Subj: Societe Anonyme - Peole in the south needs to wake up and join the 20th century,, a representation of general psyche, I am sure,, stop lynching blacks and burn the gays man,, may be it's the grits,,
Murder Reveals Double Life of Being Gay in Rural South
By DAVID FIRESTONE
SYLACAUGA, Ala. -- The closets that gay people build in small, severe towns like this one are thick and difficult to penetrate, and Billy Jack Gaither's was locked tighter than most.
Until the day two weeks ago when he was beaten to death and burned, Gaither, 39, lived with his disabled parents in their white clapboard house, tending to their needs, cooking dinner and cleaning up, singing in the choir of his Baptist church. His parents swear they had no idea he was gay, and his father, Marion Gaither, is still half in denial, desperately pointing out that his son once had a girlfriend in Birmingham whom he almost married.
But the small group of gays in this central Alabama town of 13,000 knew Billy Jack Gaither as one of their own, sharing their fears of public knowledge. A friend who grew up with him and used to accompany him on the nearly 40-mile trip to the gay bars of Birmingham said Gaither would probably have escaped Sylacauga, like most gay people who grow up here, but was too devoted to his parents to contemplate leaving. The friend, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing business, said Gaither never wanted to hurt his deeply religious, Baptist parents by revealing the nature of his sexuality.
Now, his parents and the rest of Sylacauga have found out about Gaither, and in the worst possible way. On Thursday, officials charged two local men with Gaither's murder, saying the men said they had become angered after Gaither made a sexual advance toward one of them.
The murder is already being called another signpost of hate, alongside the deaths of Matthew Shepard, killed in Wyoming last year because he was gay, and James Byrd, the black man dragged to his death behind a truck last year in Jasper, Texas.
The Coosa County sheriff's report said the arrested men, Steven E. Mullins and Charles M. Butler Jr., had known Gaither and met him on the night of Feb. 19 at a local nightclub. They then locked him in the trunk of his car and drove to a deserted boat dock where they bludgeoned him to death with an ax handle, then heaved his body onto a pyre of burning tires. His charred remains were found the next day on the banks of Peckerwood Creek, which local churches use for baptizing.
Gaither's parents had barely absorbed the horror of his gruesome death before they learned the motive for his murder, and the secret life that he had led for so long. They knew him as the kindest of their four boys, the one who read his big illustrated Bible every night before going to bed, who never came home late on those rare occasions when he did go with friends to one of the local bars (all of them straight).
"If he was gay, he sure never showed it," his mother, Lois Gaither, said Friday morning. "He never flaunted himself as being gay or talked about it. And whether he was or not, it don't make me love him any less. He was my young'un."
She added, in a kind of rueful acknowledgment of the truth, "Whatever he did, he never brought it home."
But Marion Gaither, debilitated by multiple heart attacks and a stroke, sat on the couch near his wife, holding his forehead in his hands, shaking his head at all references to his son's sexuality. When a television news report came on saying his son was killed because he was gay, Gaither shouted out, "If he was gay. If he was gay."
A tour of the house, however, gave a glimpse of a separate world that Billy Jack Gaither lived in. He had decorated his room with a large collection of Scarlett O'Hara dolls and other figurines from "Gone with the Wind," for which he hunted at flea markets on weekends. A large picture of Clark Gable kissing Vivian Leigh hung over his bedroom fireplace; pink chiffon curtains fluttered around antique etchings of antebellum women in hoop skirts.
The rest of the house, which his parents also allowed him to decorate, was more conventional. In the living room he hung a painting of the Last Supper, next to another of Jesus praying in the garden; between them was a golden plaque of the Ten Commandments.
The two rooms, one for the outside world, the other for himself, seemed to illustrate the traditional dichotomy of small-town Southern gay life. Gaither's friend said there are about 100 gay people in town, but none were open about their sexual orientation. Though there had never been a violent incident like this one against a gay person, the friend said, there was plenty of evidence that homosexuality was not appreciated.
Not long ago, he said, citing one example, a group of downtown merchants hung up a series of flags on lightpoles to spruce up the image of the central business district. The merchants were not aware that a rainbow symbol on one flag was sometimes used by gay groups, but a local church recognized the symbol and began a strident campaign to remove it, saying that its presence promoted a gay lifestyle in Sylacauga. The flag quickly came down.
Those gay people who have not moved out of town occasionally travel together to gay bars in Birmingham or Montgomery, the friend said. He said Gaither occasionally went on such trips and was known to have had at least two short-term relationships with other men, whom he would meet out of town.
Sylacauga, with more than 70 churches in its boundaries, is not unlike most rural southern towns in its conservatism and religious beliefs. It is industrial rather than agricultural, with many people working in the factories that ring the town. Gaither operated a computer terminal at Russell Corp., an athletic wear manufacturer, in nearby Alexander City. He dropped out of Sylacauga High School in the 11th grade, but later got his equivalency diploma and joined the Marines for a year before getting an honorable discharge because of high blood pressure, his parents said.
David W. White, the Birmingham coordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama, said Gaither frequented a Birmingham bar called the Tool Box, one of five gay bars in the city. Many gay people from surrounding small towns drive to Birmingham for companionship, he said, because the slightest indication of homosexuality in a town like Sylacauga would invite harassment, or worse.
"I would consider it difficult to live anywhere in Alabama other than Birmingham," White said. "Even in Birmingham, I would never in a public place grab my partner's hand and walk down the street. It would literally be a death wish in the state of Alabama. You would almost be inciting violence to do something like that."
Until now, Gaither's friend said, gay people in town have been more concerned about harassment and the loss of jobs or business than about violence. That all changed with Gaither's murder.
"We're all looking over our shoulders now," said the friend, who carefully closed the doors of his office before even discussing the subject. "You know, Mullins lived just two miles from here."
Mullins, who shaved his head, was known around town for wearing Ku Klux Klan T-shirts and making racist comments, but Gaither's friend said the gay community had not been aware of either him or Butler as someone to fear. Mullins and Butler are being held in the Coosa County jail on $500,000 bond each; their case will be handed to a grand jury on March 17.
Although the two men could face execution if they are convicted of capital murder, they cannot be charged with a hate crime, because Alabama's hate-crime statute covers crimes committed due to race, religion, ethnicity and disability, but not sexual orientation. White and other gay leaders said the murder would increase the pressure on the Alabama Legislature to broaden the statute. Shephard's death led to similar calls for hate-crime legislation that would apply to gays.
President Clinton was explicit in comparing the two cases in offering his prayers to Gaither's friends and family. "In times like this, the American people pull together and speak with one voice, because the acts of hatred that led to the deaths of such innocent men are also acts of defiance against the values our society holds most dear," Clinton said in a statement.
Mrs. Gaither put it somewhat differently.
"If he was gay or not, that still didn't give them no right to kill him," she said.
Saturday, March 6, 1999
Copyright 1999 The New York Times |
