By Shelly Ridenour

AUGUST 3, 1998:  Walking the sandy stretch of Loyola Beach in Rogers Park, it becomes obvious there's something less frantic about life up here - it seems the farther you go up Chicago's Lake Michigan shoreline, the fewer bikers, skaters and joggers you encounter. Dogs are "happily" lolling about in the blaze of the Saturday morning sun. Men, women, kids - whole families are working intently on the 600-foot beach wall mural during the annual Artists of the Wall Festival. The hands painting come in almost as many shades as the colors of the artwork. This neighborhood is a true melting pot. Serbs live next to Croats live next to Haitians live next to Brazilians live next to Arabs live next to multigeneration Americans of all types of ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds.

As TV-perfect as such integration seems, it's also a potential trigger for angry confrontations. According to a study by the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center, commissioned by the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, one of the top causes for hate crimes is culture conflict and population change. Most hate crimes occur in communities where new racial or ethnic groups are beginning to move in.

This area is Joseph Houseal's very own "heaven on earth." Houseal keeps another residence in New York and travels extensively for his work as an "all-around aesthete." (A former artistic director for R&B musician Chaka Khan, he performs as a trained Kabuki artist, has his own production company, and is an educator, freelance writer - occasionally for Newcity - and art collector.) When acquaintances around the world ask, "Why Chicago?" Houseal tells them about this beach, and the way it "serves as a great equalizer. Everybody's in their underwear, having some food, listening to music, enjoying children, worshipping the sun, the waves and the earth. Everybody has a story, and due to the plethora of languages, cultures, races, sexualities and religions, the stories are fantastic."

He tells them of his encounters with neighborhood children who speak barely any English, like the young Hispanic boy who mirrors Houseal's martial-arts moves as he practices them on the beach. He tells them how watching the scene from his own window clears his head, makes him appreciate the way global unity is happening right outside his front door.

He doesn't want to have to tell them of the way his "chi was interrupted" recently. In Houseal's own words, he is a stereotype: a well-educated, well-off "gentrifying gay man" in a developing neighborhood - and a recent incident makes him think maybe some of his neighbors don't want him here.

Three times now he has gone into the only video store in the neighborhood, a small shop run by a Middle Eastern family, two brothers and their mother. The store requires more proof of identification than most others in the city; a sign on the check-out desk clearly asks for "1. Driver's license or I.D. 2. Cheque stub or proof of income. 3. Credit Card." During his previous visits to obtain a membership, Houseal was turned away for not presenting enough of the required documents. But a few nights ago, in front of the small market next door to the shop, he ran into one of the sons, who encouraged him to come by.

Houseal recounts the scene: He goes to the shop with a full cache of proof: utility bills, bank statements, driver's license, credit cards, even the phone book page bearing his listing. He presents everything to the woman behind the counter, who looks over the previous month's stubs from Houseal's paychecks - stubs which show he made $5,000 - and questions the legitimacy of his production company's bank account. After Houseal reassures her of its validity, she looks at his Michigan and international drivers licenses and tells him the store requires an Illinois-issued license or I.D. Finally, she tells him to give her a credit card, which he hands over.

"'Fucking faggot pole sucker! He's full of bullshit,' comes the voice of one of the two sons," Houseal recounts.

"'There is no reason to be treated so rudely,' I say. 'Why should I spend my money here?' I begin to gather my many documents. 'We are trying to live as a community, there is no reason to act like a bitch.' I'm not shouting, and I am calm.

"WHAM! Leaping across the counter is one of the sons, swinging for my face. 'Fucking faggot! Stupid fucking pussy ass!' I duck, but he hits my handful of documents, which go scattering, ironically, into the enclosed gay porno section of their shop. I stoop to gather my things. The other son comes roaring out from behind the employee area wielding what looks like a sawed-off plastic milk case. On both assault attempts, it's the mother who successfully intervenes by physically placing herself in front of the men and spreading her arms, almost as much to protect as to prevent them. Seething, the milk-case-wielding son warns me, 'If you want to live, you better leave.' I notice my credit card is not in my possession. Whether on the floor of the gay porn section, or still on the counter awaiting approval, I do not know. 'I'm going to get the police,' I say, and I leave."

