Source: Express Gay News, Miami Herald, Bay News 9
Gay American Heroes, the new traveling monument that memorializes gay men and women who have been killed due to homophobic violence, is scheduled to be displayed in the Florida Capitol Rotunda April 28.
According to organizers, the exhibit marks the first time a gay-friendly display will be exhibited inside the hall that overlooks the entrance to the chambers of the Florida House of Representatives and Senate. The date of the exhibit, April 28, also marks the birthday of Ryan Skipper, a gay college student who was murdered last year in Polk County, Fla., in what police described as an anti-gay hate crime. Skipper would have turned 28 on the date of the exhibit.
Equality Florida and the Gay American Heroes Foundation [warn: link automatically plays sound] are planning the Rotunda exhibit to emphasize the need for the safe schools legislation that prevents school bullying.
“We’re doing it to highlight GLBT victims of hate crimes,” said Mallory Wells, a lobbyist for Equality Florida. “We want to shed a light on how hate crimes are tied to school bullying.”
Representatives of Equality Florida and the Gay American Heroes Foundation will be in the Rotunda talking about anti-gay hate crimes and passing out birthday cake in honor of Skipper. The groups will also organize a press conference that will feature Skipper’s parents, Lynn and Patricia Mulder. Denise King, mother of Simmie Williams, a gay Fort Lauderdale teen who was murdered in February, may also participate.
Wells said the exhibit represents a new foothold for Florida’s gay rights movement in the notoriously conservative Florida Legislature. Among the advances, she said, are more gay-friendly bills being introduced and Equality Florida’s full-time lobbying effort in Tallahassee.
Scott Hall, president and founder of the Gay American Heroes Foundation, said he is working with the Safe Schools Coalition and Equality Florida to arrange a meeting between Gov. Charlie Crist and the Mulder family to discuss hate crimes and school bullying. Presenting the exhibit inside the Rotunda represents a new day for gay politics in Florida, Hall said.
“It’s historic,” Hall said. “It establishes the importance of the project and reconfirms the need for us to be proactive in the state.”
Explaining the genesis of the traveling monument in February, Hall told the Miami Herald that he didn't think much about gay rights 25 years ago, even after a stranger cracked him across the head with a baseball bat outside a gay bar in Melbourne.
"When I was attacked, I felt there was nothing I could do about it," said Hall, now 43. "The concept of people thinking that I was gay was more frightening than me having my head smashed in."
A year ago, Hall had an awakening. "I was home watching TV one night and saw this little blip on the TV about a young man being brutally murdered in Polk County," he said. "It caught me off guard. I sat there and thought about it."
The March 2007 death of 25-year-old Ryan Keith Skipper -- stabbed 20 times and dumped on a roadside in Winter Haven -- spurred Hall to action. The Cocoa Beach auctioneer began the Gay American Heroes Foundation and began work on the traveling memorial.
"Scott's memorial speaks to our society as a whole," said Skipper's stepfather, Lynn Mulder, 49, of Auburndale. "It will help awareness all across the nation. . . . Ever since Ryan's murder, I've been acutely aware of all the horrible things happening across the nation."
Many well-known national and Florida gay activists supported the project, but Hall is more impressed by a lesser-known woman supporting the project -- Elke Kennedy, whose son Sean, 20, in May 2007 took a fatal punch to the face in Greenville, S.C.
"I get up each day knowing that this is what I need to do for the rest of my life," said Kennedy, 46, of South Carolina, now an activist lobbying for a national hate-crimes law.
"I did not want any mother to have to go through this again," she said.
A short film considering Skipper's death has also been shown in the past month at several Florida venues. It's produced by a women who, like Hall, never met Skipper
But, like Hall, the film's producer, Vicki Nantz is also trying to keep his memory alive and examine the larger issue in a documentary about his life and death. The film, "Accessory to Murder: Our Culture's Complicity in the Death of Ryan Skipper,' is an effort to start dialogue on how societal views can lead to violence.
Nantz said stereotyping and society also played a role in Skipper's murder.
"People who marginalize the gay community and open them up to violence and incite violence against them through hateful rhetoric,' Nantz. "They are largely responsible as accessories to Ryan's murder."
Full article: Gay hate-crimes memorial to be displayed in Florida capitol | Express Gay News
Memorial to honor gay victims of hate | Miami Herald (2/23/08)
Remembering Ryan Skipper | Bay News 9