The recent stabbing of a gay man in New Glasgow FOR NO REASON but his sexual orientation makes me sick to my stomach. Thank god he is alive, but he is now paralyzed for life and by the sounds of it they intended on him dying that night. This cannot be swept under the rug or ignored. He deserves justice. We need change. I’m disgusted and at a loss for words. —ashamed pictou county person
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2013.
I cannot understand why some guys get so insane about gay people. what?
If it is a hate crime. His sister was the one that brought it up. The accused has a history of assaults, so this could be one of those random assaults and the victim just happens to be gay. Let the investigation happen and see if it truly was a hate crime. Being assaulted while gay does not automatically mean it was a hate crime.
This horrific crime is going to inevitably get derailed into a discussion of whether or not the poor man’s sexuality is relevant, and don’t straight victims of random violence matter and all of that is semantic BULLSHIT!
I don’t know why we live in a society where an individual’s life can be ruined forever by some insignificant virus that came out his or her mother’s womb broken from the get go. Internet bullies, teen rapists, swarming punks, drunk drivers or random attackers. When the fuck did sadism and cruelty become entertainment.? We don’t want facile explanations. We don’t need psycho/social bullcrap. We’re not looking to blame rap music, Grand Theft Auto, Reality T.V. or Miley Fucking Cyrus. Just fucking stop!
What the fuck is so Goddamned difficult about “Leave Other People Alone!”
I’m going to get a fucking migraine tonight because all I can do is rant on this useless fucking board while a young man is lying in the hospital with a long hard path ahead of him and a lovely young woman with her life ahead of her is dead because of scum and I will never see my beautiful friend again because of some fucking mutated cells in her adrenal gland.
fuck.
because people prefer to spend their time bitching about toilet seats left up, armpit odour on the bus, fat people wearing stretchy pants or one of the thousands of other trivial annoyances in life. are so many people really that shallow. yes.
*Captain salutes the esteemed Col. Ivan Sonofabitch*
*Captain continues marching up and down the square*
Sorry for popping off like that, folks. Although I’d be lying if tried to tell you it didn’t feel good to abandon all pretense of self control and let the invective fly.
Short version – best thoughts to this young man and his friends and family from a pair of strangers.
Marching with you Mon Capitaine. “Illes ne passeront pas”
Take a walk in our shoes…
Unless you’ve been attacked by someone else because you’re gay, you will NEVER understand why some [people] get so insane about gay people. what?
True, being assaulted while gay does not automatically mean it was a hate crime, but I suspect it was a motivating factor. It’s rare to see a young, under-weight, non-violent gay guy insult/come-on-to/abuse/pick-a-fight-with an oh-so-hetero, heavy, violence-prone straight guy…
With the progress they’re making these days, given a few years the victim might regain full mobility. The fact it’s a hate crime or not doesn’t really change anything to the sudden and unexpected presence of a sharp piece of metal where the spine should have been. Hopefully the culprit gets locked up for a good long while, as if he has a history of assault he’s rather clearly dangerous.
Ivan >> sounds like you recently lost a friend to the Big C. If that’s the case, my condoleances. I know how much that thing sucks; a friend of mine finished dealing with her 6th or 7th one about a year ago. (yay growing up close to a superfund site)
2 Years ago February, Maes. Still hurts. SOBova lost a former co-worker earlier this summer. A friend of my Dad’s has just been diagnosed with mesothelioma. I know I’m shotgunning my rage today, but there’s enough shit out there; we don’t really need to be brutes to one another.
Hope your friend is doing better and has seen the last of the beast.
Merci, mon ami.
So it WAS because of his sexual orientation? Last thing I read, this was only speculation.
I’m out of the country right now so i might have missed breaking news in the case. I’ve been waiting to hear whether or not this speculation was accurate. I sincerely hope it was NOT a hate crime.
Sorry. I’m a scientist. I cannot trust the unknown.
No GBS, the sister said it and others followed. The police as of this moment say they have no evidence of a hate crime at this time. This may or may not change as the investigation progresses. It may just be a matter of the wrong place, wrong time for the victim. Until more is learned, we will not have an answer.
NewGlasgow sounds like such a dirty place.
We would love to hold a magic wand and make a wish to all humanity to learn to have respect and dignity towards each other, sad part is no such wand exist. This was a tragedy, but more importantly, it was a heinous crime.
Don’t blame yourself OP, Glad you gave a shout out.
THE REALITY OF EVIL
: “evil, a., n., adv. – Bad, harmful; the Evil One; the Devil; an evil tongue; an evil eye; pop. believed to do material harm” (The concise Oxford Dictionary)
What is the reality of evil? Does it have a distinct ontology or is evil just a momentary lapse from otherwise correct moral behaviour? Put differently, can one consciously, knowingly, intend to do evil? The question drives to the heart of what it means to be human. So what’s the answer?
Well, the short answer is either yes or no and it has a considerable historical pedigree. For example the Church Fathers, in proclaiming the “Manichaean Heresy of the 3rd. to 5th. centuries, maintained that evil has no independent existence but was rather simply the absence of good. The belief was that to suppose otherwise would place Satan on an equal eternal footing with God in the contest for the souls of men and as such was blasphemous, heretical and must be crushed, which it was. So, while good had a distinct ontology, evil did not.
The view is not irrelevant to our present belief about the reality of evil. The current view is that evil and rationality are mutually exclusive. Benevolence is written into the concept of rationality itself. To be rational is to be open to the force of reasons. If one is rational then it is a contradiction in terms to say that one can knowingly do evil. It may be the case that while the act might appear to be evil in the eyes of others, in the eyes of the perpetrator the act is necessarily seen under the aspect of the good. Even Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews was, for Hitler, good. For Hitler, it was a good thing that the Jews should be eliminated and he acted in accordance with that belief. We often hear the phrase “not criminally responsible” in connection with evil acts. Was Hitler criminally responsible for his actions or did he just happen to slip into a momentarily pathological state?
However to say that he was not criminally responsible is to descend into complete moral relativism, the view that whether or not an act is evil or not depends on how the agent happens to view that act. But the consequence of that is to drain morality itself of its content. It is to deny its existence. It is to reject all the grounds upon which society rests other than the momentarily advantageous and expedient. In effect, it is to reject society itself.
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with the unavoidable conclusion that, the Manichaean Heresy notwithstanding, evil does exist, that it has a distinct ontological existence. Further, there can be no plea of “not criminally responsible” for evil acts, whether on the magnitude of Hitler or that of the New Glasgow homophobe. The penalty for such evil acts will turn, of course, on the weight one gives to the sanctity of the individual as opposed to that given to collective security and well-being. But that is a question for another time.
A pleasure as always.
Cheerio!
Hello PC person,
Your post is inflamatory, and prejudges the accused. You cannot know that he was stabbed “FOR NO REASON but his sexual orientation”. Let the police handle it, since they aren’t jumping to conclusions .. and haven’t said if it is a hate crime.
Of course, nobody on LTWWW knows if it was a hate crime or not but, rank speculation, isn’t that what we do here? I know I do.
When anyone is harmed viciously it should make people pause and consider the motivation for an act such as this. I don’t understand why anyone would arbitrarily decide to end another’s life.
I can only send support (via some worthy causes) to the victim. May he get what he needs to recover.