Last night, I attended the candlelight vigil in Toronto for Chris Skinner. It was a somber yet somehow thrilling evening — a powerful reminder of the beauty and strength we see when a thousand of us come together in a single cause. Sure, there’s the annual Pride parade or the occasional Madonna concert but this was a display of true community as we gathered to honour our friend and neighbour.
Skinner’s death was a huge blow to Toronto’s image of itself as a safe haven and thus a big story. I’ve been asked a few times this week why I didn’t say anything about it here on the Roundup. Surely I could stop my round-the-clock coverage of Levi Johnson‘s penis to discuss something important, no? Well frankly, I was itching to but didn’t because
1) I tend to stay away from Toronto-centric news on what is a national blog
2) the Roundup is meant to be a light, pop take on the day’s events (gay in every sense!) and
3) my Xtra colleagues Rob Salerno, Matt Mills, Brent Creelman and Michael Pihach have already covered the story so far in great and skillful detail. No need for my chatter there.
But one thing nagged at me: the constant discussion around whether or not Skinner’s murder was a hate crime. The extreme viciousness of the crime certainly leads to that conclusion but the police are insisting that there are many other possibilities. They’re factually correct, of course, but what’s breaking my self-imposed silence is a comment I heard this weekend — a man who “heard from a friend” that, in his fatal encounter with the occupants of that black SUV, Skinner may have brought the attack on by striking the truck with his hand as it drove by. It’s entirely possible, he said, that Skinner was “drunk and angry.”
Now I never got to meet Chris Skinner but friends in common tell me he was anything but. The police, however, are duty-bound to jump in and say that, well, anything’s possible. An anonymous commenter on the Towleroad blog snarked, “I’m so glad being gay makes us immune to getting drunk and saying
stupid things, while projecting a sobering effect on others so all
their actions are rational and intentional.”
But while we all play our game of amateur trial jury, let’s just remember that “drunk and angry” is the classic defense lawyer’s gambit — a way of defusing the crime by putting partial blame on the victim. It takes two to tango, they say, but we’ve heard this song before.
Just a couple months ago, in Toronto, bike courier Darcy Allan Sheppard argued with the driver of a car that raced up from behind him at an intersection. Sheppard was allegedly drunk and angry so the driver stepped on the gas, dragging the cyclist a block before grinding him under the car’s wheels. Earlier this year, police in Bay City, Michigan, were called in to apprehend a drunk and belligerent 15-year-old boy. They handcuffed, then tasered him and the boy died.
And will we ever forget the infamous ABC News ’20/20′ piece in 2004 that attempted to shatter the Matthew Shepard “myth” by telling how a drunk and horny Shepard came on to his eventual killers. The piece inspired conservative blogger Pam Meister to write that Shepard “was a troubled young man who was HIV positive and into the drug scene too” (drunk and angry!) and it led North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx to oppose proposed hate crime legislation in the US with this speech:
Why you can trust Xtra
