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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Domestic violence occurs as often among gay couples as among hetereosexuals, according to a new study, but victims of same-sex battering do not have equal protection under the law.
Jun 4, 2003 | Patrick Letellier was shocked the first time his boyfriend punched him. And when "Steven," as he refers to him these days, fell onto his knees and began to cry, Letellier immediately forgave him.
"I started comforting him, telling him that I was OK," recalled Letellier. "And the pattern was set. He would hit me, and I would say we should try to work it out."
The violence gradually escalated, said Letellier, from a few times a year to monthly to weekly. During the last six months of their four-year relationship, Steven threatened to kill Letellier, pounded his head against the pavement in their San Francisco neighborhood, and beat him for chopping up carrots in a manner Steven didn't like.
Letellier became increasingly desperate, but he was reluctant to seek help. He had only recently come out to his family and was ashamed to tell them about the abuse. Some of his friends didn't believe him. He felt he couldn't go to the police because he was sure they wouldn't take the situation seriously. And he thought he should be able to defend himself.
Letellier also believed that he was more or less alone, the victim of an isolated case of bad luck rather than a larger, more significant, social ill. He was aware that domestic violence was an issue for heterosexual couples, but no one he knew ever talked about it as a problem in same-sex relationships.
"The turning point came when I saw a flier that said, 'Does the hand that holds you in public strike you in private?' and then in big letters, 'Gay Domestic Violence,'" he says. "All of a sudden I knew that what was happening to me was not about me. I hadn't had a language for it, but I thought, 'Omigod, he's a batterer, I need to get away from him.'"
Letellier finally left Steven for good in 1987. Now, more than 15 years later, a large-scale study has shown that abusive same-sex relationships are not rare. In fact, according to the research, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, more than a fifth of the 2,881 men surveyed -- in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- had been physically battered by an intimate partner during the previous five years. It is a rate comparable to the incidence of domestic violence among heterosexuals.
"This study demonstrates that intimate partner abuse among urban MSM [men who have sex with men] is a very serious public health problem," wrote the researchers, in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health. "It sheds light on a subject that has long been taboo both within and outside this MSM community -- that is, men are also victims of battering and not solely perpetrators."
In the past few years, most of the public attention on same-sex relationships has focused on the fight for the freedom to marry and obtain health insurance, custody rights and other benefits enjoyed by heterosexual couples. The legality of sodomy laws that restrict the right of gay couples to engage in sexual relations is also currently under review at the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently heard arguments in a case brought by two Texas men who were arrested for having sex at home.
But gay and lesbian relationships are also prone to the same kinds of troubles as their nongay counterparts. And when it comes to gay domestic violence, not only has society largely ignored the issue, but the law itself also frequently discriminates against same-sex couples. Making the issue more complicated is the reluctance of some members of the gay community to publicize any dysfunction in their midst.
"A lot of people will say, 'We don't want to air our dirty laundry,' so it's not something they want to bring up," said Julia Sudduth of the Antelope Valley Domestic Violence Council. "You have a lot of the public to begin with condemning you because of your sexuality, and then it's kind of like, 'You deserved this.'"
According to a report last year from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Project (NCAVP), an umbrella organization of groups that address gay-related hate crimes as well as domestic battering, six states -- Delaware, Louisiana, Montana, New York, South Carolina and Virginia -- have laws regarding protection orders for victims of domestic violence that specifically exclude same-sex relationships.
Most other states have adopted gender-neutral language for their protective-order statutes, meaning that gays and lesbians should be able to obtain protective orders as easily as heterosexuals, although whether the system always works that way is open to question. Recently, for example, the Puerto Rican Supreme Court, in setting aside a criminal case against a gay man accused of beating up his boyfriend, ruled that the territory's domestic-violence statute could not be applied to same-sex couples.
And even when statutes are neutral on the matter, law enforcement officials often do not understand or know how to handle situations involving gay domestic violence, and they have tended to dismiss or ignore the seriousness of the issue. Although some police departments and district attorney's offices in cities with large gay populations, such as San Francisco, have taken steps to sensitize their employees to the issue, many officers and prosecutors treat these situations as cases of mutual battery.
"It gets minimized," said Shawna Virago, director of the domestic violence survivor program at San Francisco's Community United Against Violence, which documents cases of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender domestic violence. "If it's two men, it's 'boys will be boys.' If it's two women, it's a catfight. Some people will think, 'They're both the same size, so what's the problem? Why can't they just defend themselves?'"
