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Alleged Gay Basher is Air Force Sergeant

1/24/2010-by Natasia Langfelder

Gay bashing suspect, Air Force Staff Sgt. Benjamin Ford, was tracked down by the NYPD in England. The incident occurred September 26^th, 2009 outside McCoy’s bar on Ninth Ave.  McCoys is a Hell’s Kitchen anchor. The last sports bar, a man’s bar, with scratched up wooden tables and a barely used women’s bathroom, in the increasingly trendy Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.  Ford allegedly flicked a lit cigarette at victims, Blake Hayes, Alec Bell, and Danny Calvert and said “Keep moving faggot”. The victims retaliated by making sun of Ford’s baldness. Ford shoved the victims and punched one in the face.

The NYPD assigned the Hate Crimes Task Force to the case, who tracked Ford down at an Air Force base in England. Ford maintained that the victims were actually the instigators of the brawl, however the NY Daily News maintains that there is surveillance camera footage of Ford attacking the victims.

Despite statements by City Council Member Christine Quinn that this case will send a message that “hate crimes will not be tolerated. The NYPD has decided to let Ford be tried by the Military Tribunal. Expect Ford to get a slap on the wrist.

The main question that this article raises in my mind is, do members of the United States Military enter the service with the inclination to hate gays or is this something that is polarized by the phenomena of groupthink that accompanies the military attitude towards gays that is verbalized in “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT)? How much of the past discrimination towards the LGBT community is perpetuated by the older generation refusing to let go of the perceptions of the past and forcibly hammering it into the minds of the next generation? These questions, while crucial, will be impossible to answer until the institutionalized bias towards LGBT by the Military is abandoned.  

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