In the Life: Ep. 1907, "Dismantling Hate"

in the life is funded in part by the H van a meringue and foundation foundation the estate of richard w island David bone at foundation and these funders and by the annual support of in the life members like you it's sexual orientation which he said covers about 30 different pathologies LGBT people know it when we hear it the lies and misinformation that inspired bias against our community I'm opposed to the older guy bearing a child and calling that a marriage wendice bias turned to hate homosexual sodomy destroys people who practice it and nation set approve of it ken hearing hate speak lead to violence tonight on in the light documenting the issues and people shaping the gay experience we talk to victims and perpetrators about the nature of hate I was led to believe that in order for me to save the country I had to do what the authorities were were afraid to do and later we visit photographer Alex Smith who's traveling the country photographing hundreds of same-sex couples challenging stereotypes and taking conventional portraiture to a new level I was a in Chelsea looking for a nightclub I see a group of guys walking towards me and I stopped him and asked him do you know where this Nightclub is hot and he's staring at me kiss miss deep awful gaze so I was ready to walk away and he asks me so you're a [ __ ] and I turn around and god I wish I didn't turn around I've asked myself so many times I just can't make sense of why someone would do that an openly gay 15 year old boy who was murdered getting weather is hitting the rain but three people inside a gay bar where the hateful woman says that her attackers targeted her because she's a lesbian yelled anti-hispanic and anti-gay slurs the statistics are startling they're about 12,000 hate biased crimes based on sexual orientation alone over the last decade in the last year that the FBI reported which I believe was for 2007 there were over 7,600 hate bias crimes in this country in my research and this is with non-criminal young adults very high number especially of the young men admitted to some form of anti-gay behavior about eighteen percent of the men admitted to actual physical assaults what we notice with hate crimes or hate violence incidents there's this phenomena of overkill whereas someone it may only take someone one or two stabbings to murder somebody we've documented incidents of where someone may have been step 30 or 40 times during the course of a hate crime incident people are beaten much more brutally will be shot more time since someone who's just carrying out a crime that doesn't involve a hate element so overkill is is a very big part of of this type of violence the recent murder of oh hey steven steven lopez mercado in puerto rico nineteen-year-old you know he was brutally brutally murdered you know dismembered burned so those are the type of incidents that we see when when there's a hate crime somebody yelled tonight the [ __ ] died and we just went for it the best way to describe that evening was that it's sort of like taking a remote control and pressing fast-forward it's like really really fast adrenaline and a human being was left in a pool of blood in an alley in West Hollywood the best way to describe myself presenting a former skinhead late 70s early 80s and there was a lot of violence that was involved I was the person who initiated the majority of the confrontations because I knew that I had to prove myself and at that time in Hollywood there was a a rapidly growing gay community and at times we clashed this particular evening we were already involved with violence that night we left the concert and we were on our way to the hamburger stand and we had probably stopped two or three times simply to get out of the car and beat somebody up I mean violence was in the air it was like we were a pack of rabid wolves on the prowl looking for trouble a typical hate crime offender against gay people and specifically and we can't generalize too much but it tends to be young males teenagers and your early 20s and most often in a group in my research what I've come to think of it as they're performing a spectacle for their friends and they're trying to prove something to their friends and that's why it's committed in a group with the the victim really being a symbol which they can act against and I said his friends are all kicking me and punching me they were also calling me a [ __ ] they're also calling me a sucker and just and their Ruby getting a kick out of this and I could see it in their faces I could see that while he's well he's as serious as he can be in he says enrages he can be the others are watching him do this to me and there smirking and they're laughing and they're kinking and there's there they're stomping and calling me names there are a variety of motivations everybody is an individual even when their member of a group but typically the group motivation has to do with proving masculinity masculinity for young men it's not something that they are automatically born with or just automatically have happened to them they have to establish it this is the age group of you know teenagers adolescents young adults they're trying to submit their identity in the world and it's part of that they want to be a proper man if they don't show that in some way there's a fear that they're not masculine it's a very deep-seated fear I think years ago I was the old no I'm not I'm a big macho skinhead don't you know I always thought that it was important for me to continue with that macho posturing or you know being the big tough guy I truly think one of the main reasons was is because I was a scared little boy even up until you know a few years ago a scared little boy when when I