Charles Monroe Butler (top) discussed his killing of gay man Billy Jack Gaither. Now, Butler fears homosexual advances in an Alabama prison. Gaither's brother, Ricky (below), also was on the PBS Frontline special |
Review by Jack Nichols
Sylacauga, Alabama—In a wide ranging examination of the roots of homophobia on Tuesday evening, PBS-TV's groundbreaking documentary, Assault on Gay America, premiered. Drawing on the work of
primary sources, including Dr. George Weinberg, who coined the word "homophobia" and Dr. Gregory Herek, whose scholarship covering the phenomenon is extensive, PBS took its viewers on a
disturbing and enlightening ride in which major points about America's uglier cultural pot holes struck hard with each turn of the reel.
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Assault on Gay America begins and ends in Sylacauga, Alabama, once home to 39-year old Billy Jack Gaither, a quiet, well-liked gay man who'd been stabbed in the neck, dumped into a car trunk, and later savagely beaten to death with an axe handle by two young men, one whom he knew well.
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Interviews with Billy Jack's murderers expose the severity of their cultural poverty and give focus to religious dogmas they've accepted without question. The continuing influence of such dogmas on the now-jailed Steven Mullins, a confessed perpetrator, becomes clear as he speaks with assurance about how Billy Jack, his gay murder victim, is now in Hell.
Written, produced and directed by Claudia Pryor Malis, Assault on Gay America, connects the rising
climate of violence against gay men and lesbians in the United States with two factors: (1) the use of homophobic rhetoric by such preachers as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Rev. Fred Phelps and (2) macho role-conditioning that makes the rejection of homosexuality its foremost defining characteristic.
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Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
CBS' Eye on People: The Homosexuals
Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media
Interview: George Weinberg, Ph.D.
Related Sites:
Frontline: Assualt on Gay America
Anti-Violence Project
GayToday does not endorse related sites.
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Falwell, imagining, perhaps, that he'd scored well appearing in this PBS documentary, sent e-mailed
announcements to his followers last week, suggesting they watch. In fact, Assault on Gay Americaplaces Falwell precisely where he belongs, at the center of a late 90s rampage of anti-gay violence. He
castigates his fellow Baptist clergyman, Rev. Fred Phelps as "either mean as the devil or a nutcase" without seeming to realize that such descriptions could also be made of Jerry Falwell himself.
Opposing Views: The Rev. Jerry Falwell said the Bible tells Christians to reject homosexuality, while former Roman Catholic priest Daniel Helminiak says those interprutations of the Bible are inaccurate |
Doctors of psychology discuss homophobia indicating how its roots have grown thick
because of society's confused conceptions about what it means to be masculine. The doctors explain how
the very litmus test of conventional macho masculinity lies in rejecting all same-sex impulses in the self,
This radical insight sees a confluence of influences between this distorting but widely-accepted macho dogma and the anti-gay persecution being instigated by such religious fanatics as Falwell and Phelps.
One is left, after listening to interviews with Billy Jack Gaither's killers, with the impression
that they were, perhaps, attempting to shore up their own fragile self-images by rejecting same-sex impulses as they had been conditioned to do and which they seem to have been unduly worried about.
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PBS has published a valuable gay and lesbian resource on its web site, examining homosexuality and bisexuality in nature and through science, history, and other disciplines. There is also a discussion of the so-called ex-gay movement and a quiz which, reportedly, uncovers an individual's homophobic reactions.
The PBS site is accessible at www.pbs.org
Order your copies of this incisive documentary:
Telephone: 1-800-playPBS.
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