Nation's reaction to lesbian's slaying at issueBy Steve Strunsky, Associated Press, 8/18/2003
NEWARK -- On the night she was killed three months ago, 15-year-old Sakia Gunn and her lesbian friends had been hanging out in New York City's Greenwich Village, a place they knew they could find acceptance.
While waiting in Newark for a bus, the teenagers were approached by a man who tried to pick them up, and when they told him they were lesbians, he grabbed Sakia, witnesses said. The high school sophomore broke loose, but he lunged and stabbed her in the chest, the witnesses said. Suspect Richard McCullough, 29, has pleaded not guilty to murder. About 2,500 people attended Sakia's funeral, a gathering that gay rights advocates said revealed the numbers and commitment of Newark's young gay and lesbian community. But people working for gay rights in this predominantly black community say they're encumbered by an especially strong antigay bias.
Friends put together a support group carrying Sakia's name for young lesbians, but several students at West Side High School said Principal Fernand Williams refused their request for a moment of silence. School district spokeswoman Michelle Baldwin said she referred a request for interviews to Williams and other school officials, who did not respond.
Some in the gay community say Sakia's background as a black female from a working-class neighborhood also factors into how the nation reacted. Outraged lesbians and gays held rallies in Newark and other East Coast cities, but critics said Sakia's death didn't generate as much visible attention among mainstream gay rights groups or media organizations as the killings of two other youths, Matthew Shepard in Wyoming in 2000 and Teena Brandon, the subject of the film "Boys Don't Cry," in Nebraska in 1993.
"I was shocked at the lack of response, the lack of support," said Amy Goodman, host of the "Democracy Now" news hour on New York's WBAI-FM.
The Gay City News, a New York City-based weekly newspaper focusing on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community, or LGBT, ran an editorial about the killing with the headline, "Where is the Outrage?"
"I think there's racism in the LGBT community, and no doubt there's classism," said Mick Meenan, the paper's assistant editor, in an interview. "Whatever attitudes that occur within the community at large occur within the LGBT community."
