Steven Parrish: Killed for being gay

The Baltimore Sun reports:

Two teenagers were ordered held without bail yesterday in the death of a Randallstown High School student who was stabbed and stomped to death after his fellow Bloods gang members found messages on his phone that suggested he was gay.

Steven T. Hollis III, 18, of Randallstown and Juan L. Flythe, 17, of West Baltimore - both of whom are members of the Bloods gang, according to police - were arrested and charged Thursday evening with first-degree murder. They are accused of killing a fellow gang member days before his high school graduation in May.

The body of Steven Parrish, 18, was found May 29 in a wooded area near his parents' home and Woodlawn Cemetery. "

It's awful," Baltimore County prosecutor William B. Bickel said in an interview after yesterday's bail-review hearing in Towson. "You're talking about a gangland-style execution because he was gay. They took him out back in a field and stabbed him to death."

An autopsy revealed that Parrish died of both blunt-force and stabbing injuries, according to court records. He suffered 50 superficial cutting wounds to his arms, neck, head, wrist and hands in addition to one stab wound to the chest that injured his heart and caused significant blood loss. He also had bruises on the left side of his neck.

Clearly these young men are not Boy Scouts, but Steven Parrish has paid a high price for not conforming to a macho culture. His fellow gang members deemed it necessary to kill Steven, least anyone think they were weak for having someone gay in their gang.

On the day before Parrish's death, several members of the gang met at his home, according to charging documents. There, Hollis and Flythe discussed finding what they believed to be "gay" text messages on Parrish's cell phone.

Angered by the messages and a photograph they found, they worried that their Bloods group would appear weak to others if word got out that they had a gay member, according to court records.

Carrie Evans, Policy Director for Equality Maryland, issued a statement about the tragedy.

When you work in the LGBT civil rights movement, you learn to construct a thick wall around your heart as a means to survive. Sometimes though an 18-wheeler comes crashing through that wall.

As I read the story in the Baltimore Sun about the killing of Steven Parrish, I kept re-reading the witness accounts. "...Parrish left his parents' home with another young man and walked toward the woods. About a minute later, the witness and other neighbors heard someone yelling and pleading, "Stop! Why are you doing this to me? I didn't do anything!" His wrongdoing? The insinuation (or fear) he was gay and the implications this had for the gang he was a part of. I kept on imagining the awful things that may have been going through his head as he was being led to his vicious death. Was it the fear of violence and death that many LGBT people feel when someone "discovers" our secret? Was it regret that he hadn't tried hard enough to be straight? Was it sadness that he could not live his life openly and honestly as a young gay man? Was it betrayal that his sexual orientation would trump any familial bonds with his gang brothers? Was it resignation that being murdered is the horrific price one pays for "not being a man?"

I will never know.

I do know that we do this work in hopes that we can create a world that embraces Steven and all of the young, old and in between people who are gay or don't fit into the rigid gender roles that society imposes. We must move out of our isolating silos, whether they are lesbian, black, Muslim, Lakota, or disabled. These silos protect us from nothing but living fully. We sit in our silos reading or watching stories about the murder de jour, the problems with our schools, the lack of affordable housing, the HIV/AIDS crisis and domestic violence, being thankful that our silo is "safe." Once in a while we may even feel a pang of empathy for someone in another silo but don't quite know where to go with that feeling. There is no doubt the societal conditions leading to Steven's death are not easily remedied. There also is no doubt the remedies are not cleverly hidden in our silos and only emerge when we leave the silo.

Commit to step out of your silo, start with small jaunts - tutor at your local public school, stop someone when they are telling a homophobic "joke," don't look away when you walk past a homeless person. Stepping out of the silo may be scary and intimidating, but I know when I step out of mine, I will think of Steven.

It is important for everyone to challenge the homophobia that exists in our culture. And homophobia is rooted in sexism, so we must continue to fight that battle as well. It hurts everyone when even one person is considered "less than" for simply being who they are.