realized what happened that night I started to piece everything together I was just I was just further devastated everyone seems to focus on that one Ethan the attack the gay bashing itself and no one seems to understand that it's the situation is much bigger than just an attack or just someone being hurt someone who's been called to name is so we're getting beat up can count against this hate crimes bill Lord he got against it he spoke it two representatives are golf government homo sexual sodomy destroys people who practice it and nation set a proof of it messages of hate on anti-gay messages don't exist in a vacuum you cannot continue to take moral wrongs and turn them into civil rights and survive as a people what we know is that these anti-gay activists and many political leaders who who speak out and well against the LGBT community are sending a message that it's okay to hate someone might hold some very hateful beliefs but we're America shouldn't they be allowed to hold those beliefs and that message feeds down through the culture it trickles down and the things that young people here in the schoolyard and how they react and respond it trickles down into the ways in which people can relate and and be respected and valued in their communities people who are perceived as LGBT are particularly vulnerable to violence because of the institutional or legalized discrimination that we have in this country against lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people if you look at the Civil Rights Act generally we're excluded from all of those protections the Don't Ask Don't Tell policies the Defense of Marriage Act all of those types of federal policies are laws that explicitly discriminate against us well I think that sends the message that we are not equal in the eyes of the law which means we are less than or other in the eyes of our society no matter how much of the world is changing I find at the heart of many conversations people still think of us as deviant we don't know where homos came from we don't know we're lesbians came from we believe that homosexuality is destructive to society it's nasty it's disgusting and so I believe that a person who participates in a homosexual relationship that that person is somehow anti-family or there is their their very existence threatened the the way of life for people who are heterosexual and people who consider themselves morally upright if you believe that then what conversation is there there used to be this idea that young guys that attack gays were afraid that they were gay and they were just sort of defensively responding because of their own mixed sexual feelings and you know this could be true for some people but in general that is has not been established by the research and it it looks more like young guys who do these group assaults in particular they have this sense of cultural entitlement I mean I don't want the man blowing me a kiss either I mean things happen yeah I've been beat up like that too but you know you don't see me on the news and my family crying and this is an eye on you wounds healed Ricans like they have the right or they should be helping to control social deviance by keeping people who violate gender norms in their place who has this biblical quote your tattooed on his shoulder Leviticus 18 22 should not lay with another man as one does with a woman for his in bham nation I was led to believe that in order for me to save the country I had to go out and I had to do what the authorities were were afraid to do you know I had never had any sort of experience or relationship with somebody from that was positive from the gay community sour culture that tells young people that they can go out and be people up for whatever reason it's it's really just a matter of degree if everybody saying hey [ __ ] this and even [ __ ] that about women or girls it's just a matter of degree before those attitudes can translate into something more physical we cannot survive if we solemnize our sons and our daughters we see the statistics of people being beat up and oftentimes killed because of who they are and so we know we know the effects that this language has and when we live in a society of free speech and I will defend those folks rights to the day I die to say what they want to say but I will not defend their rights to promote violence and to say that it's okay to kill it beat up gay people after more than a decade of opposition and delay we've passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like who they love how they pray or who they are it is often thought that hate crimes legislation is our issue and so once hate crimes legislation was passed our issue is done like Ed successfully done in congratulations and there is legitimacy to what hate crimes legislation can do for our communities but that is not only not the sum total of what we're trying to do in moving policy but it's actually not even the most important part of what we're trying to do and move policy because it is so punitive and it is so reactive like what we want to see is a shift in attitude of shifting culture when the message out there is so horrible that to be gay you can get killed for it we need to change the message hate like a disease like a cancer and I think until we as a society go after the causes not what happens afterwards not the effects of hate but the cause of the hate because you can you can cut out something and it can still be there you have to find the cause cure the cause and you'll cure the hate in the life documenting the issues and people shaping the gay experience one day or pushing we appreciate well you do yeah buddy okay look at him how perfect this is so bad i hate to me i love photographing people in their own environment