motivated by bigotry.

The truth is men like this are terrified of lesbians.

It could be insecurity because women who want other women are completely independent of men for their needs and push gender equality to a new level.

It could be the same kind of patriarchal entitlement that makes men say they “love” lesbians - you know as long as the lesbians are hot, young, filmed and well, actually more bi-curious than strictly lesbian.

Bigots like this man cannot be allowed to comfortably keep treating gay people as less than people. If we do not stand together as a civilized society and say we must move past this level of intolerance, than honestly we never will.

There will be a rally in support of these battered women in Oshawa north of City Hall at 7 p.m. tomorrow night (Nov. 14).

Comments

[Jason Chamberlain]

Just disgusting and I hope he gets the book thrown at him.