Quote:
Originally posted by jaguar
Interesting....Sure sounds like legal war over there. Is gay bashing still a common thing?
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In the NRA context , by "gaybashing" I meant verbal disparagement of queer folks.
*Physical* assaults against queer folk certainly do still occur. Matthew Shepard's case is notorious, and Danny Lee Overstreet's death in the Backstreet Cafe shooting in Roanoke VA (
http://speakout.com/activism/apstories/9977-1.html ) is a classic case where a gathering of queer folk was thought to be helpless because they were presumed to be unarmed.
The movie "Boys Don't Cry" documented a queerbashing multiple murder that actually happened. A lot of the other folks who died *without* their own movie are remebered at
http://www.gender.org/remember ...including Joanne Lillecrapp, who was murdered in Adelade last November.
As for "legal war", there's been a dispute as to the correct interpretation of the Second Amendment ever since Miller. Olsen's statements leave some rather wide loopholes, but in general the Ashcroft Justice Department has come quite a ways in what I consider to be the "right" direction from the positions of previous Justice Departments.
The constitution of the Commonweath of Pennsylvania, where I live, is much clearer on this issue; we don't have that confusing paean to militias (a term that has changed in meaning considerably since Federalist times) in front of the clause affirming the right.
Section 21 of Article 1 says simply "The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned." Not much wiggle room there.