Reporting on anti-gay violence

Yesterday, MLive posted a story about a gay man who was assaulted on Wednesday night after leaving an event at the Bistro Bella Vita in downtown Grand Rapids.

The article states that Dave Battjes, a member of the West Michigan Pride, was physically assaulted by “2 men in their 20’s” who called Battjes a “faggot” and told him he didn’t deserve to live.

The article then refers to the assault as “alleged” until police are able to interview the victim. The Press reporter goes on to quote Battjes and then refers to a statement from the GR Community Foundation President, which condemns the violent assault.

The comments section of the MLive article is filled with lots of anti-gay comments and victim blaming, which is what we have come to expect from those who regularly spew hate. However, what is equally objectionable is the weak article from GR Press reporter John Tunison.

Like much of crime reporting, the article has little contextual information that would assist readers in understanding that while this assault was a specific incident it is also part of a larger societal problem. For instance, a National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs report from 2010 stated that anti-LGBTQ violence increased by 13% from 2009 to 2010, with 2,503 reported incidents of violence.

The same report also states that the majority of the perpetrators of such hate crimes are White men between the ages of 19 and 39. The Press article says that the victim estimated the perpetrators as in their 20’s, but it doesn’t identify their race and there is no discussion about what motivates young men like those who assaulted Wednesday’s victim. In other words, like news stories on rape, we are left with only a focus on the victim and not the perpetrators.

In Michigan the numbers on anti-gay violence aren’t much better. According to Equality Michigan (cited in the same report mentioned above), the number of reported anti-LGBTQ hate crimes reported in Michigan in both 2009 ad 2010 were both around 200.

One of the services that Equality Michigan provides is to assistance to victims of hate crimes. Michigan Equality’s Department of Victim Services (DVS) “is a social change and social service program that works to address and end violence in the lives of LGBT and HIV-affected people. Violence is any act or situation where a person or group harms others, denies them the right to be who they are, or hurts their quality of life. Violence can be direct, such as assault, or it can be indirect, such as being fired because you are gay. Both can be devastating to an individual and to a community.”

In fact, at the Equality Michigan event that was held on Wednesday night in downtown Grand Rapids just prior to the assault, the new Executive Director spoke about this service that the statewide organization provides. The focus on these kinds of services might have been more apparent to the GR Press has they bothered to send a reporter to that event, which was historic in that the new Executive Director for Equality Michigan is the first trans person to lead an statewide equality organization. The sad fact that no commercial news media attended the event and the only report we are aware of is what GRIID posted yesterday.

It is certainly important that the GR Press reported on the anti-gay assault, but we need to demand better coverage of this kind of violence in order to have a greater collective understanding of what drives this kind of violence and how we can all respond to it.