|
|
|
|
This press release was sent to me today:
Equality Forum Calls on US Justice Department to Investigate
Decapitation and Dismemberment of Puerto Rican Gay Teen
On Saturday, November 14, 2009, the body of 19-year-old George Lopez Mercado was found by the side of the road in Cayey, a city near the victim’s hometown of Caguas, Puerto Rico.
Lopez Mercado was partially burned, decapitated and with both arms and legs dismembered from his torso.
The police investigator suggested that Lopez Mercado deserved what he got because of the “type of lifestyle” he was leading.
According to Puerto Rican activists, Puerto Rico has never classified the murder of a gay man as a hate crime.
“Equality Forum calls on US Attorney General Eric Holder to have the FBI investigate,” stated Malcolm Lazin, Executive Director, Equality Forum. “The Matthew Shepard Amendment empowers and requires the federal government to prosecute this horrific murder.”
Lazin served as a federal prosecutor; received the US Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award, the department’s highest annual honor; and was the Chair of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission.
The Matthew Shepard Amendment to the federal hate crimes act includes among other protected categories, sexual orientation. President Obama signed the bill into law on October 28, 2009. The federal hate crimes act enables federal agents to investigate hate crimes, especially where there does not appear that a full and fair investigation will be undertaken.
Puerto Rican gay activist Pedro Julio Serrano stated, “It is inconceivable that the investigating officer suggests that the victim deserved his fate, like a woman deserves rape for wearing a short skirt.”
“Equality Forum joins Puerto Rican activists in condemning the statements of the investigator and calls on Police Superintendent Figueroa Sancha to terminate the officer,” stated Malcolm Lazin. “It is clear that without federal intervention, there can be no fair and complete investigation.”
Equality Forum is a national and international GLBT civil rights organization with an educational focus. Equality Forum coordinates GLBT History Month, produces documentary films, undertakes high impact initiatives and presents annually the largest national and international GLBT civil rights forum.
[Updated on: Wed, 18 November 2009 00:21] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
 |
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
|
|
|
I have a feeling this is not going to be an open and suit case. We have the "Just another damned maricón" side and the "this is a hate crime" side.
I wonder if we will remember that the dead lad was someone's son who had hopes and fears, ambition, a living to earn, food to buy. I wonder if we will realise that he also had to shit and piss as do we. I hope he was loved. I'm sorry for those who loved him, and I wish those whom he loved will have known how much they were loved.
"Puerto Rican Gay Teen" is not the way I'd like to be remembered. I guess it beats "Just another damned maricón" though, but Jorge Steven Lopez is his name.
This poor kid deserved to die as much as did Matthew Shepard. They both deserved to die... But of old age, in the arms of the person who loved them and whom they loved back,
[Updated on: Sun, 22 November 2009 20:08]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Nov 19 | The dismembered body of 19-year-old college student Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was discovered November 14th alongside a road near the interior town of Cayey. Lopez was widely known as a volunteer for organisations advocating HIV prevention and gay rights, and activists are planning remembrance vigils for him in cities including San Juan, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
The suspect, 26-year-old Juan Martinez-Matos, was arrested earlier this week and allegedly confessed to killing Lopez and mutilating his body. He was charged with first-degree murder and weapons violations and was admitted last night to jail in The Spoons, in Ponce, Puerto Rico after failure to pay a bail bond of $ 4 million that was imposed by judge Madeline Guayama.
Martinez-Matos met Lopez while looking for women Thursday night in an area known for prostitution according to prosecutor Jose Bermudez Santos. He said the case was submitted to Judge Guayama since the victim's body was found in Cayey located in that region of the judiciary. However, during the course of the investigation, it emerged that the murder occurred in Cidra, thus it was decided to move the case to the regional judicial circuit court of Caguas and the preliminary hearing will be held on December 7 at the judicial center there.
Santos said the suspect confessed to stabbing Lopez, who was dressed as a woman, after discovering he was a man. According to the prosecutor, what is also claimed by Martínez-Matos, is that they went to a room in his parents' house in the neighborhood Beatriz de Cidra, used cocaine and upon termination of the drug, Steven George demanded money for sex. "That's the version he (Martinez), stressed, " said Santos, "There is not a shred of evidence to support a claim of self defense."
Martínez-Matos, who is married with children, confessed to killing the victim with a stab wound to the neck. He then beheaded, dismembered him, and dumped the body in a spot where he tried to burn it .
"He has a deep-seated rage," Santos said in remarks reported by the local newspaper El Nuia.
LGBT Activists on the island are outraged that prosecutors have not yet decided whether or not to prosecute Martinez-Matos under the newly enacted Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Law passed by Congress & signed by President Obama last month.
