It will be a very sad holiday season this year for the family of Ronald Hayes.
A postmortem report has confirmed the 63-year-old gay British man was “beaten to death” outside a bar in Chester, England last Saturday.
Hayes suffered major head injuries following an assault near the Liverpool Arms Bar at around 1 a.m. on November 23. He was attacked shortly after leaving the night club. Police can now confirm that the official cause of death was “blunt force trauma to the head.”
After the incident, Hayes was rushed to a local hospital in a critical condition before being placed on a ventilator. The ventilator was switched off at 1 p.m. on Monday and he died shortly thereafter.
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Two 26-year-old men have been arrested on suspicion of murder. They are both currently out on bail. Police say the investigation into Hayes’ murder is still ongoing.
Hayes’ family described him as a “doting partner, father and grandfather whose spirit and energy was infectious.”
Photo credit: ChronicleLive.
Scribe38
RIP sir
jimbryant
He was not a gay man. He was a man who had relations with both men and women by the looks of it. Let’s be accurate here.
In any case, what a dreadful incident. My heart goes out to his loved ones. Britain is not the open-minded place its gay propagandists claim it to be. Homophobia has been forced underground by the PC squad, thus making it invisible and more dangerous.
Alan down in Florida
@jimbryant: By the looks of it he was a closeted homosexual living in a time where many homosexuals married and had children and kept their homosexuality secret. He may not have openly broadcast his orientation when he was younger but that didn’t make him any less gay.
Deepdow
Russians did it.
jimbryant
Alan down in Florida,
How do you know he wasn’t a closet heterosexual who hid his heterosexuality from his gay friends in the bar? The closet works both ways, you know.
Or maybe you can’t accept that many men can have relations with both men and women, including the so-called “gay” men who frequent gay bars.
Stache1
@jimbryant: closet heterosexual? Yeah, like that happens all the time. True bisexuals usually end up in relations with women when they get older.
GeriHew
RIP Ronald Hayes and my condolences to his family.
Regarding his sexual orientation, the mainstream news reports I’ve seen of this murder offer no evidence whatsoever that he was gay (or bisexual) other than he had been drinking in The Liverpool Arms: Chester’s only gay venue (which features drag acts) and that he was murdered outside by two men who had also been drinking in The Liverpool Arms. The evidence that he wasn’t gay (at least not entirely) is that he is a grandfather
It is only some gay media websites who are reporting that he was gay and others like Queerty who are just repeating this as “fact”. These “news” websites offer no additional evidence for making this assertion. Which is frankly utterly pathetic of them.
Perhaps Ronald was straight (or bisexual) and enjoyed drag acts and the men who murdered him are gay. There is no evidence whatsoever being presented so far in news reports that this is not the case.
Billysees
” Two 26-year-old men have been arrested on suspicion of murder. ”
I’d like to know what the profile is of those who attack patrons of gay bars, or any gay person for that matter.
You know — family history, education, religious background(if any) and other characteristics.
GeriHew
@Billysees: Police reports say the two 26 year old men who were arrested were drinking in the same (gay) bar as the victim on the night of the attack. They’ve also said it’s too early to speculate on whether the attack was homophobic in nature.
GeriHew
@GeriHew: Finally found a report that confirms that Ronald lived with a male partner. It doesn’t label him as gay or bisexual though.
http://tyneandwear.sky.com/news/article/90387/murder-hunt-after-morpeth-grandad-63-dies-in-attack-outside
GeriHew
@Alan down in Florida: Ronald wasn’t a “closeted” homosexual or bisexual. He lived openly with a male partner.
http://tyneandwear.sky.com/news/article/90387/murder-hunt-after-morpeth-grandad-63-dies-in-attack-outside
Alan down in Florida
@GeriHew: I was referring to Jim Bryant’s comment that Ronald wasn’t a homosexual because he had sex with a woman. As a contemporary of Ronald’s I remember a time before being openly gay was acceptable and many men of my generation chose/were forced to marry and have children to hide their homosexuality. Sex with women under those circumstances was simply biological mechanics and not evidence of hetero- or bi-sexuality as Mr. Bryant was saying. My classification of closeted goes back to that period of his life and not his current status.
Either way, may he rest in peace and my condolences to his family and friends.
GeriHew
@Alan down in Florida: Your response to Jim Bryant implies that you have a belief that bisexual men are either very rare or don’t really exist. Which is simply untrue. Whereas Jim Bryant’s comment implies a belief that truly gay men are totally incapable of having sex with women and fathering children – and therefore this poor man must have not been gay but actually bisexual. Which is highly debatable. And probably quite subjective whatever opinions you may or may not hold on the issue.
I’d be willing to bet my life that neither you or Jim have a clue how Ronald Hayes identified his sexuality. I don’t think Queerty or Pink News really have a clue about this either.
The way tyneandwear.sky.com reports the story with the known facts and no assumptions about sexual identity avoids labeling the victim either way as gay or bisexual. It therefore avoids any possible accusations of Bisexual Erasure down the line should it emerge later on that the victim identified as bisexual or in some other non-monosexual way.
Mind you if Queerty did know that Ronald identified as bisexual they might not even be covering this story. I sent them this link about an openly bisexual man who was practically beaten to death a few months ago:
http://www.mercurynews.com/san-mateo-county-news/ci_23824292/hate-crimes-charged-san-mateo-beating-bisexual-man
I got an email back thanking me for letting them know about the case. Then they didn’t post anything about it. Most of the gay media have ignored the story too. So what are bisexuals to make of that?
Here’s a recent update on that story for anyone who’s interested:
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2013-11-21/hate-crime-claim-dismissed-in-beating-of-bisexual-man/1776425113720.html
There is no hyphen in the word bisexuality by the way.
Billysees
@GeriHew:
Interesting new info about what happened.
I wonder whether some kind of exchange occurred between Mr.Hayes and the two men that didn’t go down very well. You know, like maybe a wrong word or gesture or something like that. Not everybody in a gay bar is gay. Some people go there for curiosity or something to do. If such people are not mature minded individuals, they could be easily offended or turned off by what they see or hear. They could then become simply dangerous and out of control.
Some time ago, I went to one of my favorite gay bars with a friend of a friend. I didn’t know whether the guy was gay or not. After about 15 minutes, I could see that he was becoming unhappy about something when he remarked to me that he wanted to smack somebody. I asked him what was wrong and he said that he thought the bar was gonna be about 50% straight and 50% gay. It happened to be about 100% gay and that got him bent out of shape. I quickly said let’s get out of here and we joined up with his other friends who went to another bar nearby.
It’s kinda funny recollecting the episode and that a bad event could have happened just because the percentages of straight versus gay patrons were not the balance he felt comfortable with.
Moral of the story is this — certain straight people can’t cope with gay issues and then they go off the deep end. Our society or culture needs to be educated that homosexuality is not some kind of foreign invader and that we as gay folk are not demons.
GeriHew
@Billysees: Perhaps your friend of a friend is bisexual but hasn’t come to terms with it yet.
Billysees
@GeriHew:
Yes…it’s possible that he was a bisexual and hadn’t come to realize it.
Coming to terms about ones sexual orientation is a “spiritual journey” of sorts, if I can put it that way, or it could be described as an “awareness journey”.
Most are good ones in that a simple level of self-acceptance is all that’s required. That was my experience. But other’s I’ve learned are long and winding roads with certain amounts of remorse because of coming-out-of-the-closet experiences after you’ve been married with a family or something like that.