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‘Gay panic’ defense in Miss. murder case

Details in dispute; group calls on Justice Dept. to investigate

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Marco McMillan, gay news, Washington Blade
Marco McMillan, gay news, Washington Blade

Marco McMillan (Photo courtesy of Facebook)

A county coroner in Mississippi disputed claims by family members of gay mayoral candidate Marco McMillian that McMillian was murdered on Feb. 26 by being beaten, burned and dragged naked along an earthen levee next to the Mississippi River near the City of Clarksdale.

The dispute between the family and Coahoma County coroner Scotty Meredith surfaced on Tuesday shortly after local TV news stations reported that Lawrence Reed, 22, the man charged with McMillian’s murder, told friends that he killed the mayoral candidate in self-defense after McMillian allegedly made sexual advances toward him.

Those claims created an immediate uproar among gay activists and McMillian’s friends and family members, who argued that Reed appeared to be invoking the so-called gay panic defense that has often been used by criminals who target gay men for violent attacks.

ABC 24 News of Clarksdale reported that Reed’s friends said Reed and McMillian met a few weeks before the murder at a Clarksdale bar and became friends. The friends told the TV news program they learned later that Reed, who says he’s straight, called his girlfriend immediately after he reportedly killed McMillian.

“She said she was listening to everything that was going on, how the guy was trying to get Lawrence to have a homosexual activity,” Derric Crump, one of Reed’s friends, said in an interview with the TV news program.

McMillian’s friends and family members dispute that account, saying McMillian would not do such a thing.

As developments in the case continued to unfold, the National Black Justice Coalition, an LGBT civil rights group based in Washington, D.C., announced on Tuesday that it has called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate McMillian’s murder as a possible hate crime.

“After speaking extensively with the family, community and anti-violence coalition members like the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, NBJC feels the perpetuation and validation of the ‘gay panic’ defense is irresponsible,” NBJC Executive Director Sharon Lettman-Hicks said in a March 5 letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

“The conflicting reports as well as the current racial and anti-LGBT climate in Mississippi is justification enough for a federal investigation,” Lettman-Hicks said in her letter.

The dispute between the coroner and McMillian’s family members over the nature of the injuries suffered by McMillian came at a time when neither the coroner nor the Coahoma County Sheriff’s Office have disclosed the cause of death or the motive for the murder.

According to a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, an autopsy was conducted but its results remain inconclusive until toxicology tests are completed. The coroner’s office has said the results of those tests wouldn’t be known until at least the end of the week if not later.

Meredith, the coroner, appeared to be the first public official to provide details about the nature of McMillian’s injuries when he spoke to the New York Times on Tuesday.

According to the Times, he said McMillian’s family apparently misinterpreted information he gave them a week earlier, prompting them to incorrectly disclose to the press and LGBT organizations that McMillian died from being brutally beaten, set on fire and dragged from the side of a road to the levee where his body was found on Feb. 27.

The Times reports Meredith as saying McMillian’s body was found unclothed, with a black eye and two small burns on his skin. Those injuries were not the cause of his death and the cause was still not confirmed pending the completion of the toxicology tests, he told the Times.

“There was no beating, although there may have been an altercation,” the Times quoted him as saying. “He got two little bitty burns.”

In a statement released on Tuesday prior to the publication of the New York Times story on the Times website, McMillian’s family members said the gay mayoral candidate was “brutally murdered.” He suffered severe injuries from being “beaten, dragged and burned (set afire),” the statement says.

“This was reported in our meeting with the local coroner on two occasions,” the statement says.

Meredith told the Times that burns the size of a half-dollar coin were found on McMillian’s hand and leg and that the cause of the burns were unknown.

“For this family, this was their child, whether he’s 34 years old or 3,” the Times quoted Meredith as saying. “They want to believe it was a hate crime. But we don’t have a hate crime.”

