More from the Party of Peace and Tolerance
Law, National Politics Comments (4)
Well, the St. Paul Pioneer Press is reporting that three students are facing charges for using a bat to beat another student who taunted them about being John Kerry supporters days after the contentious election.
“We were sitting in the computer room at school, and there was kind of a political debate,” said Chad McKay of Arden Hills. “Some people said only gay people vote for Bush.” Chad said the victim said “only gay people would vote for Kerry because he supports gay marriage.”
Backstrom said the victims then “called the other guys some names.”
So, the victim here was apparently beaten for relaying the thoughts of others who might say, “Only gay people vote for Kerry.” The obvious implication here is that the “names” the victims called the perps here had something to do with that statement.
If it weren’t for the fact that at least one US District Court has held that being called “gay” cannot be defamatory as a matter of law, I might think that they felt defamed by that and took their frustrations/outrage out on the victim. But since it’s not defamatory, then I wonder why they felt the need to attack this kid with baseball bats and padlocks? And really, if you’re going to call the namecalling defamatory then everyone has been defamed because the Kerry supporters (according to the story) first called Bush supporters “gay” and yet who was it that got beat up?
And one final note: If the perps had been Bush supporters, how far and wide would you think this story might get spread?
MickC @ November 10, 2004