MAR. 27 - APR. 2, 2009
PHILADELPHIA GAY NEWS
International News Life sentence in antigay slaying A 20-year-old Liverpool man has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an 18-year-old gay man who was brutally beaten and left in the street to die. James O’Connor was 19 when he beat and kicked Michael Causer to death after a party on July 25, 2008. He was one of three men charged in the killing. O’Connor pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors that took a hate-crime charge off the table. His co-defendant, Michael Binsteed, 19, pleaded guilty to perverting the cause of justice and was given 34 weeks in custody that was suspended for two years. A jury absolved the third suspect, Gavin Alker, 19, who had been charged with murder but pleaded not guilty, last month. Causer was part of a group that had met during a night out at a local pub. After heavy drinking, the group went to the home of one of the men’s grandmother to “sleep it off.” During Alker’s trial, the prosecution alleged that Alker discovered from one of the other men that Causer was gay. Prosecutor Richard Pratt told the jury that Alker initiated the assault. At the same trial, Alker blamed O’Connor for the murder. After the assault, as Causer lay unconscious, Alker, Binsteed and O’Connor decided to dump Causer on a street. They moved Causer over a fence and dragged him to the road. Paramedics found Causer barely breathing and suffering massive brain injuries. He died eight days later when doctors declared him brain dead and a ventilator was removed. With good behavior, O’Connor could be out of prison in about 11 years. “This is another black day for Michael,” Causer’s parents, Marie and Michael Causer, said outside court. “It’s just pathetic.” Tommy McIlravey, of Liverpool’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Network, commended Liverpool police for their part in the investigation, but said the judiciary has failed. “The law has failed because no one has been convicted of a hate crime,” he said. “It’s second-class
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justice and it seems to happen all the time. It begs the question: What do you have to do for it to be a homophobic attack?”
Trans man pregnant with twins A Spanish man who was born female is claiming he is pregnant with twins after a course of fertility treatment. Ruben Noe Coronado, 25, plans to bring up the babies with his partner, Esperanza Ruiz, 43. The couple hope to marry before the babies arrive in September. Coronado interrupted his gender-reassignment treatment in order to become pregnant. “I’ve gone public with this so people start to see a transsexual pregnancy as normal,” he said. “But I am thinking of selling the picture everyone’s going to want of me looking pregnant. If I don’t do it, someone else will and they’ll make a fortune.” However, he vowed not to sell photographs of his children, claiming he wanted to protect them. Last July, Thomas Beatie became the first trans man to give birth. Born Tracey Lagondino, he had been legally living as a man since age 24 but had kept his female reproductive organs. His wife of five years, Nancy, was unable to conceive. The couple is expecting a sibling for their baby girl this summer.
Australia to blacklist gay sites Several gay Web sites have been included in a recently drawn-up list of Web sites banned by the Australian government. The government is proposing a law that requires Internet service providers to filter and block inappropriate content, such as that related to terrorism and abusive images of children. However, gay and straight porn sites, YouTube links and certain Wikipedia entries have been included in its scope of Web sites to be blacklisted. The blacklist of about 2,395 banned sites was obtained by Wikileaks, a Web site that allows See INTERNATIONAL, Page 18
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