"Let's Fuck, I Mean, Kill Him"

by Diego

The Associated Press is reporting that David Ritcheson, the 18-year-old Mexican-American who was a victim of a hate crime in Texas, has killed himself. The boy was beaten unconscious and sodomized with a "patio umbrella" by two men shouting "white power". He underwent more than 20 operations after that, and jumped to his death off a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico. The incident seems like the extreme physical version of what goes on metaphysically with gay men all over the world -- whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we can admit it or verbalize it or not. So if you're not in psychotherapy yet, go find an analyst now. Interestingly enough, if the crime had been committed against a white woman we'd be all up in arms, CNN's crawler going berserk with updates and things. But it's a Latin victim and a buttocks-related crime. So, shhhh...

The above image is of a white boy (left) who beat and sodomized, of course, yet another Latino, 16-year-old Keith Turner (right), back in April. When you look at a homophobe's eyes you realize, very clearly, that there is a fine line between wanting to kill someone and wanting to fuck them. The attackers in this case dragged Turner to a back yard, kicked him in the head with steel-toed boots, sodomized him with a plastic pipe and carved something on his chest. Turner also had bleach and cigarette burns all over his body. And, still, for some reason, one has to dig deep into quirky queer-devoted small blogs online to find out about these cases. While Katie Couric smiles and talks about talking pandas and fun fourth of July recipes for the entire family in the evening "news".