Lawrence Reed. (Photo courtesy Coahoma County Miss. Sheriff's Office)

Lawrence Reed. (Photo courtesy Coahoma County Miss. Sheriff’s Office)

The Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, Will Rooker, told the Blade investigators linked defendant Reed to the crime after he became involved in a head-on collision with a car while he was driving McMillian’s SUV on a highway on Feb. 26. McMillian wasn’t in the SUV, and the discovery that the vehicle belonged to McMillian prompted the Sheriff’s Office to launch an investigation into his whereabouts, Rooker said.

Reed was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Memphis, Tenn., which is the closest large city to Clarksdale, where he was treated and listed in stable condition. He appeared in a Memphis court on Monday and waived his right to fight extradition to Mississippi. He was being held without bond and was expected to be returned to Coahoma County, Miss., later this week.

The Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger reported yet another wrinkle in the case on Monday. According to the newspaper, the driver of the vehicle struck by the SUV Reed was driving said friends of Reed told him Reed’s girlfriend called 911 to report that Reed confessed to her that he killed McMillian and stole McMillian’s SUV.

The 911 call was made before the traffic accident occurred, Chris Talley, the driver of the other vehicle, told the Clarion-Ledger. Talley told the Clarion-Ledger he spoke with family members of Reed’s girlfriend at the Sheriff’s Office when he went there to pick up his belongings that were left behind at the scene of the accident.

“They already knew that the vehicle was stolen when the sheriff’s deputies arrived (at the scene of the wreck), and they already knew it was a murder,” the Clarion-Ledger quoted Talley as saying.

McMillian’s friends and campaign supporters said he was considered a viable candidate to become the first openly gay elected official in Mississippi. He was one of four candidates running in the May 7 Democratic primary for mayor in the majority Democratic city of Clarksdale.

With no Republican running in the election, the winner of the primary was expected to easily win the general election on June 4.

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Federal judge blocks Trump’s order restricting gender-affirming care for youth

Seven families with transgender, nonbinary children challenged directive

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President Donald Trump (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A federal judge on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order that blocks President Donald Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order restricting access to gender-affirming health care for transgender people under age 19.

The order by Judge Brendan Hurson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, came in response to a request from the plaintiffs in a lawsuit, filed on Feb. 4, against Trump’s directive.

The plaintiffs are seven families with trans or nonbinary children. They are represented by PFLAG National, GMLA, Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Maryland, and the law firms Hogan Lovells and Jenner & Block.

Hurson’s temporary restraining order will halt enforcement of Trump’s order for 14 days, but it can be extended. This means health care providers and medical institutions can provide gender-affirming care to minor patients without the risk of losing federal funding.

Families in the lawsuit say their appointments were cancelled shortly after the executive order was issued. Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia, and D.C. stopped providing prescriptions for puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and other interventions for trans patients as they evaluated Trump’s directive.

The harms associated with suddenly withholding access to medical care for these patients were a major focus of Thursday’s hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for the temporary restraining order.

The president’s “order seems to deny that this population even exists, or deserves to exist,” Hurson said, noting the elevated risk of suicide, poverty, addiction, and other hardships among trans people.

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Trump’s trans erasure arrives at National Park Service

Fate of major 2016 LGBTQ Theme Study unclear

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NYC Pride participants in front of the Stonewall Inn in 2019. (File photo by Andrew Nasonov)

President Trump’s efforts at erasing trans identity intensified this week as employees at the National Park Service were instructed to remove the “T” and “Q” from “LGBTQ” from all internal and external communications.

The change was first noticed on the website of the Stonewall National Monument; trans people of color were integral to the events at Stonewall, which is widely viewed as the kickoff of the modern LGBTQ rights movement. The Stonewall National Monument is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history.

Reaction to that move was swift. New York City Council member Erik Bottcher wrote, “The Trump administration has erased transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website. We will not allow them to erase the very existence of our siblings. We are one community!!”

But what most didn’t realize is that the removal of the “T” and “Q” (for transgender and queer) extends to all National Park Service and Interior Department communications, raising concerns that the move could jeopardize future LGBTQ monuments and project work.

