Gay community rallies against crimes

Walking into the Badlander packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder, you’d think it was a Friday night. But it was Monday, and the crowd wasn’t a drunken bunch.

At the bar was 31-year-old C.C. Deveroux, the 17th Miss Gay Missoula. He sported a frizzy wig, with a red bow, and wore red lipstick, a leather jacket, short skirt and fishnet stockings. In displays of solidarity within the gay community, others wore white T-shirts bearing the names they had been called: muff diver, big homo, FAG and vagatarian. 

The group swarming to the Badlander took part in a rally against hate crimes formed in response to attacks on two gay people in Missoula earlier this month.

The Western Montana Gay & Lesbian Community Center held the rally in conjunction with 30 other organizations, including Forward Montana, the UM Lambda Alliance and the Missoula Police Department. The night’s theme was “We are Missoula. Speak up. Stand out.”

Jess Keith, 29, said four women beat her while yelling homophobic remarks. A 22-year-old male UM student was attacked by four men while crossing the campus footbridge, he said. The attackers shoved him to the ground and kicked him in the back and chest while screaming anti-gay remarks, he said.

Speakers at the rally urged onlookers “to twist the arms” of senators, forcing them to pass hate crime legislation, like the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act, that would give local police the “tools they need to investigate and prosecute these crimes.”

“Everyone should step forward,” said County Commissioner Jean Curtiss, “not just gays and lesbians. We are all neighbors.”

Mayor John Engen supported this statement, saying, “Hate and violence are not Missoula values.”

Participants at the Badlander rally weren’t all homosexual. Dozens of heterosexual people raised their hands when a speaker asked how many straight people were there. One person wore a white t-shirt with “Straight but not narrow!!” written on the back.

Montana Sens. Dave Wanzenreid and Christine Kaufman spoke at the rally, as did others like Keith, who spoke on her attack.

“As they were kicking me in the back, I was thinking to myself, ‘Why?’” Keith said. “I felt really alone. Now, I see you all and feel so much support.”

These past weeks, strangers hug her in the grocery store, she said. Her wounds are healing but she has much to endure, she said.

“I’m on physical therapy and a bunch of Loratab,” she said. “The emotional pains won’t go away so easily.”

Keith grew up in Missoula, and she’s going to stay, she said.

“There’s strength in numbers,” Keith said, “and we can make a change.”

Other rally speakers told personal stories, like Tanya Campbell of the Crime Victims Advocacy Network.

“I’ve been called a ‘fucking dyke’ on the streets of Missoula,” Campbell said. “It happens, and we can do something about it. Look at us.”

After hearing this, the crowd let out a screaming, whistling applause.

ASUM President Dustin Leftridge said he believes the rally can do more than just create a night of noise. It can have a lasting effect, he said. Any type of human rights legislation entails a long, slow process of people at the grassroots level demanding change, he said. 

“We’ve been talking about hate crime legislation in Montana for 10 years,” Leftridge said.

More people need to stand up, he said, or Montana will have to wait another 10.

“We need to necessitate change,” Leftridge said. “This (the rally) is the best we can do.”

U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus issued statements supporting the rally, but Rep. Denny Rehberg did not. At the rally, petitions addressed to Rehberg in support of hate crime legislation were passed around.

Deveroux said the rally has the potential to instigate change.

“I think this could be a start of something,” he said.