When a sniper attack interrupted what had been a peaceful protest in downtown Dallas on Thursday night, a gay policeman was among the officers murdered and wounded during the attack.
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The Dallas Morning News reports that 39-year-old Jesus Retana had worked as a Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) police officer for a decade.
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He’s currently at home recovering with his husband, Andrew Moss, according to The New Civil Rights Movement:
Retana, above left, is pictured with his husband, Andrew Moss. Moss was behind an effort to get DART to add insurance benefits for same-sex partners that began in 2012.
Retana and Moss were married in 2008 in California. Moss, also a former DART police officer, left law enforcement in 2010 due to health problems.
On Friday, the queer-run Black Lives Matter group posted a statement on its website, condemning the murders of five police officers in Dallas as a “tragedy,” and repeated its “call for justice, transparency and accountability” in the investigations into two deadly shootings of black men by police this week.
kevininbuffalo
Hoping Officer Retana makes a speedy recovery.
David Bolton
It would be great if you didn’t write headlines that made the guy sound like he had been killed.
IDoNotHaveToAgreeWithYou
And cops rans to Pulse. What the hell have the black live matter thugs ever done for gays? Not one thing. Ye the gay blogs are promoting those terrorists like they have a right to be associated with gay people.
n900mixalot
Gay Hispanic cop, too. Black Lives Matter needs to own up to this and take responsibility, and work harder to tell the WHOLE story. They need to START by shaming those within our community who drag us down, not just speak up when crying about police. Yes police have a higher duty to protect and act justly, but I have zero respect for communities that disrespect themselves then complain when others don’t disrespect them. I don’t care what community it is. You can’t demand respect if you don’t respect yourself and others first.
NateOcean
@David Bolton: It’s called “click bait”. Queerty is addicted to it.
Ken
I don’t know where Queerty gets their news from but the DART officer involved in the shooting here in Dallas was not the man in the picture and he is not recovering. He was killed and his husband is currently greiving! Just another example of Queerty doing HALF-ASSED reporting!!
Derek de Koff
@Ken: http://interactives.dallasnews.com/2016/ambush-victims/
jasentylar
@n900mixalot: The problem with this country is denial. Black Lives Matter movement had nothing to do with the deaths of those officers. Therefore, there is nothing to denounce. What happened was tragic, but so is what happens to people of color daily. Unarmed People of color are being murdered by police officers in the thousands every year. Where is the CNN coverage on that? Where is the funds for their families? The presidential briefings? Black Lives Matter is a movement about equality. Cops lives are clearly valued more—look at the outpouring of support and coverage that happens when 5 are killed and half a dozen more shot. Black lives Deserve the same kind of attention. The movement won’t stop till it achieves that.
Sansacro
@jasentylar: “In the thousands.” That is a number that requires a source. So ‘effin tired of people, on all sides of the political spectrum, throwing out “facts” that are nothing but hyperbole, hearsay, and urban myth. And, here, it undermines the very real and serious issue of institutionalized racism.
therealegamby
@Sanscaro http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/wp/2015/12/26/2015/12/26/a-year-of-reckoning-police-fatally-shoot-nearly-1000/ – Yes, a bit of hyperbole. You are right, it was almost a thousand, but technically not in the thousands. Hope its still enough for you to care and/or understand the totality of the situation.
therealegamby
@IDoNotHaveToAgreeWithYou: So glad you asked what Black Lives Matter have ever done for gays. Well, in addition to being an organization run by Black Queer Women who advocate not only behalf of Black men who are shot by police, they also draw attention to Black Queer People who are targeted by the police, as well as victims of violence in other capacities. Black Trans Men and Women are disproportionate recipients of violence, which Black Lives Matter has drawn attention to. Or were you only talking about what have Black people ever done for white, affluent gay men? Because in order to articulate that history, we would have to go back to the 60s and 70s, when Black people not only started the gay rights movement (Marsha P. Johnson) but also provided the structure for what we call the gay rights movement. Imitating the civil rights movement, the first gay organizations like the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis drew upon Black people’s orginzational structure, political strategies, activist tactics, and understandings of themselves as an identity inherent to the individual. In addition, Black people (some of whom are queer, and don’t want to be shot by the police, whose lives are also under attack) were our first allies. Take for example, the city of Chicago, where Black aldermen introduced the first city ordinance to protect queer people. Black people also marched on our behalf, and when we started marching ourselves, alongside us, in order to protest police brutality. You see at the time we were all being beaten and killed by the police. Recognizing the solidarity, Black and queer people worked together to protest police practices. But as gay men in particular began rising in political and economic affluence, they also started relying on police forces to keep out poor people of color who they were now afraid of. Thus Black people, both queer and not, were excised from the very communities we were invited in to, as gayborhoods began the process of gentrification. And so we abandoned the coalitions that helped us to gain our footing, and as police started killing us left, we left Black people to their own devices despite the unquantifiable assistance they provided us.