Flagging down a squad car at the cul-de-sac where Pratt Avenue meets the beach, Houseal briefly outlines the incident, and he and the two policemen drive back to the shop. By this time an elderly male and a neighboring shopkeeper have appeared on the scene, Houseal says, "all claiming to be witnesses, saying that I came in, shouted repeatedly 'bitch, bitch, bitch,' threw my documents everywhere, and threatened her. I'm called a liar. 'Why do we have to have such people doing this? We should get rid of such people! We are a nice shop. And he comes in and disrespects our mother.'"

According to the woman in the shop, who is the mother of the store's owner, Houseal "came in to get a membership, and I asked for his driver's license so that I could see a picture [I.D.] He did not like this, and called me a bitch. Hundreds of times, 'bitch, bitch, bitch.' He disrespected me, and my son said, 'No. Do not say this. This is my mom.' I told my son not to cause trouble, and he did not."

Both the woman and her son deny that Houseal was called any names, and both say that no physical altercation or threat took place. "How would we know if he is homosexual?" the man asks. "Besides, we have no problems with anyone here. We have gay videos and lesbian videos. We get all kinds of people in here. No problems. My mother had to ask for a photo I.D. because she cannot read English. The man [Houseal] did not like this for some reason, and he started yelling, 'bitch, bitch.' We treat people with respect, and they should treat us with respect. If he comes back in here with the proper identification, with a recent phone bill, credit card and Illinois license, then we will give him a membership."

The officers help Houseal look for his credit card, and when it is not found, one of the men behind the counter offers use of the store phone so that Houseal can call the company and report the card lost. The offer is declined, and one of the officers asks, "Do you always run around with all your I.D.?" Houseal says, "I tell him I live on the beach a block away, and I brought them precisely to get a membership. One of the officers asks why I'm not satisfied with the offer, and says, 'What else could you expect?'

"I ask about pressing charges. They fall into a routine. 'All we have is allegations. Legalistically that's what we have to do. You press charges, we have to arrest them. They'll press charges; we'll have to arrest you.' I have spent time in jail. The thought was not appealing.

"'Do whatever you want,'" the officer says. "'You say one thing. They say another, and they have witnesses."

"I was physically assaulted twice, and hatefully abused with shouting and name calling," Houseal tells them. "Are you saying this is your responsible answer to safety in our neighborhood?"

"You don't get it," Houseal recounts the policeman saying. "It's an ethnic thing. It's ethnicity. You insulted their mother. She doesn't understand English."

"I have traveled the world and created educational programs for urban black and migrant Latino communities in several countries," Houseal recalls telling the cops. "This is called gay bashing, and it's no more ethnicity than female circumcision is. It's wrong." In the end, no report is filed.

Officer George Lopeztello says he "vaguely recalls the incident. I don't think any arrests were made. From what I remember, both parties agreed to disagree, and decided not to press charges."

And so another alleged hate crime goes undocumented by the Chicago Police Department - and, as a result, by the Hate Crimes Unit, the Human Rights Investigation Division, the Commission on Human Relations, the Cook County Hate Crimes Prosecution Council and the FBI.

But is this a hate crime, or a cultural clash? Under state law, a crime is determined to be a hate crime when it is committed because of the victim's actual or perceived race, color, creed, ancestry, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender or disability (including HIV status); it covers the criminal acts of assault or aggravated assault, battery or aggravated battery, criminal damage to property, criminal trespass to residence, criminal trespass to vehicle, misdemeanor theft, mob action, disorderly conduct and telephone harassment.

In other words, if someone calls you a faggot, it is not necessarily a hate crime (though it is verbal assault). If someone says, "You faggot, I'm going to kick your ass," it is a hate crime. There, sexual orientation is the motivating factor. But if you cut someone off in traffic, and they later call you a dyke and beat you up, it is not a hate crime; there, the traffic incident is the motivating factor.

"Calling someone a bitch is not provocation for physical assault," says Toni Carrigan, director of Horizons, a Chicago gay and lesbian social service agency. "What he [Houseal] did was disrespectful and in bad taste, but it was not criminal. The question is, was he treated any differently than anyone else trying to obtain a membership at the store? If so, that's discrimination, possibly based on sexual orientation, and that goes against public accommodation law."

