Seattle gay bars targetted by terrorist assholes

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008597989_ricinthreat07m.html

A friend of mine in the area describes this as the first stirrings of crazy-dickhead backlash in the face of the incoming Obama years.

HOPE!

"I expect them to die painfully while in hospital."

So they're looking for a Brit or an Aussie, then?

Thought it was funny that Dan Savage described it as embittered gay person backlash. The drinks are overpriced! The men are ugly! No one said anything nice about my hair!

Or people who type so fast they occassionally leave out words, I guess.

xp

Savage said the letters didn't contain any religious references, making him wonder whether the author was an embittered gay person.

Savage can be clever but this isn't even coherent.

like religious zealotry is the only form of homophobia

I just think it's funny cuz it's the sort of thing Savage would say. He is controvertial.

controverty

I'm more surprised that the Times would run such a clearly Savage-y comment as if it were earnest speculation.

not to be a humorless dbag but i don't think this is occasion for that sort of controversial snark

So they're looking for a Brit or an Aussie, then?

Has anyone checked to see if our very own gay bar bomber is still safely behind bars?

well it wasnt even funny so dont worry elmo

obviously there is an outside chance it could be an embittered gay person with access to weaponized biological agents but i would not count on that, just playing the odds

weaponized biological gaygents

space between the y and the g, plz.

Well, and obviously there's an outside chance that it could be some garden-variety crank with no access to weaponized anything. So snark away.

all well in good fun for dan "i get a death threat every day lol" savage but i imagine receiving a death threat as a private citizen -- esp. members of marginal groups -- is uh, pretty harrowing

elmo, it's speculation, granted, so anyone has a chance to be wrong, but I trust Dan's hunch on this one. when was the last time a religious group actually threatened the lives of gay people explicity (i.e. not fire & brimstone rhetoric), and not just their rights? when was the last time another gay person threatened the lives of gay people?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=gay+serial+murderer&aq=f&oq=

Now, this is a very clumsy attempt at terrorism. I'm guessing it's someone who reads Slog who hates Dan Savage. No shortage of those people. Also, many Slog commenters happen to be gay. (shocker.) Also, Dan Savage claims he gets a death threat a day because of his sex column and TV appearances and political stances. Again, when it comes to death threats against gays, I think Savage has valid experience in induction here.

Yes, and we can't have losers on messidgeboard cracking wise about harrowing eventualities (contingencies?), now can we.

Thing is, I think Savage has a point. We haven't read the letter, and don't know much about what it says -- beyond targeting a few gay bars. It's easy to picture a stereotypical Christian homophobe w/ a "burn in hell fagz" agenda, but who knows? Plus, is funny. But maybe I am without human feelings...

One detail in the story here possibly left out is that The Stranger got a special letter relating to all the other copied letters sent to the gay bars.

Why didn't this person send similar letters to the Seattle Times or the Seattle P-I? Hell, not even to the Seattle Gay News? Again, maybe these publications are keeping mum, but c'mon! These papers would not keep mum about shit like this, especially when "Black Widow found in grocery store grapes" counts as headline news in this town.

My lastest was to elmoa, FTR.

OMG, THE LETTERS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE STRANGER!

Maybe it is revenge of the Savage babby.

cntd, I would laugh, but a friend of mine happens to be one of the owners of the bars who received the letter. (c/-\rl/-\ @ the r3-b/-\r, which isn't technically "a gay bar" although very open to G&L events and shows.)

lol @ "elmoa"

The good with the bad: this may be the first time the local G&L bars have been able to unify in years? There are organized gay pub/bar crawls starting tonight, which is completely awesome.

And now there are signs stating not to leave your drinks unattended. Paranoid, sure, but for STRAIGHT bars, where roofies still run rampant unfortunately in some of them, they should take note

cntd, I would laugh, but a friend of mine happens to be one of the owners of the bars who received the letter.

― Mackro Mackro

Yeah, I can see as how that would put a spike in the laffs. Plus if anyone did get weaponized, I'd feel like shit for cracking joaks.

