Oct 03, 2008  |  By: PETER ROSENSTEIN  | COMMENTS     

SUNDAY NIGHT’S VIGIL and march was an evening of mixed emotions for the nearly 150 people that came to both celebrate Tony Randolph Hunter’s life and to demand action by our mayor and city leaders.

Tony Randolph Hunter was a gay man, 37 years young, who was beaten to death on his way to BeBar with a friend. His death is acting as a catalyst for our community to say, “Enough is enough!”
to those who would attack us simply because they see us as different and don’t respect our rights.

For many years, we in the GLBT community have tried to convince ourselves that things were improving, that we were being accepted and that we were making progress in the District of Columbia. And in many cases that is true.

We have become an integral part of the community as a whole. Our brothers and sisters are part of the business community, and integrated into the social and cultural organizations within the District of Columbia. We are a major part of the arts community both as artists and patrons. We have members of our community on the City Council and some lead major organizations, such as the D.C. Bar Association. You cannot be elected in the District of Columbia to citywide office without the support of the GLBT community and there is no political campaign that doesn’t have members of our community in leading positions.

And yet with the murder of Tony Hunter, we were awakened again to the fact that there is still a major problem in the District of Columbia for the GLBT community. In our high schools, 25 percent of self-identified GLBT students say they have skipped school at least once in the past month because they are afraid of being attacked either on their way to or in school. The national average is that 15 percent of all hate crimes are committed against the GLBT community, yet in the District that number is 60 percent.

We are being attacked on our way to and from the places we live and work and recreate. We are seeing more members of our community facing slurs being yelled in their direction and being afraid while going about their everyday lives. The owners of our bars are compelled to send out e-mails to their patrons suggesting they don’t walk alone on the streets near their establishments and the police seem helpless to do anything about it.

TONY HUNTER IS senselessly beaten and neither the mayor nor the Council chair finds it important enough to even issue a statement of condolence to his family when the news is reported. There is still no statement of condolence when he dies at Howard University Hospital and none until the community demands action.

My question, along with other members of our community, is where is the outrage that we feel, being displayed by our political leadership? It just doesn’t seem to be there and I am at a loss to explain that. I know both the mayor and the Council chair. I have always believed, and still do, that they personally care about me and our community. But I have yet to see that feeling publicly expressed by either of them in person at a press conference or by having them call a meeting to begin to address this problem. I also have not seen the chief of police speak out on this issue. I haven’t seen the schools chancellor or the deputy mayor for education speak out on this issue. Where is the outrage that we think they should be feeling?

Hate is a learned trait. It is not something we are born with. We don’t hate those of a different color, religion, sexual identity or gender without someone teaching us to do so. I believe that we need to begin to teach our children at an early age to love one another instead of teaching them to hate. This means that we need to work in our churches and our schools to deal with the root of this problem. We need to have our political leaders speak out and work with our community to develop a plan of action that will begin to tackle this, and we can’t wait any longer because it is literally lives that are at stake.

Only two current Council members and a candidate for Council — Jack Evans, Carol Schwartz and Patrick Mara — attended the program at the MCC church on Sunday evening. Council member Kwame Brown joined us as ...