Black Lives Matter is an extension of those same struggles, so instead of asking what Black Lives Matter does for gay people (other than advocating on behalf of Black queers and other queer people of color) we should be asking ourselves what they have already done, how easily history is forgotten, and how selfish we are as a community.
Sources: the books Queer Clout, Sexual Politics/Sexual Communities, and Gayborhood
JamJewel
@therealegamby: But when BLM stopped gay police officers from marching proudly in their uniforms under police banners in Toronto that was over the top and over the line and did not create friends or influence people. Even though our gay brother and sister officers were not identifiable as such, they lost their rights to march because this specific BLM action threw out the baby with the bath water. BLM protests the tendency on the part of media to document previous transgressions of black victims and have put themselves in the same situation where a lot of good actions were undermined by a terrible one.
Mo Bro
@therealegamby: They also sabotage gay pride events.
Bob LaBlah
As a member of the NRA I am going to Black Lives Matters’ defense in pointing out that it was NOT their organization that is responsible for this shooting. As I have stated before and will state again (no longer if but WHEN necessary) that there is nothing anyone can do to stop a man/woman who is hellbent on committing mass murder. The shooter was a nutcase. Case closed. Jury dismissed.
Long live the second amendment.
Brian
Let’s get rid of this phony coalition between blacks and gays. Blacks have a homophobic culture that oppresses even their own kind.
shakes_head
@Brian: Right, because the homophobic GOP, Westboro Baptist Church, the Vatican, etc. are just filled with black people. When will “white culture” stop being so anti-gay.
Brian
@shakes_head: White culture doesn’t play the identity politics game. Black culture does.
Keebler ILF
I do feel bad for what happened to these officers. I was afraid something like
this would happen.
What BLM is fighting for is for police to be held accountable for their actions. That will benefit ALL citizens. It’s not just blacks that are being abused.
Go to you tube and search these names.
Jarod Dotson
Dustin Theoharis
Keith Vidal
Connor Castellani
Patricia Cook
OrchidIslander
When the likes of Newt Gingrich is on point about police and African-Americans, hopefully that might encourage some of the deniers, deluded and slanted types among us to take note.
Might, but probably won’t
Newt Gingrich:
“It is more dangerous, in that they are substantially more likely to end up in a situation where the police don’t respect you and where you could easily get killed. And sometimes for whites it’s difficult to appreciate how real that is and how it’s an everyday danger,” the former House speaker said Friday on CNN commentator Van Jones’ Facebook Live stream in a conversation on race and law enforcement.
Most white Americans “don’t understand being black in America” and the discrimination African Americans face, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, said Friday.
“It took me a long time, and a number of people talking to me through the years to get a sense of this,” Gingrich said. “If you are a normal, white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.”
“….you instinctively under-estimate”
Probably because of guilt-by-association.
ricardo1
@shakes_head: Yeah, it’s funny because all of those organizations are full of self-hating gay men!
ErikO
@David Bolton: Indeed I thought he had been killed? I’m glad he’s alive and was not killed.
Transiteer
Gay had nothing to do with Dallas. Race and the anger at police for incidents involving police killing blacks. Someone decided to shoot back. A list of problems need fixing to set this right.
n900mixalot
@jasentylar: Black Lives Matter has eeeeeeeeverything to do with the death of those officers because of how irresponsible they are with their message. They continue to incite violence and they refuse to push the talk about Black on Black crime today.
