Letters

Torture Relief
Kudos to SF Weekly for your important and well-written story "Torture of a Transsexual" (July 7). Unfortunately, cases of such torture and discrimination are very common throughout the world. I believe that your readers will want to know about the services that the International Gay Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) in San Francisco offers to people through our Asylum Program. We endeavor to provide documentation for any asylum case on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or HIV status. Our program is located at 1360 Mission St., Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94103; telephone: 255-8680; e-mail: asylum www.iglhrc.org.

Dusty Aranjo
Asylum Program Coordinator, IGLHRC

Around Here, Self-Rebuttal Is a Way of Life
Matt Smith's article "Habitat for Inanity" (Bay View, July 7) has some serious misconceptions. Since the article has my name written all over it as using a charitable organizaiton [sic] to fight a senior housing project, I should be given the forum to re-but [sic] my position. The concerns for the subject property, 5199 Mission St., began in February of 1998 not in April of 1999.

I want to defend the Outer Mission Residents Association as being NIMBY (not in my back yard). Not once, and I repeat [sic], that any of the residents in this neighborhood used the NIMBY excuse for any type of housing project on that property. Our only concern was density, which I explained to Mr. Smith. Obviously, he must not have heard me. We were interested in family housing because of the need of family housing and not against senior housing. If anyone from the Mayor's Office of Housing would contact me, we could go on a tour of this neighborhood and address possible sites for senior housing.

Another item to be brought up, over 50 percent of our association members are senior citizens; and, we have the highest per capita of seniors in all of San Francisco neighborhoods.

Lastly, I truly object to the last two sentences of this piece, i.e., I did not say that seniors would move here from Bayview-Hunters Point or the Inner Mission. How could property values be compromised when we have one of the lowest property values in San Francisco?

Steven R. Currier
President
Outer Mission Residents Association

Cothran and Queers
George Cothran is frustrated with the city's GLBT population; just look at his berating of the Sisters and his thinly veneered attack upon GLBT-inclusive hate crime laws ("Is This Really a Hate Crime?" July 7).

It's clear, even if you are straight (George), that Brian Wilmes was killed because he was gay (or thought to be gay). That the attacker was drunk, angry, and down on his luck is no excuse. People who aren't homophobic don't kill gays just because they're drunk. That Cothran himself admitted in his article that murdering a gay, unless it was a gay child or gay animals, didn't push an emotional button for him speaks volumes. I don't believe in the death penalty either, but that doesn't mean the crime should go unpunished for what it is: a hate crime.

Until the straight haters understand that they can no longer murder queers with impunity, we will have to live with hate crime laws, just like we will have to deal with George Cothran's sensationalism.

Kevin Weaver
SOMA

Hate Is Hate
Once again George Cothran, champion of the oppressed straight male, has missed the point. In his latest piece, "Is This Really a Hate Crime?," Cothran bemoans the fate of poor, lost, and angry Edgar Mora, who in a tribute to his pitiful life, went on one hell of a drinking binge and ended up killing a man. Coulda happened to anyone, right? Whatever.

I'm not writing to argue this point. I am responding to Cothran's meager attempt at empathy for the victim, and his strange need to explain the criminal's motives. Cothran claims that if he had grown up as "the object of the hate, disdain, physical intimidation, and abuse that so many gay and lesbians have experienced" he too would be calling out in blood lust for Mora's execution.

Nice start, George, but a crappy follow-through. As one who really did grow up as a gay person in a hostile world, I do not join the clamor for Mora's head. The backwards slob needs to be removed from society for a good long time (emphasis on the long) and if he ever gets to the level of functioning as a human, let him go back to his life of stacking things in warehouses.

Cothran uses the following twisted logic to explain Mora's deeds. Mora was hurling verbal abuse at all kinds of people, "bitches" and "faggots" to be precise. Mora encountered Wilmes, whom Cothran describes as high on methamphetamines, as if it mattered. Mora sucker-punches Wilmes while uttering, "Faggot," and here's what gets me, "part and parcel of the vernacular of the angry and the drunk." Now George, I've been angry and I've been drunk, and I've been both at the same time, but never have I used that piece of vernacular. Must be reserved for straight men (real men?).

What if, just maybe, all of that hate and disdain and physical intimidation and abuse that our society continually heaps on minorities is a product of this kind of vernacular? Is it possible that if terms of hate are part of that vernacular then so are the feelings of hate? Using the term "nigger" betrays a certain set of feelings in the user, doesn't it? As a society we've come a long way in eliminating a lot of the hate and fear towards racial groups, and that has involved sanctioning certain language as out-of-bounds. Use it and you're sure to get a reaction; hell, you might even get thrown in jail if you use it while committing a crime. Sounds decent enough.