Friday, February 13, 2009

Another Life Needlessly Taken

I haven't written for a while, but there is no way that I could hear about this incident and not write something.

Michael Goucher, a 21 year-old Army veteran from Pennsylvania, was reported missing February 3rd, and his body was found a week later. He had been stabbed 20 times by a young man named Shawn Freemore that he had met on the internet. The pair had met on one prior occasion for a tryst, and were meeting in the woods on February 3rd for another sexual encounter.

It is not confirmed what the motivation for the killing was, and one of the comments I read online lead me to think that it may have been the result of Mr. Freemore abusing illegal drugs. However, it is also possible that the reason for his death may have been due to internal homophobia on the part of Mr. Freemore.

Deaths like Michael Goucher's do not need to happen. His aunt and uncle responded to his murder by saying that if he had listened to them and not attempted to solicit sex over the internet that he would still be alive. The frequency of these types of trysts in the LGBT community seems to be high, but this isn't necessarily only the fault of those in this community. Murders like these are also due to the fact that society is intolerant and not accepting of LGBT people, whereby they are marginalized and forced to meet people through unconventional means.

The reason why I find this so tragic and why I'm writing about it is because he had a lot of support in his community. He went to church and played the organ as well as sung in the choir. He was an outstanding citizen and an asset to this country. Also, Lawrence King was killed about this time last year.

Violence against the LGBT community needs to stop. No one has the right to take away another person's life and opportunities. Please, please, please, help end these outrageous incidents.

Here are the links to the articles:

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090212/NEWS/90212002

http://www.towleroad.com/2009/02/internet-tryst.html

And one of the other reasons why I'm writing about him; the song he had on his MySpace page:

http://www.myspace.com/mikeyestbg

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