Gay student brutally beaten in Ireland

A 30 second video that circulated on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram this past week showed a 14-year-old boy being jumped by a group of other young men, one punching the victim in the face, knocking him to the ground at which point the others joined in kicking and pummeling him.

Drogheda, where he was treated for serious facial injuries. The spokesperson also noted that the attack had taken place on May 15 at approximately 2.30 p.m.

Some of the teens in the video are wearing school uniform jackets from Beaufort College, a post-primary school in Navan, a medium-sized city located roughly 34 miles northwest of the Irish capital city of Dublin.

According to witnesses and in an interview with British LGBTQ media outlet PinkNewsUK, the teen was attacked over his sexual orientation. A family member, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the victim had been verbally harassed since the beginning of the last term.

“The whole family is aware of this, and that it’s been an ongoing issue, the relative told ink ews .

The boy, who was hospitalized after the assault, suffered from a concussion, broken teeth and a shoe print on his forehead, the family member and the arda confirmed.

“No 14-year-old should be beaten like that for anything at all, especially because of who he is. He is only a child and it happened across the road from a family member, where he was trying to get to, the family member told Irish media adding We are shocked, horrified and upset at what can happen in this day and age. It was a number of people against one boy, while others filmed it and posted it online. hat is horrific and wrong.

he arda spokesperson confirmed that investigators are aware of the video online.

“An Garda Síochána is aware of a video circulating on social media of this incident and out of respect for the victim in this case we would request that people refrain from sharing this video. An Garda Síochána is appealing to any person with information on the assault to contact Navan arda Station at , the spokesperson said.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who is gay himself, condemned the attack on the boy, telling Irish media outlet RTÉ Radio 1 that he hoped “everyone would condemn the attack utterly. e added I want to send my solidarity to the person who was harmed and injured in this way. I would say to them that life does get better.

“It is very sad that people experience violence and bullying in school, but life does get better and I’d say not to give up. I would say how sad I am that in this day and age we still see this kind of bullying and violence in our schools.

“I understand there is a Garda investigation underway and that the victim has been treated for their injuries [and] I would ask anyone who has information to co-operate with the investigation.

The prime minister also condemned the bystanders in the video who took no action to intervene and to stop the beating.

Five male teenagers were taken into custody by the Gardaí in Navan on May 19 and have been released without charge.

BRODY LEVESQUE

Get Tickets: bit.ly/bladepride eanwhile, in ontana, ooey ephyr, the first transgender state legislator in ontana, follows in the footsteps of early B activists officeholders like the late arvey Milk of San Francisco. Zephyr’s courageous stance against a majority of the legislature who voted for an anti-trans bill prohibiting gender-affirming healthcare for minors resulted in Zephyr being censured and prohibited from giving speeches on the House oor. Since then, there has been a tremendous national backlash against such fascist tactics both there and in Tennessee.

In an op-ed I wrote in April entitled “On Gun Violence, the New Generation Will Not Be Silenced,” I wrote about Tennessee State Representative Justin Thomas and Justin Pearson being expelled from the Tennessee Legislature.

Since then, both have been reinstated by local county governing boards that sent them back to the legislature unanimously. Let’s recall they and the remaining legislator Gloria Johnson’s “crime,” was deciding enough was enough by protesting against gun violence on the legislative oor. he national support they have received since then has been enormous.

Similarly, in ontana, ooey ephyr, the first transgender legislator there, was silenced by the Republican majority legislature there, being censured (prevented from public speaking) for saying there would be “blood on the hands” of members that voted on an anti-trans piece of legislation.

Zephyr and the “Tennessee Three,” as they’ve come to be called, are part of a new generation of leaders in merica, or the find out generation that won t settle for business as usual and are willing to face down the forces of status quo that want to maintain a system built on White supremacy and assimilation.

They follow a lineage of resistance of those willing to cause “good trouble,” as the late Congressman John Lewis once said. As the former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee in the 60s, Lewis was arrested multiple times and was part of the Tennessee sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville. (He would later, in 2016, bring Congressional House proceedings to a halt in a protest against gun violence.)

