Hate’s in the mind

What goes on in the mind of someone who’s so eaten up with hatred for gay people that they resort to killing someone they believe may be homosexual? Yesterday, Mark Malone was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering Jeff Akers in Walton-on-Thames, England in February of this year.  More on that story here.

Mr Malone had stabbed Mr Akers so deeply that the entire 8 inches of the knife used in the ferocious assault was embedded in his back, completely severing his eighth rib and puncturing his right lung. He staggered from the toilet where the attack occurred before collapsing.

I cannot comprehend the mindset capable of such savage brutality. It’s completely lost on me. At what point did the programming start which resulted in an act of such barbarous inhumanity, leaving one man dead and another rotting away in an institution not to mention the negative impact on the lives of those left behind who loved Mr Akers, not least his partner of 22 years, Mike Drew.

Was Mr Malone perhaps homosexual himself? They do say that those who have the greatest hatred for homosexuals could very likely be ‘that way’ themselves and are unable to deal with it. So, seeing people out there living the lives they are too cowardly to carve out for themselves, are seen as targets who are ‘flaunting’ their sexualities and therefore fair game to be vilified.

Looking closer at Mr Malone’s criminal past, it seems he had a history of violence against people he perceived to be gay. Where does all this anger come from though? Growing up, I often heard homophobic taunts in the playground from other kids and you’d hear it from teachers who wanted to ‘make a man out of you’ on the playing fields. What has manliness got to do with sexuality anyhow?

There is an assumption that homosexuals aren’t ‘real men’ but what does that mean? It’s like saying that all lesbians are butch, wear hiking boots, possess a toolkit, own every album by the Indigo Girls and strum acoustic guitars at all-women camps. The same kind of drivel surrounds gay men, who are perceived by many as being sissies who dress up as women and hang around public lavatories soliciting other men for anonymous sex.

We need to educate people as to what being gay really means and we need to start early, in schools and through community-based initiatives. We need to show people that being gay is entirely to do with who you find attractive and are able to fall in love with. Love is rarely mentioned in conjuction with the lives of gay men, bisexuals and lesbians. By breaking down the misconceptions and preconceptions, we can foster a society based around acceptance of others and maybe, just maybe, incidences of this nature will stop happening altogether.

A website dedicated to Mr Akers can be seen here.