Interestingly, the entire notion of their being gay-bashing by police in Provincetown has disappeared from the world wide web. In all it’s instances.
It’s gone from BMG. It’s gone from Know thy Neighbor. It’s gone from Live Love and Learn.
What happened. At first I thought maybe the whole thread was just some dream, but there are traces of it on Google so I know I wasn’t dreaming. There’s no retraction anywhere. Did maybe this incident not happen in the way it was being reported?
Please share widely!
Cache
That said, John Hosty started a 50-comment shitstorm here by accusing two individuals of committing a hate crime without any objective evidence whatsoever to back up his claim- not quite libel, but irresponsible nonetheless. After causing all that ruckus, Hosty owes us an explanation as to why he deleted his post.
When challenged, John Hosty did offer reasons as to why he classified it as a hate crime. It was not something he made up out of whole cloth. TBlade, in a very admirable manner in my opinion, challenged him on this. Readers were left thinking that there were some unknowns here and that John Hosty had some information he could not share at this time.
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That part of the discussion seemed fine to me. Going to the Google cache, I uncover the usual taunting from the usual suspects. This was a case where a perfectly legitimate question could be asked two ways. It could be asked in a way aimed at advancing our understanding or it can be asked in a way aimed at winning points.
Atrios points us to this dKos diary about Blog Warriors.
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Does your zone feel flooded yet?
I wouldn’t say that concerns over a possible gaybashing were allayed by a penetrating cross-examination. Those concerns remain; let’s just not rush to judgment, OK.
KTN pulled their article at the request of the victim. It appears their site was generating the most hits on the issue and Scott’s lawyers asked for it to be taken down. I am still covering the story on my site, and democraticunderground.com.
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I pulled my article from here because of the trolls, and to be honest I may not bother posting things here in the future since BMG management can’t seem to recognise the problems here.
Nothing has changed about the underlying events. Gaybashing remains a possibility on the facts as they have come out so far. The Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project has been alert since the events of June 14th for possible retaliatory violence against GLBT people; summer is the busy season for hate crimes.
Tudor brings up a great point, and I am gonig to take it even further off the topic of the specific ptown situation…
In the summer months, a week doesn’t go by that I do not hear someone yell fag, or homo, or pretend to throw-up, etc. Saturday night I was walking with my friends and 2 cars just minutes a part yelled homos, and fags, at me and my friends. Two weeks ago in the same week my partner and I expereinced people on the street pretending to throw up when they saw us holding hands (twice, two different groups). A few weeks before that a guy made a scene by mocking how I was walking in the street. I could go on and on. Just because we have marriage definately does not mean our streets are free of anti-gay/gender expression based harassment. Furthermore I would like to add that the police do not make me feel safer – ever. They usually make me feel less safe because in my experience the police have been bullies, and not understanding of what it is like to be young and queer. I experienced rude bully police in the Arlington T stop once with a bunch of queer youth. I have seen police yelling and screaming at trans sex-workers in the common and stopped to listen only to find the police are just being assholes.
We need a change in the way our police are trained and the way they are held accountable. (not to mention we need a change in the entire prison system complex)
As SL surmised and the author himself subsequently confirmed. This is a feature of the SoapBlox software platform: any author can delete their own post. Score one for cross-examination.