Pfc. Barry L. Winchell of the 101st Airborne Infantry was murdered in his bed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in the pre-dawn hours of July 5th, 1999 while he lay sleeping. His killer, a nineteen year old fellow soldier wielding a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, struck him with such savage ferocity that bits of Winchell's brain and bone, mixed with blood, sprayed against the wall behind his bed like a red halo.
Barry Winchell never regained consciousness. He died of massive head injuries at Vanderbilt Hospital on July 6th, when his grief-stricken mother, Pat Kutteles, kissed her only son goodbye, and watched as a machine tracked the life leaving her son's shattered body; the same body she'd once wrapped in blankets and held in her arms. He was twenty-two years old.
The vision of hell visited upon Pat Kutteles ten years ago was very much on my mind this past Independence Day weekend, and not only because it's the tenth anniversary of the murder of her only child.
Barry Winchell was also one of the earliest martyrs to Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Four months earlier, Winchell, who identified as straight, had become romantically involved with a transsexual woman named Calpernia Addam, a nightclub performer in nearby Nashville. When his roommate, Justin Fisher, became aware of this, he turned Winchell's life into a waking nightmare of harassment, innuendo, and rumor.
Branding Barry Winchell "the faggot" was a cruelly effective enterprise: under the terms of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Winchell had no choice but to keep his head down and endure the escalating brutality. Mentioning it, or even revealing the increasingly sinister abuse, would have meant his expulsion from the army. So he didn't complain. He didn't tell anyone, not his commanding officers, not his girlfriend, Calpernia Addams.
And especially not his parents, Pat and Wally Kutteles back home in Kansas City.
For his part, Justin Fisher appeared to have found the ultimate solution to the problem posed by "the faggot" Barry Winchell. On July 4, 1999, after a barbecue on the base accompanied by a great deal of alcohol, Fisher spent the afternoon needling and goading nineteen year old Calvin Glover about a fight he'd lost to Barry Winchell earlier in the day.
What sort of a man, Fisher taunted, what sort of a real man would lose a fight to a faggot like Barry Winchell?
Glover, already emotionally disturbed, and growing drunker and drunker as the shadows of the day grew longer, would have been easy to taunt. Goading him to the point of murder would have been like lighting a long fuse on a raft of Independence Day fireworks. When the midnight hour came and went, Fisher put the baseball bat into Glover's hands and aimed him, fatally, into the darkness towards Barry Winchell's sleeping form. In the classic hate crime modus operandi, the bat only struck Winchell's head, face, and upper torso area, as if Glover were trying to not only kill his victim, but to obliterate any trace of what he represented.
I spent the summer of 2002 on assignment for The Advocate on the set of Soldier's Girl, the Ron Nyswaner-directed film of Barry Winchell's last months. Soldier's Girl is told primarily from the point of view of Calpernia Addams. It would go on to win the Peabody Award for Nyswaner, and secure Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for its stars, Troy Garity and Lee Pace. It's a beautiful and powerful film about the terrible cost of love and courage.
But I felt I needed the missing part of the story in my reportage, so in the winter of 2003, I flew to Kansas City to meet, and spend the day with Pat Kutteles and her husband, Wally, who had by then become activists against Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Barry's murder had put Pat and Wally Kutteles in an odd position. While their son didn't identify as gay, he was the victim of an anti-gay hate crime. One that simmered, then reached a boiling point, under the restrictions Don't Ask, Don't Tell kept him from reporting.
"When I found out what happened to Barry, and why -- that it was a hate crime -- I went after the military," Pat told me. "Barry was pointed out and labeled gay. He was harassed daily for four months. What about the safety of the other men and women in the military, the gays and lesbians who are just trying to serve their country? What about their safety? They have parents, they have families, and no one is protecting them. If we don't fight against hate crimes, and for those people who are targeted, I feel as is we're letting Barry down. Because that's what Barry would have fought for. [As a soldier] he would have fought for the rights of everybody. No matter how hard it is, no matter how long it takes, I have to fight for my son's ideals. And that's what we're doing.
The Barry Winchell Courage Award is presented every year by Pat and Wally Kutteles in their son's memory at the annual Servicemen's Legal Defense Network's annual dinner.
Every year, Barry's parents travel to Washington at their own expense to talk to Congress about what happened to their son, reliving the horror of his murder anew, ripping open emotional wounds that are nearly unimaginable to most people in an attempt to convince lawmakers of the terrible flaws of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
If their voices are drowned out, ten years later, by the roar of more general outrage over this discriminatory policy, their voices are among the original ones -- still strong, still constant, and still unforgiving in the truths they tell.
Even though a reported 75% of Americans support the complete repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the Obama administration continues to dither and waffle about the policy, with Colin Powell recently suggesting that it be "reviewed" -- by now familiar Washington-speak for wheel-spinning as long as possible in the hope that critics calling for the immediate fulfillment of one of Obama's most important campaign promises, will be at least temporarily appeased.
Against this cold gray-flannel wall of slick political opportunism comes the seared, cauterized, open heart of Pat Kutteles and the memory of her murdered son.
The real cost of Don't Ask, Don't Tell has always been the human one -- Barry Winchell's life, of course, beaten out of him with a baseball bat over the 4th of July weekend 10 years ago while, all across the country, his fellow Americans -- the ones he'd sworn an oath to defend -- were celebrating freedom and independence, and all the ideals that make the United States a beacon of freedom and democracy, a clarion call to the pursuit of the highest human ideals.
But it has also been the lives and careers of thousands of American soldiers, patriots all, sons and daughters all, who would have been willing and proud to lay those lives down in the service of their fellow Americans.
