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Please Andrej, include this.
Hi Andrej.
Thank you for your page, specially the Memorial Hall that enlight us about hate and homophobia.
But, this story I'm sending you probably has nothing to do with hate nor homophobia... but I think Jesse Dirkhising's story and Murder should have
a place in your Memorial Hall.
Not only hate and homophobia are destroying our gay youth, but pedophile and sado-masochism from our own gay community.
I found this information in an anti-gay page and it offended me as much as any of the stories such as Matthew Shepard's, Robbie Kirkland's, Bobby Griffit's, Bill Clayton's, Barry Winchell's, Brandon Tenna or so...
Please, read it and consider it for your Memorial Hall. I think Jesse Dirkhising deserves to be remembered and his murder to be reflected about.
Thank you.
Rafael
The Dirkhising Case: A Reproach to Gay Culture
Excerpts from the article by Chris Crain, appeared March 23, 2001, in Southern Voice (Atlanta) under the titles "Do we share blame for Jesse's murder?"
 When two gay men in Bentonville, Ark., singled out a 13-year-old in September 1999 for violent sex play, the resulting murder made local headlines and a glimmer of national coverage. But "Jesse Dirkhising" isn't synonymous for anything, except in conservative circles.
Among the right wing, "Jesse Dirkhising" stands for two battle cries: the double standard practiced within the "liberal media" and, at a more subtle level, deviant gay sexual culture and its violent consequence.
It's a little too easy to dismiss the media double standard by pointing out the obvious differences in the killing of Matthew Shepard and the killing of Jesse Dirkhising.
The national media fixated on the Shepard murder because the evidence suggested that the two perpetrators were motivated by anti-gay hate. Instead of stealing the pocket change in Shepard's wallet, they pummeled him with a pistol and left him to die, tied to a fence post.
Beyond the sheer brutality of the crime and the "group prejudice" that played a role in it, the resulting cries for hate crime legislation, in Wyoming and elsewhere, were legitimate news stories.
The Dirkhising killing no doubt matches the Shepard murder in brutality and ugliness. He was a teenager far too young to consent to any sort of sexual encounter; he was heavily drugged, his own underwear placed in his mouth and held in place by duct tape, and repeatedly sodomized.
When police arrived at the chaotic scene, his body was smeared in feces and he had only a faint pulse. The two gay men only called an ambulance after one took a break from the "sex play" to eat a sandwich and noticed the youth was not breathing, according to the police report.
But even taken at its worst, gay activists are right to point out, there was no "group prejudice" behind the Dirkhising killing. No one is alleging that the two gay men deliberately planned the teen's abduction to "get" a straight kid. In fact, the available evidence suggests that Jesse was gay, or at least questioning his sexuality.
Without the presence of prejudice based on sexual orientation, or any other sort of "ism" or "phobia," the Dirkhising story doesn't have the same public policy legs as the Shepard killing. To the mainstream press, it's just another brutal crime, this time committed by two gay men.
But are those distinctions, while important, enough to shrug our shoulders and file away Jesse's murder as the random act of twisted minds that just so happen to be gay?
Almost anytime a gay person is victimized these days, our activists are quick to call upon society to recognize its complicity in the crime. What messages are we communicating, they inevitably ask, that might have led those involved to lash out in this way?
In the case of Jesse Dirkhising, the only ones taking the time to look for larger lessons are social conservatives. And that's truly unfortunate.
For one thing, they've got an axe to grind. Social commentators from the right are snooping for evidence to make a broader social point: Gays are social deviants who engage in behavior that is repugnant to mainstream America. And just by publicizing the story, they purposefully feed the claim that gay adults are out to "recruit" wayward youths, with disastrous results.
Before you sniff at such morbid opportunism, admit to yourself that gay activists did much the same thing, though for a cause you support, after Matthew Shepard's death.
Decent conservatives would acknowledge that no gays would take matters so far as they went in Bentonville, Ark., but that wouldn't end the comparison for them - just as most reasonable gay activists allowed that few heterosexuals were waiting to tie us to fence posts.
Conservatives would argue, however, that the sex-drenched gay culture, and the value-less homosexual lifestyle, were bound to victimize someone like Jesse Dirkhising. And while most youths tricked and trapped by predatory gay men don't wind up dead, they do wind up sexually confused, robbed of their innocence, and torn from the values their parents worked hard to instill in them.
Before you dismiss that conservative diatribe, conjure in your head the mental image of Judy and Dennis Shepard, grieving the loss of their son. The sympathy you feel is likely to overwhelm the stubborn "gray zones" of Matthew's murder - especially the mixed motive of his killers and the extent society is really to blame.