The Blade reached out to the National Park Service for comment on the trans erasure and received a curt response that the agency is implementing Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” as well as agency directives to end all DEI initiatives.

The question being debated internally now, according to a knowledgable source, is what to do with a massive LGBTQ Theme Study, which as of Feb. 14 was still available on the NPS website. In 2014, the Gill Foundation recognized an omission of historic LGBTQ sites in the nation’s records, and the organization made a grant to the National Park Service to commission a first-of-its-kind LGBTQ Theme Study, which was published in 2016. It was a landmark project that represented major progress for the LGBTQ community in having our contributions included in the broader American story, something that is becoming increasingly difficult given efforts like “Don’t Say Gay” laws that ban the teaching of LGBTQ topics in schools.

A source told the Blade that National Park Service communications staff suggested that removing chapters of the 2016 Theme Study that pertain to transgender people might placate anti-trans political appointees. But one employee pushed back on that, suggesting instead that the entire Theme Study be removed. Editing the document to remove one community’s contributions and perspective violates the academic intent of the project, according to the source. A final decision on how to proceed is expected soon. 

Meanwhile, a protest is planned for Friday, Feb. 14 at noon at Christopher Park in New York City (7th Ave. S. and Christopher Street). The protest is being planned by staff at the Stonewall Inn. 

“The Stonewall Inn and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative are outraged and appalled by the recent removal of the word ‘transgender’ from the Stonewall National Monument page on the National Park Service website,” the groups said in a statement. “Let us be clear: Stonewall is transgender history. Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, and countless other trans and gender-nonconforming individuals fought bravely, and often at great personal risk, to push back against oppressive systems. Their courage, sacrifice, and leadership were central to the resistance we now celebrate as the foundation of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.”

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Victory Institute executive director speaks about movement response to Trump 2.0

Advocacy groups will lead efforts to push back against anti-LGBTQ administration

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LGBTQ Victory Institute Executive Director Elliot Imse speaks at the International LGBTQ Leaders Conference on Dec. 1, 2022. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

President Donald Trump’s issuance of a series of executive orders targeting transgender rights and LGBTQ-inclusive diversity programs on the first day of his second term was a clear signal of the new administration’s appetite for going after queer and gender diverse people. 

The Jan. 20 directives also brought into focus the extent to which organizations in the LGBTQ movement, particularly those whose work includes impact litigation, will be responsible for protecting the communities they serve from harmful and discriminatory laws and policies over the next four years.

At a critical time that is likely to test the limits of their capacity, these groups are facing challenges that could restrict their access to critical resources thanks in part to the conservative movement’s opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion in both government and the private sector. 

LGBTQ organizations expected federal funding for their work would dry up when the incoming administration took over, given that Trump and his allies made no secret of their plans to aggressively reshape the government including by ridding U.S. agencies of all DEI-related programs, policies, and activities. 

Trump went even further, however, issuing orders to categorically freeze the disbursement of government funds tied to preexisting grants and contracts, while threatening investigations of private companies for “illegal” policies and practices related to DEI.

Partly in response to pressure from conservative leaders and activists, over the past couple of years companies have increasingly backed away from DEI efforts including, especially, support for LGBTQ communities and causes. 

Coupled with the loss of federal funding, a decline in corporate giving to LGBTQ organizations could have devastating impacts on the communities they serve, potentially leading to cutbacks in programs and services core to their missions or imperiling their efforts to push back against a hostile regime. 

“Continuing to fund our work is obviously top of mind for everyone right now,” Elliot Imse, executive director of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, told the Washington Blade during an interview last week.  

The move by many private companies away from supporting LGBTQ equality has been surprising, Imse said, but “what we know is it’s a very uncertain environment for corporations right now, and they are feeling out these new realities.” 

On the other hand, the moment also presents an opportunity to remind businesses that commitments to DEI are good for their bottom line while rewarding companies that resist pressure to abandon their LGBTQ customers, employees, and communities, Imse said. 

