From: Mills Mike <[email-masked]>

An article from today's Denver Post followed by a letter I sent to the post
this morning.
-Mike
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>From the Denver Post, p. 15A
Wednesday, November 2, 1994

Thugs pin gay man with car, open fire in San Francisco

By the Associated Press

photo: Victor Rohana

  SAN FRANCISCO -- Just blocks from the Castro district, the very center of San
Francisco's gay community, Victor Rohana was pinned to a wall with a
four-wheel-drive vehicle and shot in the chest, apparently because he was
holding hands with his boyfriend.

  Civil-rights advocates said the shooting, which left Rohana seriously
wounded, was an example of the growing ferocity of attacks on homosexuals.

  "Whereas in 1992, somebody may have just yelled, 'Faggot,' now they're
yelling 'Faggot' and clubbing you or raping you," said Leslie Addison of
Community United Against Violence.

  Police developed a composite sketch of the suspects, young men in their late
teens or early 20s, and Mayor Frank Jordan offered a $10,000 reward.  "It is
dismaying to think that in a city that is known for acceptance of individual
freedom that this senseless act of violence still occurs," he said.

  On Sunday, 24-year-old Victor Rohana and Steven Damron were walking to their
car after dining in a neighborhood restaurant.  Just after 10 p.m., two men in
a white Suzuki Samurai drove by and yelled at them, Damron said.

  Rohana said something to the men before turning to catch up with his friend,
Damron recalled.  The driver backed up about 100 feet to block their path,
jumped the curb onto the sidewalk, and pinned Rohana against a wall.

  Damron said the passenger stuck a pistol out a window and shot Rohana, who
was in satisfactory condition yesterday.  The bullet pierced Rohana's lung,
missing his heart by about an inch, Damron said.

  "Maybe they just thought it was macho to shoot a gay guy," Damron said.
"They made a judgment that being gay was bad, and their way of expressing that
was to shoot Victor."

  Officer Sandy Bargioni of the police Hate Crimes Unit spent Monday stuffing
fliers and drawings of the attackers into mailboxes near where the attack
occurred.

  Rohana wasn't the type to look for a fight, said a friend, Steven Underhill.
"He's very quiet and shy, certainly one of the most sweet, kind individuals
I've ever met."
=-=-=-=-=
Denver Post
1560 Broadway
Denver, CO 80202

To the Editor:

     Thank you for running in today's paper the story of a San Francisco man
who was pinned to a wall by a car and gunned down all for holding hands with
his boyfriend.  This story and countless others like them refute an assertion
made by Al Knight in an anti-gay opinion piece (The Constitution becomes silly
putty in Court's hands, 16 October 94).  In that piece Knight belittled a
finding of fact by US District Court Judge Arthur Spiegel that "Gays, lesbians,
and bisexuals are often the target of violence by heterosexuals due to their
sexual orientation."

     In the same piece Knight also questioned Spiegel's finding that "There is
no correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia."  This is by no means the
first time Knight has tried to vilify gay and lesbian people by libelously
linking us to child molestation.  He earlier printed a letter asserting that a
group (including myself) organizing a Celebration of Diversity in Boulder this
summer included pedophiles.  I can assure you that it did not.  But this kind
of bald-faced lying and demonization of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people leads
to vicious, violent attacks against us such as the one reported in today's
Post.

     As the victim's boyfriend said,"[The attackers] made a judgment that being
gay was bad and their way of expressing that was to shoot Victor."  Perhaps the
editor's of your paper can live with the libelous hate penned by Mr. Knight
which you print so often.  As a potential victim of the violence it engenders,
I can not.

Sincerely,
Michael J. Mills