Was “Reverse” Hate Crime Really A Hate Crime?

A particularly irate Palm Springs homo just sent us an email with regard to this morning’s “reverse hate crime” story:

your report on reverse hate crime in palm springs is 100% incorrect. the victim was a closeted gay man and falsified his police report to protect his sexual identity. i live in the neighborhood where this occurred and it’s not at all uncommon for young hispanic men to drive thru and bash people.

you do all of us in palm springs a disservice by your inaccurate and incomplete reporting.

i would like to see a retraction on your web page.

Hmm, you must not have been very good at math, reader.

This reader claims our report’s 100% incorrect. The thrust of our post concerned the actual events – a man rebuffed two other men’s advances, allegedly got hit in the head and then passed out. We also passed on the police’s assertion that the man’s straight. Of the thirteen sentences in the original post – including the copper’s quotes – one sentence explicitly says the man’s straight.

The one sentence in question, we’ll note, is a paraphrase of a police officer’s summation, “Spike goes on to describe the assault as hate crime: the assailants allegedly beat the unidentified man because he’s straight.” That’s hardly 100%. In fact, it’s just over 7%. 8% if we decide to round up, which we don’t.

The reader also left some angry comments under the original post. Using the name psgoodguy, he writes,

this incident happened a block from my house. gay bashing happens fairly regularly as many of the gay resorts are in this neighborhood. young hispanic men love to cruise the area and harass/beat the crap out of gay men. it’s not uncommon to be walking down the street and someone will pull up and proposition you. just yesterday some young kid hit me up in the rite-aid parking lot wanting to know if i was into “deep tissue massage.” yah right.

since they don’t know what kind of car it was or who the people were it’s only a supposition by the victim that he was bashed for being straight. anything is possible but given the history of the neighborhood i would have to wait for more evidence to support a ‘reverse’ hate crime.

we’re an extremely tolerant lot here in palm springs. the gay community is huge and a majority of our city council, including our mayor, is gay. it’s really a non issue with most all people. young hispanic men, however, seem to enjoy gay bashing as a sport.

If this good guy is to be believe, “Hispanic” men ride around, try to pick up gay guys and then beat them? That makes absolutely no sense. But, there are loads of things in this world that make no sense. For example, good guy’s next message:

How about we take this to the next level?

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so instead of inferring that we gay men in palm springs are out cruising anything with a dick and beating the crap out of them if they don’t comply maybe you could update your story to reflect what really happened and that even if you live in a place with a large gay population there are still gay bashers out there who mean to do us harm.

not very good reporting on queerty’s part.

Alright, here’s a challenge to you, reader – and, in fact, everyone else. Find us proof that this man lied about being straight, then we’ll retract the story. Until then, we’re believing our sources.

Oh, and as for our “inferring” that all Palm Spring gays cruise around for dick, we’d like to know which of our thirteen sentences make that implication. We just did a count and got – you guessed it – zero percent. In fact, it seems the only person make such an inference is psgoodguy: “it’s not uncommon to be walking down the street and someone will pull up and proposition you.”