Edward Gordon, a 22-year-old New York man whose father is a retired cop, and who has a rap sheet filled with 11 prior arrests for drugs and assault, became the sixth suspect charged with the May 2009 gay bashing of a 26-year-old victim, who was left with a broken nose, missing teeth, and injured eye. Facing charges of gang assault as a hate crime in an attack where he and his buddies allegedly screamed “white preppy faggots, bitches, gay white boys, fucking faggots,” Gordon insists he can’t be slapped with hate crime charges because “that guy’s not gay — we’re being charged with hate crimes but he’s not gay . . . I wasn’t at all involved.” His co-conspirator Adan Rosado was convicted last year and is serving a five-year term that’s under appeal; there’s the requisite “ADAN ROSADO IS INNOCENT!” Facebook page.
Kev C
I’m innocent, but if I did beat him, it wasn’t a hate crime.
Ed Gordon, guilty and stupid.
The sane Francis
Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of this mentality in the hoods of NY. The whole “this is my hood, stay out of it you bitches”, generally towards people who are more educated, look put together and aren’t ignorant street trash. So none of this is surprising, of course these people believe they are innocent and did anything wrong, because in their eyes, it isn’t wrong to beat people up.
Shannon1981
Of course he’s guilty. Throw the book at him, I say. Plenty of people who are victims of anti gay discrimination aren’t actually gay. Doesn’t matter. They get beat up because people think they are gay. That should be all it takes for the crime to be prosecuted as a hate crime.
Geoff B
Sorry, but as Judge Judy says, you don’t get points for being stupid. Lock him up and lose the key.
Simon
FB page is just fucked up. All those people are sick like he is. He just did it because he wanted to do it, so it’s time to pay for mistake and being idiot. He should get some liquid soap there, so it could take more time to love gay people as they will love him in jail 😉
LookingAround
Shouldn’t it at least be a hate crime for the attackers calling him “white boy”?
Mario
@LookingAround:
The authorities seem to think white people can’t be victims of hate crimes.
LookingAround
I guess that’s the case, Mario. Not only authorities, but most gays. Could you imagine how quickly gay activists would be out there screaming and dancing and prancing in protest if a Caucasian had attacked a Black male and called him both “gay” and the “n – word” ? Gays live in their own fantasy world.
CJ Maciejeski
@LookingAround: Oh the downside of white privilege. Apparently, “fag” and “n*gger” are epithets, while “white boy” and “preppy” are…compliments? Does this extend to all euphemisms for Caucasians and the upwardly-mobile? How about “honky?” Still insulting? “Bourgeois?” I daresay the French made a pretty fair attempt at using THAT one as hate speech. Hard to nullify the hatred of a word or phrase punctuated by guillotine.
-Cj
LookingAround
CJ : Right And I daresay some would claim that if a black guy is attacked by a gang of whites while calling him something as benign as “Negroid” it shouldn’t be considered a hate crime nor even any reason for the motivation for the attack.
B
No. 1 · Kev C wrote, “I’m innocent, but if I did beat him, it wasn’t a hate crime.”
Oh I don’t mind him using an “it isn’t a hate crime because the victim was not gay” argument at all: if you read http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/legalservices/ch107_hate_crimes_2000.htm for the details of New York’s hate-crime law, a hate crime charge applies when the victim is intentionally selected or the crime committed “because of a belief or perception regarding the race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is correct.”
This guy’s “defense” is at best ineffectual and at worst (for him) actually helping the prosecution!
Tori
@LookingAround: Yeah, blacks have it so easy.
/sarcasm
Kev C
@B: Hate crime statutes are pretty straight forward. If you use a slur such as “faggot” while attacking someone .. anyone, it’s a hate crime.
LookingAround
Tori : Sarcasm or not, no…blacks don’t have it easy. And the majority of black crimes are against black victims. But in this case, I don’t understand why “white boy” doesn’t count as a possible hate crime.
TS not Trans
The way I look at it, it all depends on the intentions of the attacker. The victim doesn’t have to be gay, but if the victim was believed to be gay by the attacker, and that belief was motivation to commit a crime, then it is a hate crime.
It sounds like this guy should also be charged with ethnic intimidation too. His use of “white” shows this was also racially motivated. So “white” plus the gay slurs should make it obvious that it is a case of bias and hate.
This reminds me of a sexual harassment case. A beautiful transsexual woman dropped out of college and sued because the college professor was threatening to fail her unless she had sex with him. Then in court, the professor tried to say what he did was not sexism, since sexism could only be done by a man against a woman and that this woman was born with male parts and therefore not really a woman. The judge dismissed that defense tactic, saying he thought of her as any other woman at the time of the harassment and if it had been a woman born without TSism, he would have harassed her the same.
My point is that the issue is that the issue is intention, not so much how the victim fits in. If the attacker intends to bash a gay person, then it is gay bashing, regardless of how gay the victim is.
ARYAN SKINHEAD
While the queer “leaders” have been so busy protesting churches the past 10+ they were too stupid to connect the dots and see that rap,hip hop and ghetto culture have had much more influence on non-gays and have shut down the gay rights movement since the late 1990s.
The group that kills gays in Jamaica will soon spread to the USA like rap did and it will spread to white boys and rednecks just like rap did.
As it was said before, these queer “leaders” just hate white people and Catholics. They do nothing to address the real concerns of gays who have to face violence walking the streets of the USA everyday.
These queer leaders need to be outed and exposed as simply haters and not leaders of the gay community.
TRUTH BE TOLD
@Simon: People are so quick to judge people they dont know. no one knows the real story of what happened that night. Its not fair for people to judge others because of what some newspaper writes. Their is always 3 sides to a story. the victims, the defendents and the truth.
TRUTH BE TOLD
QUESTION?????? Why did they start arresting people a year and a half later after the SO CALLED GAY BASHING???? WHY DID THEY WAIT TO CONVICT 1 OUT OF 7 BEFORE GOING AFTER THE OTHERS? IT ALL SEEMS FISHY TO ME. POLICE AND THE DA KNEW EXACTLY WHO ALL THESE KIDS WERE AND WHERE THEY LIVED SO WHY WAIT SO LONG TO ARREST THEM? KINDA SEEMS LIKE A SET UP IF YOU ASK ME. LETS SEE IF WE CAN GET 1 KID, IF THAT WORKS LETS GET THE REST OF THEM AND HIT THEM HARD. THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IS A MESS.
TRUTH BE TOLD
@LookingAround: who to say any of this was ever said at the actual fight? How is one persons word versus anothers used as evidence? I can say someone called me a fa%%ot while they beat me, whos to say its the truth though? It shouldnt be one persons word against another because unfortunatly, PEOPLE LIE!! its all he said she said. and its sad because these days people use the words Ni@@er, Sp!c, Fa@@ot, [email protected] to freely and in most cases there is no actual hatred towards a race or someones sexual perference behind it. People have replaced those words for Bitch, Jerk, A$$hole, F&cK, Moth$%Fuc%er. HATE IS HATE AND IT NEEDS TO STOP.