Murder Campaign Driving Gay Men Out Of Iraq

October 09, 2009

Although it is not common knowledge to the average reader, Iraq is, and has been for a very long time, an extremely homophobic society.  Gay men who live there with their sexual orientation do so at great risk, and are in near constant fear of being tortured or murdered because of their sexual preference.

Historically, the idea of making or allowing their same-sex preference to be publicly known has typically been out of the question, and still is.  But in the past year or so, things have gotten much worse for outing gay men in Iraq, regardless of whether the disclosure was of their own doing or otherwise.  There has been a marked increase in media condemnation of gays, in which conservative Iraqis commonly refer to gay men as the third sex, and they are now being routinely condemned in mosques.  The growing problem, however, goes far beyond mere condemnation for what many homophobes there call unnatural sexual intercourse.  An unparalleled campaign of organized murder seems to have taken hold there, and is not showing any signs of diminishing according to a recent report put out by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Although murders of gay men have occurred in Iraq in the past, now they are being gunned down in the streets by a variety of militia, mercenaries, or other armed soldier types, and videos are being made of the murders which are then circulated widely throughout the country via mobile phones and other methods.  In the past, such murders did not include the making of videos, and people typically did not talk about them.  Now, the murderous campaign is intended to literally put the fear of death into gay men, and it has been very successful in that regard.

Click here to continue reading this story >

Stupid is as Stupid Does

December 27, 2008

While researching the article that you are now reading, I found it difficult to determine who possessed the least amount of intelligence - the victim, 43-year-old Cynthia Lynch, or those who allegedly recruited her into their group, claiming to be members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Normally I would never censure or be reproachful toward a homicide victim, but in this case, as you will see, I have to call into question the mental reasoning that led Lynch, who was from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to allow herself to be recruited - over the Internet, no less - into the ranks of a Louisiana hate group. The bad decision ultimately cost Lynch her life. Nonetheless, it is just so difficult to understand why a normal, reasoning adult would want to associate with a group as despicable as the KKK, or even with one of its offshoots.

After communicating with the hate group's representatives via the group's Website, it is believed that Lynch made her way by bus to Louisiana during the latter part of the first week of November 2008. When she arrived in Slidell - presumably sometime on or around Saturday, November 8, 2008 - located off Interstate 10 a few miles southwest of Pearl River, Lynch was met by two members of the group that called itself the Sons of Dixie and, alternatively, the Dixie Brotherhood. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group was also known as the Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. All of the different names that the group went by only served to further confuse the situation, in part by showing that they did not know what to call themselves. Regardless of whether the group was an official KKK branch or not, Lynch was promptly taken to a campground in a remote area where she was to have been initiated into the group and, it is believed, endured nearly 24 hours of initiation rites.

According to the police, the initiation ritual consisted of chanting, shaving Lynch's head, and "running around in the woods" all night with lighted torches. Instead of finishing the ritual because she had reportedly become homesick for Oklahoma, Lynch asked to be taken back to Slidell so that she could catch a bus home prior to becoming an official member, and an argument ensued. The group's leader, Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, from Bogalusa, Louisiana, which was known as a hotbed of KKK activity in the 1960s, allegedly shot and killed Lynch because of the argument. Some group members allegedly dumped her body into a ditch and covered it with brush near the community of Sun, located approximately 55 miles north of New Orleans in St. Tammany parish near the Mississippi state line, not far from where the initiation ritual was to have occurred, and other members helped destroy evidence - in part by burning Lynch's belongings.

Investigators with the St. Tammany Sheriff's Department first became aware that something was terribly amiss when they received a call from a concerned convenience store clerk in Bogalusa who reported that two individuals, one of whom was Foster's son but both of whom he had recognized, had walked into the store and asked if the clerk knew how to remove bloodstains from clothing. With information obtained from the clerk, investigators were able to locate the two individuals and promptly arrested them. The arrest and communication with the individuals led the cops to several other members of the group who were still at the campsite. The investigators informed them via telephone that they were on their way to the campsite as part of an investigation. Surprisingly, the Sons of Dixie members waited for the cops to arrive.