In the age of ubiquity, where pathologies of every stripe, human or otherwise, have been hyper-indexed, a certain degree of detachment is required in recognizing the barbaric acts of others. We may not understand how (or, more importantly, why) a mob of people, with the full participation of its citizenry, may close in on a woman in a public square and stone her to death for adultery, but at least, we ultimately conclude, it is not us, the civilized world. And, yet, the barbarism continues, a kind of weakened immune system in the human condition that doesn’t quite make us unable to function but continues to rob us of our full potential.
Honor killings, as they are ironically known throughout much of the world, are just one sort of blot. They involve the execution of a family member (or a member of a social group) who has been judged to have brought dishonor upon others.
The ‘crimes’ usually, but by no means always, involve women who, in the majority of cases, have brought shame through some act that is either directly or obliquely tied to sexuality: an adulterous affair, a refusal to agree to an arranged marriage (and, thus, jeopardize the family’s lineage through reproduction) or dressing and/or behaving in a way that is deemed offensive by the standards of the community (read: sexually suggestive).
It should come as no surprise, then, that homosexual acts, seen by most of the Muslim world where many of these honor killings occur as an affront to masculinity, are roundly condemned and are digressions no less worthy of execution.
That honor killings are largely understood and accepted, encouraged even, by the wider groups, clans and tribes around them differentiates them by degrees in what author David McConnell has examined in his latest work, the non-fiction American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men.
McConnell, whose works of fiction include Firebrat (2003) and The Silver Hearted (2010), culls from the last fifteen-or-so years a series of brutal crimes that, while different in geography, psychopathology and methodology, all involve, in one shape or another, an affront to ‘honor,’ however tortured that definition may be, and all involve victims who were gay; dots that would eventually be connected in the national push for universal hate crimes legislation.
That many of the perpetrators were themselves gay, bisexual or deeply closeted perhaps makes these honor killings uniquely American. I don’t know. But as McConnell explains in his forward, “In a sense the stor[ies] begin with the end of gay panic. The murders in this book don’t look much like that kind of crime. They’re far more complicated, atavistic. Hence, ‘honor killings.’ They involve honor, manhood, desire. When used in the phrase ‘honor killings,’ honor obviously has a negative connotation. We’re not talking about real honor.”
And yet, as each slaying attests to, some code, some manifest belief system dreamt up by the religious extremists (brothers Ben and Tyler Williams), neo-Nazi skinheads (Bradley Qualls and Darrell Madden – aka gay porn performer Billy Houston), gang members (Steven Hollis and Juan Flythe) and man-child murderers (John Katehis) that populate this affecting study in hate crimes, brings with it a construct that, however vile to the gay community, must be understood if we’re to get past the simplistic monikers. (Currently, only thirteen states have hate crimes legislation that includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.) We need to move forward and make the case that, yes, there are people out there – the people that populate American Honor Killings – whose inhumanity lies as much with the crimes they commit as with the thinking that allows them to commit them in the first place.
After all, Oklahoman Steve Domer, whose entire body was duct-taped in his own car, physically and verbally assaulted and then strangulated by an untwined wire hanger before being dumped in a ravine to rot, may engender collective outrage. But failing to understand how Bradley Qualls and Darrell Madden, the two men who committed the act, worked through their thought processes and arrived at the conclusion that Domer’s life was worthless, are as important to the hate crimes legislation debate as they are to the thematic tapestry that weaves itself through McConnell’s book.
And while the author makes no mention anywhere that American Honor Killings is some grand call to arms in the current legal debate, the reader can’t help but think how much more urgent it feels after getting to know all the unsavory nooks and crannies that inform these killers’ worldviews.
It also helps to understand and convey that crimes against gay men are more violent. “Like women [gay men are] often perceived to be weak. In the backwards logic of violence, weakness enhances its own destruction. Plus the cultural protections for gay men are still pretty flimsy,” observes McConnell. “But this is [truer] with gay-bashings and bullying than with the very different, more personal crimes I wrote about.”
And what about the victims – the Steve Domers, George Webers, Steven Parrishes, Winfield Mowders and Gary Matsons of the world – that too often and too quickly become abstractions in annual hate crimes reports? “I understand the desire to rescue and celebrate the memories of victims,” David adds. “But I don’t think it helps the public discourse very much unless it’s just to stoke outrage or move us to action. Yes, we have a ghoulish fascination with these killers, but the problem is that it’s not authentic curiosity. I guess I thought it was important for understanding to look the criminals in the eye, whether I liked it or not.”
And what he finds and then conveys in American Honor Killings reminds us that while they are not us, the civilized world, they are more than just ‘others’ for whom hate crimes legislation is just one small piece of a puzzle that McConnell fearlessly unearths, no matter how rotten what underneath lies.
American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men can be purchased on Amazon.com as well as numerous other sites.
