This week in gay bashing

Key updates on a startling world-wide trend.

• Nine teenagers were arrested in the Bronx for allegedly kidnapping and brutally torturing a gay man by sodomizing him with a baseball bat, burning his genitals with cigarettes and whipping him with a chain during a period of several hours.

• New York’s GOP candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, said that children should not be “brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.”

• Serbian police clashed with violent rioters protesting an annual gay pride march in Belgrade, Serbia.


• Two men allegedly punched a man in the face and locked him in the bathroom while they continued beating him at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the legendary gay bar where the gay rights movement first started.

• In the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City, a group of gay men were verbally harassed, had a large metal trash can thrown at them and were beaten after embracing each other to say goodbye.

• North Carolina Republican representative Larry Brown referred to gays as “queers” and “fruit loops” in an e-mail message with other representatives.