They are just as much the ones in denial as everyone else in this country because they have a “cause” that they see as being first and foremost. See, they aren’t telling the statistics that say that Black on Black violence takes the lives of more men, women and children in one year than law enforcement has over the last five, ten years combined.
We cannot expect others to take care of us if we don’t take care of one another.
dutchman67
Poorly written article. Victim means dead. The header should have said “wounded.” We had to read all the way down to the bottom sentence to find that he is alive, and recuperating.
Keebler ILF
@n900mixalot:
They are addressing black on black crime; it’s just not being televised and I doubt you’re bothering to look it up.
In black on black crime the criminals are being punished, but the police, not so much.
Did you look up any of the names I mentioned previously? In Keith Vidal’s case, about five witnesses (two of whom were police officers) testified against the cop that killed that teen. But the judge still found him innocent.
For the record, I have never had a bad experience with a police officer. But I have empathy for those who have.
Franklin
@n900mixalot: When a black person kills another black person they usually go to jail. When a police officer kills a black person, they go on paid administrative leave. It’s hard for me to get how other gay people can’t support police reform. We of all people should remember what is was like in the early days when the gay community was regularly on the receiving end of harassment by law enforcement. And just to be clear, I’m not saying all police are bad, but to many good cops are covering for the few BOD cops out there. They need to have the ability to speak out without fear of reprisal. Also FYI, some of you may know this, but groups like the black panthers were one of the first non-gay groups to support gay rights. Huey P. Newton has spoken publicly several times in support gay people and gay rights. So lets get that straight.
dwes09
@Brian: @Brian: “Let’s get rid of this phony coalition between blacks and gays. Blacks have a homophobic culture that oppresses even their own kind.”
Says the man who rabidly hates women and gay men, thus being an even greater oppressor of “his own kind” (in this case those with a greater claim to humanity than he has).
dwes09
@OrchidIslander: I was amazed to hear that comment from Gingrich. It shows that in some rare cases the right can actually come to understand the realities of modern life!
dwes09
@n900mixalot: “See, they aren’t telling the statistics that say that Black on Black violence takes the lives of more men, women and children in one year than law enforcement has over the last five, ten years combined.”
The BLM movement is dealing with a specific issue. While i understand that you are likely too dull to see that black people are well aware of the issues of black on black crime, deal with it every day and discuss it in their churches and on all other forums addressed to the black community, you might put a little effort into seeing this awareness as well as looking at the historical sources and causes of black on black crime. Ironically these are the same social and historical forces that make it so much more likely that innocent black men and women are going to be killed in situations where white folks would not be at all threatened.
That black on black crime exists does not justify the casual murder of black folks by police for no reason whatsoever no matter how much you insist that it does. The desperation of some poor black people, the scourge of drugs, the psychological and cultural damage of institutional racism over the past 300 years does not make it OK when a worker at a montessori school loved by students and teachers is gunned down during a traffic stop (for the kind of violation that police usually ignore if the driver does not appear either poor or non-white) WITH HIS GIRLFRIEND AND HER YOUNG CHILD IN THE CAR; no matter how much you would like to believe it does. If you give it some thought (if you are capable of that) you will see that were the three in the car white, the driver would be alive. He would have been given a “fix it ” citation, been given a lecture for his past offenses (driving with an expired license), and sent on his way. Had the officer seen the LEGAL and LICENSED gun the man was carrying he would have acted in a cautions and responsible fashion. It is very, very unlikely he would have simply shot the man dead. THAT is what BLM matters is about. Sorry you are too dull and consumed by stereotypes and right wing talking points to see that.
dwes09
@Franklin: There were also out (within their community) gay and lesbian folks in the early (50’s and 60’s) civil rights movement…in MLK’s inner circle. Most of the opposition to gay rights among blacks has come from the fundamentalist/charismatic christian community (as it has among whites), and yet there have been some powerful advocates among charismatic black clerics and congregations in a way that has not been mirrored among white evangelicals.
Interestingly (and sadly) it was the Black Panther movement that started interest in firearm regulation in California. White people were nervous about openly armed blacks in a way they never had been with whites.