because it's like a set it's like a stage everything in your house or your apartment you've put there for a reason and it says something about you i am really sorry guys you're so good my name is leaked Smith I am an artist photographer right now I'm working on a project called States opinion which focuses on gay and lesbian couples and families playing off classical paintings in some way I grew up on the Upper East Side of New York I went to an all-girls Catholic private school I always felt sort of out of place which is why photography was so important when I was coming out there weren't any positive gay role models out there everyone is the most of the people in movies either turned out to be straight died a drug-induced death or were a victim of hate crime the unfortunate problem with gay representation is you have extremes either everyone is elegant and perfect or they're [ __ ] and depraved and decadent what she shows us is normality every day people in everyday situations there was someone who told me a story that they their parent had been very conservative and he said god I wish I was just normal and this idea that he was growing up thinking he wasn't normal I found it very sad it's hard growing up in a society where the stereotypes are so prevalent that you begin to believe them yourself and I think that part of the project is to dispel those stereotypes and to allow people to embrace who they are how the shoots are set up is I contact the family and I give them about 20 images that I think might work and because portraiture is so much a collaboration between the artist and the sitter I want them to have a say so they're given the images and I asked them pick which one you think would most describe you or is most akin to your family for them I chose the Renoir the photo doesn't necessarily end up looking like the painting it's just a jumping off point well I just saw the dog and I was like this is the one that had a dog and it had two kids and have you know it only had one mom but I figured you know we'll just add another I actually showed it to the boys I was like what do you think which one do I wanna be ya the dog was like that one when we got married we really decided that we would we would never sort of leave it to chance anymore for people to know that we were a couple and that we were a family we just have to treat ourselves as full human beings and never compartmentalize any piece of who we are and that's exactly what she's doing she's just is capturing the fullness of what a family can look like all art is narcissistic essentially so you make something because it interests you so this idea that I was gay that I didn't really see a lot of images that were like me and sort of wanting to create those images I mean that's where it started from I think anyone who's going to enjoy these pictures will spend a great deal of time trying to figure out the details because once you get past the fact that they're supposed to be art we really only care about the people in the pictures we're trying to read their stories you're trying to see how their stories are similar to our stories we're a group of people that don't have a visual legacy and I think it has a lot to do with sort of psychologically how we see ourselves because when you open in art history book and you're straight and you can see these images that is sort of defining who you are or what group you fit into and being gay or lesbian you don't have those images so part of the concept is starting off with these paintings starting off with this language of portraiture and from there building our own visual legacy there is this long history of art being a device to bring the public's attention to things that might not be right in front of them might not be surrounding them photography's always been used for social change I mean if you look at Dorothea Lange for instance the migrant mother image that's so famous I mean that image created a whole movement to help those farmers by the government by volunteers by donations even Annie leibovitz's image of Demi Moore when she was pregnant it was the first time you saw a pregnant woman on the cover of a magazine like and at that point it was something that you covered up that you were like not ashamed of but like you didn't flaunt it and from there women started to embrace pregnancy and their bodies and it changed people's perceptions it's validating on so many levels and educating and thought-provoking so the more people that think I think that's that's where change comes from it's more subversive than the most overtly political work out there because the message is delivered so quietly and so with such a gentle touch that you don't know that you know that your ideas might have shifted until after the fact i think photography purpose is basically to catalog to show you what is there and her project will be a major catalog of contemporary gay families people hate what they don't know which is why it's really important to show people who they're voting against or who who this body is who this community is because by keeping us in the dark it just perpetuates the hatred because if you don't have an image that dispels stereotypes then those stereotypes grow and grow thank you for watching in the life to watch more from our exploration on the nature of hate and how you can get involved with issues raised in tonight's episode visit our website at in the LiveTV org you can also watch extended interviews sign up for monthly air date alerts and download past episodes 24-7 in the life is funded in part by the H van a meringue and foundation arcus foundation the estate of Richard W Island David bone at foundation and these funders and by the annual support of in the life members like you you