As well as the KTVU story and raw footage showing the police in riot gear, and the written testimony, there is now posted at Youtube this video that opens with the direct testimony of one of the Christian girls. She says they were repeatedly told "We're going to kill you."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
8 comments:
Oh, I find it highly ironic that you'd put this on a blog called "Perpetua of Carthage." I know about Perpetua and nothing near to what happened to her, Felicitas and the other Christians who suffered in 203 AD happened to this young woman.
This is just grandstanding by a group of people who are in San Francisco, by their own admission (go to JHOP's website) to confront people about homosexuality and abortion. They went into the Castro, they knew they were going to get harassed, they sought out what happened and now they claim to be "martyrs." What a joke and what an insult to Perpetua and Felicitas.
You should be ashamed for promoting such claptrap.
Hi mirele,
Thank you for stopping by. Did you get a chance to listen to the video? The girl says:
1) That they were not confronting people but standing in a circle singing hymns. They were not witnessing or preaching.
2) That they had done this before and nothing bad had happened. They did not know this was going to happen.
3) They had hot coffee poured in their faces, one of the girls was shoved to the ground and kicked, one had her pants pulled down and objects shoved into her rear end, they were repeated told "We're going to kill you." Sounds like a Hate Crime against Christians to me.
With regard to a similarity to Perpetua, there is an ironic similarity, now that you mention it. The same argument was made about Perpetua's small band:
they sought out what happened and now they claim to be "martyrs."
Her father begged her to just deny being a Christian and the whole thing would go away. And the Romans begged her to just deny being a Christian. But, oh no, she just had to hold her ground.
I may have missed it, but I only heard her say she was starting to think she was going to be martyred, not boasting to be a martyr. From looking at their website, though, the one thing that stood out the most was their sense of compassion. Nobody is slammed, slandered, or condemned. Though they do acknowledge, basically, that following our own inclinations can be deadly, their aim is to save all they can from that death rather than throw rocks at the dying.
When you close your eyes tonight, please remember that the God who is really there really loves you. Not once you "clean up your act," but right now, and he's looking to hear from you. Enjoy life. Enjoy knowing God!
The true irony of this is that homosexuals, bisexuals, transgender and transvestites have to put up with this kind of crap (and worse, much worse) every day of our lifes. I don't like what the crowd did but I certainly can understand it after beeing called sick, insane, pervert etc and having things thrown at me and beeing chased down the street by mobs both around my home, out on town and at work. This for no other reason than beeing gay, I'm not even all that obvious. I have had four friends die in the last two years from attacks by people who quoted the bible in their defense and several friends have committed suicide after beeing harassed by family-members.
The Castro is a symbolic peace-zone, a place to be yourself in a world that hates us. I can imagine peoples feelings when a lot of do-gooders stand around singing and you know how they feel about you. What happened was not right by any means but then .. we don't come to your churches.
Some threw hot coffee in their faces? Life sucks, get a helmet.
Hello karl,
While I am very sorry to read of the harassment you claim you have received, I am also disturbed to see the lack of empathy for others displayed in your remarks and the inability to make a distinction between public and private property.
I see you live in Sweden. The assault in the Castro described in the video of this post occurred on a public street. Your remarks fail to make a distinction between public streets and private property, like churches. The crowd in the Castro was treating the public street as if it were there private property., and the police essentially allowed this.
I was very surprised to read that the sort of harassment you describe is occurring in Sweden at this time. Can you give us any details that we can use to verify your claims?
I am also deeply shocked that four of your friends have died in the last two years from attacks by people who quoted the bible in their defense. Was this also in Sweden? Such things are very rare in the United States and well publicized when they do occur. Can you give us any details that we can use to verify your claims?
Hi, Perpetua. Thank you for your sympathy.
I meen no disrespect for what happened in Castro, it was wrong to attack them. I empathise with both sides in this (perhaps a little more with one ;). I wrote in my blog about this recently and describe it as beeing a violation of democratic and human rights on behalf of the attacked. However I can't help but think of the crossbearing, biblequoting demonstrators at pride almost every year.
As for public and private property It's a bit different here but I understand your distinction. In Sweden most churches are open to the public and permit must be saught in order to organize demonstrations and public meetings. A gathering like the one in Castro would never have been passed as it would have been seen as an open provocation wich could have ended in violence.
Sweden is by no way a perfect place and bad things do happen (but I do pride myself with living in the best little oblong nation in the world :). About 2 men are murdered every year obviously for beeing gay. It's impossible to say if it's better or worse than the United States since the statistics are done differently and legislation differs. For instance I understand there is no hatecrime legislation. Newsreporting here seldom take up the aspect of hatecrimes except when sensational, I hear this is similar in the US.
Beeing as involved as I am in gayrights I ofcourse get a larger share of bad news.
Earlier this year the chairman of the RFSL youth (gayrights youth-organization) here in Gothenburg committed suicide at the age of 19 after years of harassment. Last year he had been attacked and badly beaten by two men who later claimed they did it because he "acted like a girl". He was a friend of mine and we had mutual friends. It was terrible to see everyone the next day. We all knew the story and why it happened but there's always a feeling you can do more.
Then there was that serialkiller in Stockholm and Malmö but I'm not going in to that.
When I came out at work a few years ago I started getting deaththreats on my home- and work-phone. I can no longer have a landline or traceble cellphone because of this.
At Stockholm Pride two years ago me and my date were walking back hand in hand from a beach when two men and two women (all aprox 19-25 yo) came at us without provocation. The men spoke to each other and looked at us and brought out a couple of knives. As they approached I took out my peppersprays, they stopped and we had a silent standoff while staring at each other and then they left after the women started complaining but we didn't dare turn our backs on them. This sort of thing is more or less to be expected at Pride, someone always gets beaten up and someone always throws faeces on people or property.
The rest I'm not intending to go into on a public blog. Very little of this has been reported in the news but here are some other articles from pinknews:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-8514.html
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-9111.html
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-8546.html
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-8456.html
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-6317.html
Strangely, if you google for "hatecrime homosex sweden news" you mostly get Ake Green and how hatecrime-laws would conflict with religious freedom in the US. The same search in swedish "hatbrott homosex nyhet" delivers mostly articles on people attacked. I recommend looking around a bit.
Also, ask any gay man over the age of 40 how many friends he's lost to HIV, suicide and murder. I don't know anyone who hasn't. I've only met one guy who had no such experiences.
While the attack in Castro was wrong by any legal definition any gay, lesbian, bi or transgender knows there are places you just don't go, especially after dark. And if you do most people will say you had it comming and that applies all the time.
I empathize with the folks that may have allegedly been injured. And I agree that it was public property that these people were on.
However, the Castro district is the ONE place that gays, lesbians, transgender folks move to in order to escape bigotry and hatred that exists everywhere else. It IS the one place where being gay/lesbian/transgender is the MAJORITY and not the minority. IT IS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD and has been for years...enter it preaching hate or anti-gay rhetoric and folks can likely expect more of the same.
During the beginning of the equal rights movement with Afican Americans, there were riots in response to bigoted comments.
During Stonewall and after Harvey Milk was assasinated there was violence in the streets of San Francisco.
So good luck to anyone that wants to preach in the Castro again. Bring a police escort....that was their first mistake.
Hi Brent,
Thank you for your comment. As a minor clarification, please note that no preaching was going on. They were only singing hymns, mostly Amazing Grace. There is no evidence that they were "preaching hate".
Post a Comment