From: WildcatPrs@aol.com Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 01:02:27 -0500 ********************** NEWS YOU WON'T SEE ON TV Syndicated column by Patricia Nell Warren Patricia Nell Warren wrote "The Front Runner" and other bestselling novels. Her current publisher is Wildcat Press. Her books are available from Ingram and other trade distributors. ****************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************** ********************************************* IN MEMORY OF STEVEN WILSON by Patricia Nell Warren 11/15/95 I want to tell you about a 9-year-old boy named Steven Wilson. Steven lived in Middletown, Delaware. Around the town, little Steven was known as a kid who liked to play with dolls. Other kids teased him and called him "fag." Nobody knows if Steven was really gay. The point is, he was perceived as gay -- at the age of 9. Evidently the local school district did little to discourage this kind of harassment. Evidently he had a special problem with the Harden boys across the street. One day in mid-October, the younger Harden boy was teasing him once again. Steven scuffled with him. When Mrs. Harden came out, he was winning, sitting on top of his tormentor and pummeling him and choking him. A couple of days later, after Steven had been missing, his body was found in a muddy ditch a mile from his house. Steven had been brutally raped, beaten and drowned. The town went into shock. Even more shocking was this...the perpetrator was not an adult pedophile, or a serial killer. Lamont Harden, the 15-year-old brother of the kid Steven had beaten up, confessed to the deed. Rape and murder was Harden's chosen course, to humble "the fag" who bested his little brother. The shock in this murder is not merely that it happened -- but that it got so little media coverage. Today Americans are so driven by the media that we have a national heart attack if a child falls down a well and is rescued after hours of suspense. Indeed, child welfare is an overriding emotional issue. We go into a collective frenzy every time a Susan Smith murders her children. National headlines proliterate when a tot is blown away in an L.A. drive-by. TV cameras show us the candles and flowers proliferating on a sidewalk where a young person died violently, as a mourning public pays tribute. Yet the Steven Wilson murder has been swallowed up by a strange silence. Why? The reason is clear. Not enough people care. Not enough people are interested in justice for a boy who played with dolls. Prosecutors are asking that the teenage murderer go to prison for life. But the cold workings of our judicial system will not bring "justice" to Steven Wilson's spirit. Real justice has to happen in people's hearts. How can a nation do justice to a 9-year-old when so many people are abysmally indifferent to the fact of his violation and murder? All too many Americans feel in their hearts that it is somehow "okay" for a 9-year-old child who played with dolls to be sodomized and beaten to a pulp. The little bastard deserved it. Serves him right. In the words of General Phil Sherman, when he was questioned about his troops slaughtering brownskinned tribal children, "Nits make lice." As long as some influential Americans insist that "justice" is a 3000-year-old list on some stone tablets, with homosexuality chiseled among the capital offenses, there can be no real justice for the Steven Wilsons. As long as some Americans insist that "homosexuality is evil," those citizens will share a collective responsibility for the victims of gay-bashing. Dishonesty about "what the Bible teaches" is a major cause of gay-bashing. Eight of the 10 Commandments call for the death penalty. Death by burning or stoning is mandated for DOZENS of other "offenses" -- the list is quite long. To say that these Bible laws are literal truth for America today, is to ensure that violence against gay people of all ages will continue. Most especially, violence against gay youth will continue. Today, because of this kind of teaching, many Americans remain obsessively hostile to homosexuality. Yet "Biblical crimes" of equal magnitude -- like adultery, worshipping another God, not being virgin on your wedding night if you're a girl, swearing, and working on Sunday -- are no longer punished by death. If tomorrow every state made swearing or adultery a felony punishable by death, we'd have to kill half the country. Any American who insists that our moral law and penal law be based on the Old Testament is asking for a national blood bath. Steven Wilson certainly perished in a blood bath of one. Paradoxically, a person can be a good Christian without being a homophobe. Why? Because Jesus himself said nothing against homosexuality. This country has a crying, screaming need to acknowledge its national accountability for the violence against gay children. There are too many parents, police, schools, clergy -- who not only overlook but encourage the brutalizing of gay youth. Indeed, there are even parents who beat their own children when they learn they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. One girl I know was assaulted by every member of her family before she was finally flung onto the street....at the age of 13. Even the media and the courts have offered little help. Recently a Wisconsin federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that a gay student brought against his former school. From seventh to eleventh grade, James Nabozny suffered from verbal and physical brutalizing. Other students ambushed him in the hall or the bathroom. They beat him, punched and kicked him, even urinated on him. On one occasion, some boys pinned Nabozny to the floor and acted out sexual acts with him, while the rest of the class watched. Although his parents supported him, and complained to the principal, the school did nothing. "Boys will be boys," was the callous comment of officials. Nabozny stood it for four years. But finally he dropped out of school, and attempted suicide. Eventually he was diagnosed with "post traumatic stress disorder." PTSD used to be called "shell shock," and it is typical of soldiers who have experienced the extremes of carnage in battle. This case is now being appealed. It is but one of thousands, every year, that shows how low our society will sink to keep gay youth in the closet. The fact is, many gay kids are lucky to get out of school alive. Steven Wilson did not have that kind of luck. My question is this: how many more Stevens will die before Americans see the need to protect gay youth? Hopefully there are listeners out there who are feeling uneasy on hearing my story. Maybe they are suddenly remembering actions of their own, feeding the climate that killed an innocent 9-year-old. Maybe a parent, or school board member, or preacher. Maybe even another kid. Hopefully they have the courage and compassion to light a candle somewhere, and leave a few flowers for Steven. Maybe they will love real justice enough to do something about the problem. Maybe some other child, boy or girl, will not be assaulted or murdered because somebody, somewhere, had a change of heart. ****************************************************************************** **********************Copyright 1995 by Patricia Nell Warren. Permission granted for Internet posting of the above commentary. All other rights reserved. Permission to reprint in print media must be obtained from the author. 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