One of Houseal's neighbors, who did not wish to be identified in this story, says he received similar treatment at the store a few years ago. According to the man, who is gay, he was sent home repeatedly to obtain documents from an ever-growing list. Finally, he lost his temper and exchanged words with the mother of the store owner, even going home and continuing the heated discourse over the phone. The woman allegedly hung up on him a few times, before putting an unidentified man on the line who reminded the customer that they knew where he lived. The spurned customer, however, does not believe this was necessarily a case of gay-bashing. "I think they're just crazy," he says. But the man adds that his partner - a man he describes as "a picture-perfect Yuppie" - obtained a membership without any problems.

All officials interviewed for this story agreed that, in the words of Renee Goldfarb, Chief of Appeals for the State Attorney's Office, and Chair of Policy and Legislation of the Cook County Hate Crimes Prosecution Council, "Hate crimes are definitely under-reported in Cook County," as well as the rest of the country.

According to the 1997 version of an annually produced report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Projects, a group that uses local reporting agencies (in Chicago, Horizons) to track hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and HIV-positive individuals, extensive empirical evidence suggests that such crimes are vastly under-reported.

No extensive empirical evidence exists, however, as to why this is the case, but there is much speculation among law-enforcement officials, activists, and the homosexual community.

"Hate crimes are widely considered to be underreported due to the ignorance of victims and the investigating officers that something is a hate crime," says Betsy Shuman Moore. "Police officers are often in denial; it's such a stigma that they're reluctant to categorize it as such," adds Shuman-Moore, of the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights' Hate Crime Project.

In fact, "Law enforcement experts agree that when compared to other crimes, hate crimes are underreported to the police," according to a study by the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay-and-lesbian political group, with more than 250,000 members. "Minority groups, including gays and lesbians, have historically had strained relations with law enforcement and fear what is called 're-victimization' when they go to the police. For gays and lesbians, re-victimization can consist of the police verbally or physically attacking the individual who reports the crime, blaming the victim ('if you weren't outside a gay bar, you wouldn't have been beaten up') or unwillingness to write up a police report."

In a case reported to Horizons last November, a gay male couple was assaulted by a taxi driver after asking to be taken to an intersection known for its gay bars. The driver said, "It figures. I could tell." When one of the passengers questioned the taxi driver's discomfort, the driver turned around and punched him in the head. As the victim tried to exit the cab, the driver tried to close the door twice, injuring the victim's foot and arm. When police arrived on the scene, they questioned the driver, and another taxi driver who had shown up shortly after the assault. Chicago Police officers then arrested the victim and his partner, and did not allow them to file a complaint against the taxi driver.

"The city's official stance on hate crimes is simple: Zero tolerance," says Sgt. Anthony Scalise, of the Chicago Police Department's Hate Crimes Unit. "We work at educating both the community at large, through training sessions with community groups, and our officers. They all go through a two-hour training block at the academy, where they watch a film from the Anti-Defamation League of Chicago and are taught what is and what isn't a hate-motivated crime."

Community activists and city officials agree that such training has improved the responsiveness of the CPD to hate crimes - even though the track record is still far from perfect.

"We work a lot with the CPD, and have for the past ten years," Carrigan explains. "It's still tenuous at times. There's a history of police officers being verbally abusive or worse, but where we are today is far better than we've ever been. Especially with the last two administrations - they not only say the right thing, they do the right thing. But there will always be folks who let personal bias effect professionalism."

There are other reasons why victims shy away from reporting hate crimes, particularly ones motivated by sexual orientation. "When the predominantly lesbian bar The Otherside Lounge, in Atlanta, was bombed last February, a woman who had a shrapnel wound refused to be treated at the hospital because of all the media in the emergency room," says Chris Pratt of the Human Rights Campaign. "When people report hate crimes to law enforcement, they may be 'outed' to their family or employers. If they have to go to court, they will likely have to explain why they need the day off to their employers, and some people just aren't ready to be outed like that. There's a large percentage of the gay community who is not yet out, and they worry about losing bonds if their friends, family or church turns away from them."

