Calum McSwiggan. Say it with me, now: Calum McSwiggan. It’s a fun name—Calllummm McSwigggggannnn—but I’m hoping this post marks the last time I ever have to write about him because his recent scandal has gone from a semi-satisfying bit of schadenfreude to a bleak snapshot of a very particular slice of popular culture.
On June 17, 2015, white supremacist Dylann Roof gunned down a congregation at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, leaving nine dead. Now federal prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty against him, and the families of the victims accept this measure. Some, in fact, welcome it.
The Louisiana Senate is considering a bill this week that would treat violence against police, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians as a hate crime. It’s been dubbed the “Blue Lives Matter” bill, and it is a civil rights nightmare waiting to happen.
A trans woman named Pearl Love says she was assaulted and threatened last Thursday on the 4 train by a woman who also shouted slurs in reference to Love’s gender identity and race. Love captured part of the incident and uploaded it to her Facebook and YouTube accounts “so now you can understand what’s happening in my…
The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for anyone who can provide information about a man seen on a surveillance video wrapping bacon around the door handles of a Las Vegas mosque. The vandal was also seen on video popping a piece of raw bacon into his mouth as he worked, so perhaps they ought to be looking around for an…
A mosque in Peterborough, Canada, was deliberately set on fire this weekend, police said Sunday. While the blaze was quickly contained and no one was injured, the Peterborough Examiner reports, the building, which suffered an estimate $80,000 of damage, is now unusable.
In response to the controversy and violent threats surrounding the University of Missouri this month, the Twitter hashtag #BlackOnCampus was born.
Last May, Thomas Hamm, a gay man, visited his partner at New York City’s Rikers Island. After the two men kissed in the visitor’s room, he claims guards called him a “faggot” and beat him up—resulting in fractured bones and head trauma. This week—nearly 18 months later—Lambda Legal announced they have filed suit…
A 27-year-old man in a New Orleans suburb has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly pulling down an abortion clinic’s signs. William Kennedy is accused of pulling metal lettering off the building of Causeway Medical Clinic, an abortion clinic in Metairie, a little after 1 am on August 1.
Days after nine people were murdered in a racist attack on a black church in Charleston, and after studiously ignoring the issue for as long as she could, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is holding a press conference at 4 p.m. today, where she’ll reportedly call for the removal of the Confederate flag that flies…
Charleston, South Carolina is waking up to a nightmare this morning, after a white gunman shot and killed nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest historically black churches in the United States. A five-year-old girl is reportedly recovering this morning after surviving the…
A homeless man has been arrested after he allegedly pushed a transgender woman onto the subway tracks in Greenwich Village earlier this week, Reuters reports. Police said Saturday he had been charged with second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime.
A noose made with yellow rope was found hanging from a tree on the Duke University campus in Durham, North Carolina around 3 a.m. today. In an email to students, Larry Moneta, the school’s Vice President for Student Affairs, wrote, “I can’t begin to describe the disgust and anger I felt, and still feel.”
Three Muslim students were shot and killed in an apartment complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina Tuesday night by a 46-year-old man. Two of the victims, Yusor Mohammad, 21, of Chapel Hill, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were sisters. Mohammad's husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, who she had just married in…
If you're ready to cry into your evening bowl of ice cream bon bons, grab all the Kleenex ever made, and get into this Anti-Defamation League video. It imagines a world that still has Martin Luther King, Anne Frank, Matthew Shepard, and many other wonderful souls because it's a world without hate crimes. I'm…
The den of Amish beard thieves arrested last fall by the FBI for a series of facial-hair shearing attacks were convicted on Thursday of federal conspiracy and hate crimes.
Concerned Tennessee lawmaker Richard Floyd has withdrawn a bill that would have made it illegal for transsexual women to use ladies' restrooms in his state, but that doesn't mean that he wouldn't kick a mudhole in any depraved pervert that tried to go in the "wrong" bathroom. I'm not an expert on law-type stuff and…
On March 7, 23-year-old Justin Alesna went into a Detroit gas station to buy cigarettes. He left, instead, with a fractured skull—thanks to a hateful, gay-bashing stranger. Justin begged for help. Nobody listened. Here, he tells his story.
Last night, someone hung a noose on the door of gay rights group Equality California's office. The police response: "Sometimes you just have to live with being a victim."
Conservative "media watchdog" L. Brent Bozell III complains in a TownHall column that, "The only characters on [Glee] disapproving of homosexuality are vicious school bullies." Yes, why can't more episodes focus on Rachel committing hate crimes against Kurt? [ThinkProgress]
