Law changes as a result of TG murder

Transgendered Community Remembers Murder

Sat Dec 27, 6:18 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!

By TARA GODVIN, Associated Press Writer

FALLS CITY, Neb. - Ten years ago, a handsome, brown-haired 21-year-old named Brandon Teena was raped and later murdered by two men after they discovered he wasn't born a man.

The New Year's Eve tragedy in rural southeastern Nebraska inspired the award-winning 1999 film, "Boys Don't Cry." It also touched off a movement in the Transgendered community.

In the days after Teena was killed, a new generation of activists banded together to demand greater civil rights protections. Ten years later, 65 municipalities and states have hate crime laws that specifically include transgendered people, according to the Transgender Law Policy Institute. California became the fourth state to adopt such a law earlier this year.

Big corporations, such as Hewlett-Packard and Nike, have adopted similar rules. And 145 members of Congress have banned such discrimination from their offices, said Riki Wilchins, executive director of the Washington-based Gender Public Advocacy Coalition.

"How many times do you get to see a giant sea change like this in people's perceptions? But you look at Congress, corporate America, and cities and states... and you see this enormous change in how people are looking at gender as a civil rights issue," Wilchins said.

Nebraska passed a hate-crime law in 1997, but it did not refer specifically to transgendered people. It was found unconstitutional after a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruling in another case involving sentencing provisions.

One problem for the transgendered community — which encompasses a range of identities including cross-dressers and transsexuals - is that allies have been hard to come by.

Although they were at the forefront of New York City's 1969 Stonewall Riots, which led to the gay rights movement, the relationship between the transgendered and gay communities hasn't always been easy.

"For a long time, the gay movement was like, 'Well, that's an interesting problem, but it's not our problem. You folks are too weird. We don't want to talk to you.'" said Paisley Currah, executive director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at Brooklyn College in New York.

Teena's story helped reveal the two groups' common ground, Currah said.

The national attention given to Teena's murder also helped introduce the idea of being transgendered to mainstream America, said Shannon Minter, a board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute in New York.

"People are just much less freaked out about the concept, and see us more as human beings with partners, families, children," said Minter, who is transgendered.

Many activists say Teena's murder attracted so much attention because of its brutality and the failure of law enforcement to protect Teena.

John Lotter and Marvin Nissen were convicted of murdering Teena, who had dated a female friend of the two men. They also killed Lisa Lambert, 24, and Philip DeVine, 22, who had witnessed Teena's death in a farmhouse.

A week before the killing, Teena had told the local sheriff the men had raped him, but the sheriff took no action.

In a scathing court opinion in 2001, Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice John Hendry said former Richardson County Sheriff Charles Laux showed indifference by referring to Teena as "it" and not immediately arresting the suspects.

Laux, reached by telephone at his home, decline to comment.

A judge initially awarded Teena's mother, Joann Brandon, $17,360 in damages, saying that Teena's own lifestyle was partly responsible for his death. The state Supreme Court ordered him to reconsider, and he later awarded Brandon $98,223.

Brandon's lawyer, Herb Friedman, said she no longer wanted to talk about case.

Lotter is now on Nebraska's death row. Nissen was sentenced to life in prison.

Though much has improved for the transgendered community in the last 10 years, there is still a long way to go, Minter said.

In the past year alone, Remembering Our Dead, an online memorial that tracks bias killing of transgendered people around the world, recorded 17 deaths in the United States.

The few people in Falls City willing to talk about the case voiced a desire to move on and frustration at its cost to the county.

"Every town's got some weird people," said resident Mary Symonds.

About 25 miles from Falls City in the tiny town of Humboldt, the small farmhouse where Teena, Lambert and DeVine were killed attracts a regular stream of sightseers.

"They just drive and stare and I guess get a thrill out of that," said Dagmar Jansen, who moved into the house about two years ago with her family.

"It's horrible. It probably comes from prejudice and people not being open-minded." Jansen said. "I think by the year 2003 people should be able to live for who they are and not for what people think they should be."