Justin Jones himself has been arrested 13 times for non-violent protest and jokes that one of the reasons he ran for the state legislature is that “members of the Tennessee Legislature can’t be arrested,” which is true, at least while in session. But Justin’s arrests are part of the tradition of the civil rights movement in the South. Tennessee was indeed the home resistance.

In May of 1960, over 150 students were arrested by the police for attempting to desegregate lunch counters in downtown Nashville. During the trial, the students, including Diane Nash, were defended by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby, a Black lawyer from the British West Indies, whose house was later bombed by segregationists. Looby and his wife were thankfully unharmed.

Later that day, 3,000 protesters marched to Nashville City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West to demand something be done about the violence. He agreed the lunch counters should be desegregated but that it should be up to the store managers.

The city later reached an agreement to desegregate numerous stores before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited desegregation altogether. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. later came to Nashville, saying he “did not come to bring inspiration, but to find it.

As we look ahead to Junteenth and Pride next month, Jones, Pearson, and Zephyr are visible symbols of the rise of a new generation coming up, the find out generation that refuses to accept the status quo and who is willing to put everything on the line to face injustice in the name of service to their communities.

Whether it is gun violence, housing, or hate, leadership like this will create the multigenerational, intersectional leadership we need at the local, state, and federal levels in the Halls of Congress to bring about solutions to the issues we have been facing. To create a new America that works for everyone. And I’m here for it.

ISAAC AMEND (he/him/his) The is a trans man and young professional in the D.C. area. He was featured on National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ in 2017 as a student at Yale University. Amend is also on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. ind him on Instagram @isaacamend.

Trans rights have reached a crisis point

We should fear DeSantis more than Trump

Trans rights have reached a crisis point. There’s no other way to say it.

On March 4, CPAC speaker Michael Knowles plainly stated that “if [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely – the whole preposterous ideology.” is a longtime B rights and Democratic arty activist. e writes regularly for the Blade. tour this spring. ume 1,” tells Porter’s life story through song. ering, that’s where the healing lies.” ment, he said. As a kid and in his early career, he refrained from experimentation in fashion because of how much queerness was seen as an impediment. designs, inspired Porter. in our culture.” no excuse,” Porter said.

To liken transness as a mere ideology is problematic on many different counts, but that paled in comparison to Knowles’s need for us to be eradicated. Eradication rhetoric is a genocidal tool, to ask and plead for an entire subpopulation to go away in one fell swoop is murderous and brutal. Genocides begin with this kind of rhetoric, then escalate to dangerous politicians being elected to office, then escalate even more to harsh policy, then escalate yet again when those harsh policies force humans to have to do many things — be locked in a cage, move out of the country, or even detransition, in this case.

Look no further than what happened at the southern border during Trump’s years in office, when images of migrants and their children surfaced at maximum security facilities, lying on the oor with nothing but a meager blanket and barbed wire surrounding their bodies.

Indeed, a lot of the CPAC conference was dedicated to engaging in these culture wars — but Knowles’s statement of eradication goes beyond the normal cultural bickering. This is why trans politics are at a dangerous turning point.

Adding to this chaos are bathroom bills and sports policies that prevent trans high schoolers from accessing the bathroom they need, or playing on the right side of their sports team.

In conversations with professionals, academics, and friends, I like to mention the fact that Republicans take peoples’ rights away when they notice that those people have gained more freedom. Think of it this way: when I was in high school, in 2010, far fewer trans people were out with their identities. Transness didn’t take a center stage in culture be it on the left or on the right. nd as a result, trans students were only attacked by bullies and in locker rooms, not by state politicians.

But the rise of en has witnessed many high schoolers now outing gender norms, going by nonbinary pronouns, and being proud of their gender variance. Moreover, society is filled with many more trans models and celebrities. When our presence becomes celebrated and known, Republicans will then take the necessary tools to push us back into the closet.