Now imagine the parents of Jesse Dirkhising, sitting in court while prosecutors played tapes of his accused killer, telling police, "Jesse really didn't have anything to offer, except maybe sex now and then." Could you stand in front of them and disclaim any responsibility for gay culture in his killing?
As a minority group, we homosexuals have perfected the art of deconstructing mainstream society for its conscious and subconscious homophobia. Our "gay studies" scholars write treatise after treatise on the topic, and our civil rights groups wear out fax machines with press releases on the subject.
But when it comes to examining whether gay culture plays a role in societal ills, we are sometimes as willfully blind as our conservative foes. We are so defensive about "bad press" and passing judgment on anything sexual, we resist the question at a visceral level.
If the gruesome killing of a gay youth won't at least make us look harder at where our culture might bear some responsibility, what will?
A comment
 by Kenneth ElderEco@aol.com
In reference to the articles about Jesse's death, everyone should feel compassion for a 13 yr. old brutally molested and killed. But the next time that a 13 yr. old girl is raped and killed by two heterosexual men should we call for the elimination of all heterosexual men from child care positions with girls? Of course not. The vast majority of rapes are committed by heterosexual men against women. And are homosexual people harmful to children? No. Another fact is that 75% of children of homosexual parent or parents turn out heterosexual, they are not being forced into their parents lifestyle.
Stop Hate 2000 Newsletter - May 5, 2001
Dear Friends,
We start by marking an anniversary. May 8 is the anniversary of Bill Clayton's death. We have always had a link to the website which his mom, Gabi Clayton, maintains, and we'd like to remind you of it.
We had been expecting the second trial arising from Jesse Dirkhising's death to begin yesterday. It did not come to pass. The second defendant, Davis Carpenter, reached an agreement with the State to plead guilty to rape and first-degree murder. The link in our April newsletter still holds good.
Jesse's death has attracted some attention from commentators who held that the relatively limited coverage given to this case, as opposed to Matthew's death, was the consequence of a pro-homosexual bias in the media. Last month, with one trial just over, and a second about to begin, we didn't say much about Jesse's death, except to provide information links and give an indication of some of the issues which we thought were being overlooked both by these commentators and others.
We haven't thought it right to ignore some of those implications, and with the second trial now completed, perhaps we can raise a few ideas.
As it appears to us, it's possible the real reason for one murder receiving the attention it did, and the second not receiving as much attention is that the second did not seem to involve a question that posed a crisis of conscience. In Matthew's case, there was a clear one: that attitudes we had allowed to build unconsciously fed fires of prejudice. It's not evident that the question has re-emerged with such force in the 33 murders of gays which have occurred since, and which have not attracted nearly the same amount of attention. Nevertheless, the question has not gone away altogether, nor has the search for possible responses.
In Jesse's case, at first glance such a question doesn't seem to arise: it would be hard to think that many would see much right with two grown-ups tying up a 13 year old (of either sex) and raping the child. One would be surprised if the full weight both of the law and social opprobrium didn't descend on the perpetrators. But perhaps, if we look a little more closely, we should ask whether such a question exists.
Last month, we suggested one. We've noted several times that a general indifference to children not our own does seem to exist. We may not be too terribly aware of it, but, if hatred can be as much a consequence of neglect and indifference, children are indeed one of the first objects of it.
In fairness, there may be a second: is the uninhibited indulgence of one's sexual pleasures an absolute good?
Put that way, it's pretty clear what most of society thinks. That includes liberals and libertarians, and most of the GLBT community. Perhaps there are enough times that we forget that it's an issue worth a closer examination. Certainly we have encountered some who do think that way until they start thinking through the full implications of that position.
In a similar way, the traditional belief that parents had an absolute right over their children allowed some to think it was okay to practice incest, or worse. That's never quite been accepted, but it was, for a long time, not a topic that anybody wanted to pursue. The idea that there is such an absolute right belonging to parents has changed because the degree to which we are prepared to look the other way has changed.
Either way, the issue is one of personal respect for each other and the responsibility we have towards each other.
The incest issue reminds us of another case, which did not attract much mainstream media attention either. A pillar of the Christian community in the state of Indiana (and no reflection intended on Christians or Indiana!) led a widely publicized campaign against same-sex couples adopting children, and very publicly "saved" a twelve-year-old girl from one such couple. This pillar of respectability then adopted her. Six months later, he was tried and convicted of the repeated rape of this girl.
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Jesse Dirkhising Yates