"All the information we have is very clear that this is indeed a hate crime," said Pedro Julio Serrano, a Puerto Rico native who is a spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "A 2002 hate crime law in this Puerto Rico has not been applied to any cases involving sexual orientation or gender identity despite calls to use it more aggressively," he remarked.
A suspect convicted of a hate crime offence as defined by the 2002 law, as part of another crime , automatically faces the maximum penalty for the underlying crime. For murder, that would be life in prison.
Juan Martinez-Matos is escorted to Bail Hearing by Police Detectives. Photo By Tony Zayas The Associated Press
[Updated on: Fri, 20 November 2009 02:16] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
|
|
|
A discomfiting report from Brody Levesque http://brodylevesque.blogspot.com/2009/11/brodys-notes-vigils-to-be-held-for.html speaks of an interview with police investigator Ángel Rodríguez Colón.
“These types of people, when they enter this lifestyle and go out into the streets know that this could happen.”
"These types of people" interests me.
What type of person was Jorge Steven Lopez?
The press picture shows a somewhat feminised youth. Does he deserve all he got because he dressed in a less than masculine manner, then?
He is said to have been picked up where ladies of the night ply for hire. Does he deserve all he got because he was possibly plying for hire?
His self confessed killer allegedly believed he was picking up a lady. He got a young gentleman. Does this mean that the young gentleman had to be killed? Did he deserve all he got because he was the wrong sex?
Jorge Steven Lopez was undeniably gay. Does he deserve all he got because he was gay?
Puerto Rico has the same proportion of LGBT folk as anywhere else in the world. Well, obviously except Iran, which kills all it can find by state sanctioned murder. What message does Ángel Rodríguez Colón send to every one of them? And what message is he sending to Miriam Mercado, Jorge Steven Lopez's mother?
She loved her gay son.
[Updated on: Sun, 22 November 2009 20:10]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
|
|
|
I have been looking at this story and thinking "why is it that it seems to be just Brody, EJ, and me who think it is in any way notable or important?"
It was, after all, 'just another kid who got killed', wasn't it? Like Matthew Shepard, another gay kid who got killed.
Maybe we have grief fatigue. Maybe this fails to shock today. We've seen and heard of dead kids before. And we've seen beatings and murders before. So I don't know any more. is this just another hate crime that we're immune to?
In so many ways this is what prompted my posts about Gay Community and Being a Gay Man. You see. I know I'm powerless to help, powerless even to give a smidgen of comfort to any dead gay kid's family, to those who loved him, to those whom he loved. And yet crimes like this hurt me, insulated as I am in Royal Berkshire, in a haven of tranquillity.
They hurt me because this is one kid I know I couldn't help.
I'm ignorant. I have no idea where Puerto Rico is. I know two Puerto Ricans, and one of those is Ricky Martin. Come to that I know an Iranian, a gay man, who may or may not have been killed i Iran for being gay. I haven't heard from him for too long. I do know where Iran is.
I know that both places are remote from me and outside my experience, yet there is a welcome, one gay man to another, when hands reach out across the sea. I was awarded a hug by Yonatan Gher-Leibowitz in Jerusalem. All he and I have in common is homosexuality and a desire, a passionate desire to make the world somehow safer for people like us. I'd never met him before and I feel richer for the hug and for the conversation. It's not too much to hope he feels a little richer from mine
Each time I meet a gay man I feel comfortable and "at home", even with the camp queens. And each time a kid dies by someone else's hand I feel a loss.
And yet I know this is not a memorial site, we don't write headstones here.
But I feel that these kids, Jorge, Matthew, the kids in Iran, the gay man murdered in Trafalgar Square, these could have been my friends, had I been in the right place at the right time.
Am I alone in these feelings?
[Updated on: Mon, 23 November 2009 21:01]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Timmy, we work to our strengths and weaknesses. In a team we use the people with certain skills; we do not try to cover one another.
I was brought up not to express my emotions. That doesn't mean I don't have any. I just for the main part keep them to myself. It would be pointless for me to copy what you, Brody and EJ do. I would only make a mess of it and it wouldn't be genuine.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
|
|
|
Seems fair.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy wrote:
> But I feel that these kids, Jorge, Matthew, the kids in Iran, the gay man murdered in Trafalgar Square, these could have been my friends, had I been in the right place at the right time.
>
> Am I alone in these feelings?
Not in the least. But we can't all do everything - each of us will have things, people, causes that we are especially interested in, which touch a particular chord in us, and which take up the bulk of our energies. Some of mine I've shared here, some I haven't.
And - to be utterly honest - some things are too close to home. I, for example, couldn't get personally involved in abused kids, because it would bring back too many memories and is an area I'm not entirely stable on.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
timmy
|
|
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
|
|
|
also a fair answer. I just sometimes feel rather alone in things
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
