By Kai Wright
Progressive Media Project op-ed syndicate, June 12, 2007

Gay Pride rallies will parade down America's main streets this month to celebrate freedom's forward march.

And with good reason: It's no longer legal for law enforcement to storm into my home and arrest me for having sex with another man.

Gay movies win Oscars.

Vice President Dick Cheney publicly welcomed the new baby of his lesbian daughter and her partner into the family.

But unfortunately, the news has not all been good.

There's 15-year-old Sakia Gunn, who was stabbed to death in May 2003 at a Newark, N.J., bus stop by a man who got offended after learning that the teen girls he was trying to flirt with were lesbians.

There's 29-year-old Michael Sandy. In October 2006, three straight men lurked in a New York City gay chat room disguised as a single gay man. They lured Sandy to a park, where they jumped him and chased him onto a highway. He was run down by a car and killed.

And there's 72-year-old Andrew Anthos. In February, a fellow rider on a Detroit city bus asked Anthos if he was gay. Anthos proudly said yes, so the man followed him off the bus and beat him with a pipe. Anthos died 10 days later.

These attacks sound uniquely cruel, but violence against lesbians and gays is sadly common.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs attempts to track such attacks. The project found 11 murders in 2006, nine in 2005, 20 in 2004. The death count rolls on -- and these numbers encompass just the dozen or so cities with monitoring groups.

Gay rights advocates have long pushed a bill to stiffen federal penalties for antigay hate crimes. But law enforcement is an insufficient response to a malady this culturally deep-seeded. The problem lies in our insistence on a sexual "normal."

Lately, gay politics has centered on broadening normal to let in certain types of gays -- those that get married, adopt kids and build families just like everybody else.

But as long as there is a "normal," no matter how it's defined, there must also be those cast out as deviants from the norm. Those considered deviants will always be preyed upon, and sentence-enhancements alone will not protect them.

Almost 40 years ago this June, a group of homeless gay and cross-dressing kids -- exiled from society because of their supposed deviance -- started a rebellion now known as Stonewall, named after the New York City bar where the riot began. We celebrate that uprising every June with Gay Pride parades.

Marchers and onlookers alike would be well put to remember Stonewall’s original point: There’s no such thing as a sexual deviant.

A version of this op-ed was syndicated to daily newspapers via the Progressive Media Project.