WHERES JACKIE HELL AND URSULA ANDROID?

WE NEED PHO BANG NINJA REVENGE GODDAMNIT

THIS LETTER WRITER IS GOING TO BE SPANKED WITH A KNIFE!

Anyway even if this thread died, a Slog commenter clued in Dan that the letter writer apparently plagiarized a gay poet in the death threat letter:

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/01/07/good_work_sloggers

Wau. Kinds rules out the Friends of Fred Phelps, unless they're doing a lot of research these days. Points to Dan for going w/ his gut on disgruntled scenester perp.

> We haven't read the letter,

Uh, yes we have, if we followed the link in the article.

Crap-O! I even went back and looked again! Anyway, rereading, it looks way more like the work of random psycho of WTF persuasion* than that of seething homophobe.

* tho maybe dramatic goth persuasion

"rereading" means reading for the 1st and only time

the fact that dude plagiarized a poem about aids-related death does nothing to lighten the situation for me, sorry.

xpost: I resent the insinuation that goths might be behind this.

It is from years ago but this is the craziest news article I've ever read.

Excellent, you fell for my plot. HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

Posted by Emperor Palpatine on January 7, 2009 at 12:33 PM

There are about a bazillion WTF moments in that article, from the obvious to the subtle.

This is the one that got to me:

William Gay also said his brother didn't like that his fifth ex-wife, Laura Ramsey, had experimented with a lesbian relationship before they were married. But Ramsey, who lives in Citrus Springs, Fla., said she was up front with her former husband and he didn't seem bothered.

It's like "wait his ex-wife experimented with other women... wait his fifth ex-wife????????"

Be great if she had experimented with the fourth ex-wife.

Gay drank whiskey all day and chatted with his new friends.

I think it is his following of the lyrics to Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" that drove him over the edge.

"In a little more than a year, he and Ramsey had divorced, he scorched his legs in a brush-burning accident and his rental home was destroyed by fire."

I wonder if these two events are related.

i'm trying to piece together wtf is going here on w/o reading the article, and it's really difficult

going on here

"Not long after his latest divorce, he rented a house in Huddleston, about 30 miles from Roanoke. Rescue workers were called to the home in April a few days after he apparently scorched his legs while using gasoline to burn his divorce papers and a bundle of brush, according to Lt. Larry Dellis of the Huddleston Rescue Squad.

On May 13, Gay's house was destroyed in a fire that investigators determined was caused by a clothes dryer."

A gay clothes dryer.

honestly the thing that got me the most :\ in the original article was this:

"in what some are describing as a hate crime"

because that's totally open to opinion, rite?

A man who answered the phone at the house of Gay's mother and identified himself only as Gay's stepfather said he recalled a time when Gay got dressed up and said he was going to the White House to ask the president why the word gay was associated with homosexuals. He never made the trip.

ok moral of the story: sometimes, changing your family name is a good idea

re: Abbott's last quote, obv my first question was "WAS THIS BEFORE OR AFTER VIETNAM"

When I showed that article to the boyfriend I had in 2000, when I read the article in the newspaper, he like ACTED THE WHOLE GODDAMN THING OUT and then said they should make a movie of it. "My name is Gay, and I'm here to kill you." I broke up with him soon after.

"I tried an alternative lifestyle. It was not my cup of tea," she said.

xpost Was his renactment that poor?

"He had a lot of flashbacks," William Gay said. "He was a gunner protecting convoys. One day a truck blew up and his buddies were on it. He was in charge of picking up body parts. He always said it was just his job and he had to do it, but I know it bothered him."

O RLY

Oh come on I did that for like $7.45 an hour without benefits. He had it good, comparatively; and I can say he's being a real wussy about it.

You were a gunner protecting convoys?

What's weird is that the jokes about the Gay story make me way more queasy than jokes about the ricin goth. *shrug*

Well people actually died in the Gay story, right, so that makes sense.