What s adding to the concern is the rise of smarter epublican candidates for the 2024 election who have exactly the same feelings of Trump but with higher intellects. Ron DeSantis is an example of a presidential contender who mirrors Trump’s bigotry and policies but is far more targeted and intelligent in his approach to public speaking and politics. Indeed, Democrats should be more afraid of DeSantis than of Trump.

On an end note, I like to summon an old saying by the late Martin Luther King. “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” No matter how much cruelty Republicans will put us through, they won’t succeed in the long run. More and more of society is catching up to the fact that trans people deserve respect and fairness. There will come a day when we have to sigh less and less about the state of our rights.

I find it interesting we celebrate our ride only one month a year. I take pride in being gay all year long. I am not opposed to celebrations in une parades and festivals are great fun. I appreciate Capital ride naming me a ride ero in . hose magnetic signs decorating the convertible I rode in, now adorn my refrigerator. But for me ride in being gay is something I have all year long.

It took me many years to feel that way. I was when I finally came out, sharing who I was with others. ne of the factors keeping me in the closet as a young person was the desire to run for public office. hat wasn t possible as an openly gay man, even where I grew up in ew ork City. It was only moving to Washington, D.C., away from family and childhood friends, that finally focused me on my true self, allowing me to come to grips with who I was, a gay man.

In , D.C. was a place people could feel comfortable taking those first steps toward coming out. any people were away from their family and old friends, ready to take a step into their own reality. ou could go to a bar like ascals in Dupont Circle, meet congresspersons, congressional staff, government officials, non-profit and business CE s, teachers and reporters, all still in the closet and not afraid they would be outed. Back in the late s and early s, before IDS, many of us were still in the closet. hankfully, there were some who were not. In the D.C. mayoral race, won by arion Barry, the ertrude Stein Democratic Club, the gay Democratic club in D.C., played a ma or role in his victory. Barry openly thanked them. e was a four-term mayor who supported the B community. It wasn t until the end of his career, when he was a Council member from Ward , that he came out against gay marriage. I remember how arring it was for so many when he stood on reedom la a with some homophobic ministers, and told us he opposed our right to marry. But he was the anomaly in D.C. he work of activists over the years, I was proud to be one of them, won. he D.C. Council passed marriage e uality.

In today s troubling times the rights of women, the B community, the frican- merican community, and all minorities, are at risk. With white supremacy on the rise, and anti-Semitism once again rearing its ugly head, it s important to celebrate our ride all year long. I want every month to be a ride month, so people in lorida will know they cannot deprive us of our rights, or erase us from their schools. So, a young boy or girl in ississippi or ontana, who struggle with who they are, and who they love, will be able to see they are great and loved, and can live their life fully, and safely, being their true self.

I hope by the time we celebrate World ride in D.C. in , inviting the world in to see who the nited States really is, we can be proud of who we are. oday that is not the case in many ways. I want a transgender person to come to the nited States for World ride and feel comfortable, not only on the streets of D.C., but anywhere in our country. I want us to be able to show off and say, here you are safe. I want the feeling I had, as a privileged white cisgender man, coming out safely in D.C., to be the feeling everyone has. o do that we will have to fight not only homophobia, but racism, and se ism. It is all interconnected and we must recogni e that and oin hands, if we are to be successful. While today in D.C. we have frican- merican ride, ransgender ride, outh ride, and atino ride, maybe we can all oin together for World ride. et us have pride in each other, as well as ourselves. et us have that pride every month, every day, and every hour, all year long.

We can do this and still have fun in une. et s not keep B police, and military, out of our parades. et us be as proud of them, as they are of themselves. et us invite the corporate entities that support us. I would be proud to march with Disney CE obert Iger. We will only make progress if we do so together.

A changing industry

Porter tried to go on a music tour before, he said, but the industry wasn’t ready for him.

A lot has stayed the same in the music business, but the industry has shifted since anything after all these years, it’s to keep going, stay in it, and focus on the work.