Today they have names like Dan Choi and Victor Fehrenbach. Tomorrow, sadly, they will have other names.
As for me, I learned everything I needed to know about true courage from a bereaved mother in a cemetery in Kansas City in 2003. At Barry's grave, as the frozen amber sunlight died to black in the midwinter night wind, it was I who wept, and Pat Kutteles held me.
"I feel Barry died for a reason," she'd told me. "I feel that there's a reason things happen. That's also one of the reasons I keep fighting. That gives me comfort, in a way. I don't know that there's anything that gives me total comfort, though. Sometimes when we're home alone, going through our day-to-day stuff, I feel alone. I feel that there's nobody who really cares what kind of a person he was. No one who shares our anger and our grief over what's happening to others out there. And then something will happen that reminds us that there are people out there who care, and who are fighting with us. Then I feel a little bit better. But often I feel like I'm really alone, and really, really missing my child."
Barry L. Winchell
1977-1999
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0joBu2E88vc
Still, the representative's stats about the number of people separated are interesting but probably require more context. Thousands of people a year are separated for a variety of the myriad of offenses written into military regulations. For many of those, someone could intelligetnly challenge from the macro perspective. And I'm sure Congressman Murphy is aware of that.
Still, I hope Pat and Wally know that Barry is not forgotten. I just hope for everyone's sake, 'Don't As, Don't Tell' gets repealed. I have always though it was the stupidest thing. It incites violence because you can't say anything even if it means protecting your life. I encourage everyone, Prior and current military to demand D.A.D.T. be repealed. As for all the proud men and women who have been punished for simply being born gay, I thank you for your outstanding service and I stand with you.
Now what is with all of the ignoramuses who are posting their responses? Can't they even read the damned article before they start piping in with their BLAHBLAHBLAH?
While, I too mourn for this young man and his family, how does DADT factor into this? It wouldn't have mattered to the man who murdered this young man. If inuendos and mudslinging caused this young man's death, tell me how serving openly would have stopped the murder! Some of you want to blame DADT for all of the bad things that have happened to gays and lesbians in the military. Matthew Shepard wasn't in the military and he was murdered, because those men thought he was gay (I don't care if he was or not, just making a point).
When DADT became a law, gays and lesbians should have weighed that decision before joining the military. Gays and lesbians are not the only people who face discrimination. Women, especially, face the same terror as gays and lesbians. Women, in the military are raped every day and the Military do nothing. It's a culture and it won't change as long as the old guard still run the military.
You are a cold, mean-spirited human. Thanks for hoisting the responsibility of Pfc. Winchell on his own shoulders.
Your lack of empathy is disgusting.
And yes, DADT is responsible for all of the bad things that happen to gays and lesbians in the military if they happen BECAUSE they are gay and lesbian. In other countries, where gays and lesbians serve openly, soldiers are disciplined for the harassment, not for being gay. Blaming Barry Winchell for his own murder is beyond appalling.
Lastly, I don't know what Matthew Sheppard has to do with the Barry Winchell murder other than the fact that they're both hate crimes. And if you know for a fact that "women in the military are raped every day" (seriously? Every day?) and "the Military [sp] do nothing" then you ought to contact the FBI and the Justice Department immediately. This will be news, and they will want to act on it.
I personally have always believed that if DADT was policy, it should be applied to people of every sexual orientation. If a general who is straight happens to mention that his wife's mother is developing dementia, then the general is out of the military. He indicated his sexual orientation. Of course, there could be no benefits to families of soldiers (no married housing on base, etc.) because that would indicate a person's sexual orientation. If DADT was equally applied, it wouldn't have lasted a week.
We simply enforce homophobia by DADT and as this tragic story reveals, the insecurities of our young soldiers (and who wasn't insecure at age 19) becomes the weapon to destroy others. The perpetrator here now has to face the fact that he has brutally murdered someone. What a thing to face at age 19. Why would our military want to support such a sick system?
And, if anyting, minorities are given protections in the military that are not afforded the majority.
Why can't we protect our gay and lesbian servicemembers then?
http://www.slashlegal.com/showthread.php?t=169365
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-865710.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/07/31/national/main517033.shtml
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-marshall30jan30,0,510658.story
a two second search. The race ones are about a skinhead group at Fort Bragg. It doesn't say that they harassed black soldiers but they killed two black people in town. I assume if you are killing black civilians that you have some incidents in the military.
J
Hate is not even close to a requirement for murder. Do you think contract killers hate the people they kill? No, they do it for the money, plain and simple. Similarly, robberies gone wrong, where someone is killed, don't involve hate.
Is that the message that's being reinforced here, that if you become intimately involved with someone who was born with a pen is, even though that person is living as female 24/7/365, then because that person ever had a pen is, you yourself must be gay?
Was PFC Winchell Gay? Would he have as easily chosen a pen is bearing person who presented as male?
Was he gay? Or did his Army 'buddies' label him as gay because of involvement with a gender variant person, and then punish him for his 'gayness'?
This is a very powerful message -- that if you become intimate with a male-to-female transsexual, you will be labeled as 'gay' and then punished for it.
It polices both the heterosexual, cisgendered (non-transgendered) as well as powerfully polices those of US who are transgender.
Was PFC Barry Winchell gay? I don't think so. But there are those who need for it to be so.
It is however true that neither Winchell nor Addams were gay and that the article doesn't explore whether transphobia palyed a part in this heinous crime as well.
Nor does the article note that Addams herself was also a veteran - outranked Winchell if memory serves. And - that oveturning DADT would do nothing to have allowed Addams to serve - or address transphobia in the military.
Perhaps the author might have considered speaking to Ms. Addams for the article? She may have had some insight on these issues.