NY anti-gay killings, severity of violence up
Anti-gay-bashing activists say the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people killed last year was the highest in a decade.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released its annual report last week. The study lists 29 people killed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity last year. That number was the highest it had been since 1999. The executive director of the New York-based National Coalition is Sharon Stapel. She says the violence “has to end.”
Sharon Stapel: “There has to be a ceiling to this violence, it seems that each year it increases more and more, and this year in particular we have seen a dramatic increase in the severity of the violence that LGBT people experience in the United States and in New York.”
Appearing with Stapel at a news conference on Tuesday was bashing victim Joseph Holladay. Just this past weekend, the Boston resident was attacked while visiting New York for the Pride Parade. A group of men assaulted Holladay outside his friends apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He says at least four men called him a ‘faggot’ before bashing his head with a blunt object and leaving him unconscious in a pool of blood. Police are investigating. Stapel said this was just one of several attacks that happened in New York over Pride Weekend.
–Aaron McQuade