"Reporting a hate crime is always intimidating," says Carrigan, "but if you're gay, or lesbian, or transgendered, there's a little more danger in reporting a hate crime. Your parents already know that you're African American, but they may not know you're gay."

Still, "Illinois has the strongest and oldest hate crime statute on books," says Goldforb. Here, a hate crime is a felony; people committing a hate crime can go to jail, be fined, and/or sentenced to community work. They also can be sued for damages in civil court, and can be made to pay thousands of dollars for injuries to a victim, or for the harassment and emotional suffering that a hate crime causes.

In February, an Illinois judge awarded $6 million to the family of a Hispanic teenager who was physically and verbally abused after being involved in a car accident. The 15-year-old, who later died from injuries determined to be received in the crash, was kicked in his stomach and told "Mexican! Go back to Mexico!" by the man who was the owner (but not the driver) of the car that caused the wreck. The man was also convicted of aggravated battery and a hate crime, and sentenced to serve a year in a work-release program.

Horizons' hate crime statistics for Chicago vary greatly from those recorded by the police department. While Horizons estimated that anti-lesbigay crimes in Chicago dropped 32 percent last year - even as the national group's numbers rose 20 percent - the Commission on Human Relations says that such hate crimes reported to the CPD more than doubled between 1996 and 1997, from 16 to 37 cases.

The areas with the greatest numbers? Lake View, with eleven, followed by three in Rogers Park. Although these areas are popular with gay residents, Carrigan is quick to point out that "Hate crimes occur in all districts of the city, not just Lakeview or Rogers Park; they're just not reported. The perception that gay people don't live in all twenty-five districts simply isn't true."

National lesbigay hate-crime figures are nearly impossible to track, not only because of underreporting, but also because of varying state policies and laws. Under the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, the U.S. Justice Department is required to release a report covering hate crime numbers. It is not mandatory, however, for states and their law-enforcement agencies to report the crimes. Hawaii, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, New Mexico and Tennessee do not require police agencies to report hate crimes; Alabama, which does require reporting, officially logged no hate crimes for 1996, despite the fact that other agencies documented several. Nicknamed the "Zero Report" by members of the media, it is so incomplete that even Jim Noland, of Criminal Justice Information Services, the research department that prepares the study, admitted to the Tribune earlier this year that hundreds of agencies intentionally report inaccurate totals. "Despite these deficiencies," he said, the report has been cited with little or no qualification in scholarly studies and by the media, or used as a policymaking tool in awarding of grants or drafting legislation. "We hear the report is used a lot," he said. "The report should be used as a tool. It still has a lot of problems."

The alleged police response to Houseal's case is similar to one last year, documented by Horizons, involving a gay Polish man in his thirties, living on the Northwest Side. A victim of serial gay-bashing, the man charged his elderly female neighbor had cut his Christmas lights with scissors and stolen his gardening tools. The abuse escalated to violence last August, when she attacked him with gardening shears, cutting him twenty-two times around his hands and arms, screaming "I gonna kill your dog," "I'm gonna blow your house up" and, "Die of AIDS, you faggot." Although the woman was eventually charged with verbal assault, the victim says police tried to make excuses for the woman's actions on account of her age and the fact that she has a limited understanding of English.

"To some degree, hate crimes are underreported by the police because they try to figure out what's winnable, what can be proved," Carrigan says. "But it's important to report because if these crimes go unchecked - if these criminals go untouched - then the violence will escalate. Verbal abuse will become physical abuse."

After his incident, Joseph Houseal says, "One of my most horrible realizations echoed in my mind. I refer to it as 'We're not at one yet.' Several years ago, in pre-protease days, I received outpatient treatment daily in a London AIDS ward. Everyone there had something different, impossible, bizarre. I had never seen such suffering - until I accompanied Chaka Khan to Africa and saw my first starving human beings, hundreds of them. I thought to myself, 'We're not at one yet as a race of people. We're not at one yet.'"

After digesting everything that had happened to him for four days, Houseal put pen to paper and composed an offering to be delivered to his alleged attackers. It said, simply, "Peace."

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