“There’s a lot of courageous corporations out there, too, right now, a lot that are continuing to step up. And we need to be grateful; we need to be making purchasing decisions as a community with those corporations in mind. Every corporation that has reaffirmed its commitment to us, we need to go out and support them.” 

“While Victory Institute — like all LGBTQ+ organizations — is concerned about the current fundraising environment, we have a programmatic plan in place that directly addresses the realities of what is happening across the country right now,” he said, with programs to support LGBTQ elected officials serving everywhere from small municipal offices to the most powerful positions in government. 

A diverse pipeline of out leaders from diverse backgrounds is the best bulwark “against attacks on our equality and democratic backsliding,” Imse said. “We have a very robust programmatic plan for 2025 — and we need to execute on it at this critical moment.”

While the Victory Institute is currently looking for funding to support the organization’s international work to compensate for the loss of federal grants, Imse said the group plans to expand U.S.-based programs, maximizing their reach at a time when this work is especially critical.  

“We’re going to be in more cities than ever before. We’re going to have a larger training presence than ever before, including our LGBTQ+ Public Leadership Summits, which are specifically designed to inspire and recruit LGBTQ+ people to run for office. It is essential folks reject the demoralization of the current moment and that we have more boots on the ground to support those willing to step up and run.” 

He added, “we are hopeful that we will be able to raise the money we need to carry these programs out, and we believe we can make the case to donors that these programs are an essential path forward.” 

At the same time, Imse acknowledged that LGBTQ groups, including the Victory Institute, are in a difficult position at the moment and “we’ll absolutely have to adjust if we see a downturn in fundraising throughout the year.”

“it’s going to be an uphill battle, there’s no doubt about that. Like all other organizations, we’re going to watch the numbers and adjust as necessary,” he said, adding, “the people we have at our organization are what makes our organization strong — their expertise, their relationships, the networks that they’ve built.” 

And while he said “making sure that we meet the moment is something that keeps me up at night,” Imse stressed that “figuring out how to balance the reality we are in versus optimism is something that is on everyone’s mind as you talk to LGBTQ+ community members, your staff, your funders” who recognize that “you must have hope, because if people back away from our equality at this moment, it’ll be much worse than even the situation we’re in right now.”

There is no shortage of good reasons to hold onto hope, Imse said. “Our movement has always thrived in moments of crisis. While we’d prefer no crisis, it refocuses us. It motivates us. And oftentimes leads to breakthroughs that we may not have had otherwise. It destroys complacency. It instills urgency.”

After Trump took office and the new Congress was sated with GOP majorities in both chambers, LGBTQ groups whose work includes lobbying or government relations understood their ability to influence policy at the federal level would be limited, at least until Democratic allies have the opportunity to retake control of the House in 2026. 

The Victory Institute was especially well positioned to shift away from Washington, Imse said, because state legislatures, city councils, and school boards have always been the organization’s “bread and butter” and the elections for these positions “truly matter” even if they are less “high profile” than U.S. congressional races. 

“When we’re talking about opportunities to make progress in the near future, opportunities to launch a successful offense and defense, it is in these legislative bodies,” he said. “And they arguably make more impact on individuals’ lives than the federal government does.”

Imse added this is especially true with regard to opportunities for legislative action to support LGBTQ Americans and defend their rights, which is unlikely to happen on Capitol Hill for a “long time.” 

It is especially important now that LGBTQ communities and organizations support each other, he said. 

LGBTQ movement groups, particularly those with international focus, “have been phenomenal in bringing us together and trying to find out what’s been done, keeping us up to date on potential litigation opportunities, as well as looking for funders that are willing to step up at this absolutely critical moment in our movement’s history,” Imse said. 

“We also need our community to step up in terms of supporting these organizations,” he said, “financially through resources and capacity and giving their time, because that’s the only way we’re going to be able to move forward effectively.”

It is “important that our community members remain active, engaged, and involved, and that our LGBTQ+ media continues to ensure our stories are being told,” Imse said, adding, “Especially right now, this is an entire movement ecosystem that is working to make sure whatever backsliding is about to occur is not permanent.”

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