Ten Years Later Paul is gone. Matthew is gone. Hundreds of others have been attacked, hurt, killed. What can we do? Stop the language. In Memoriam: Paul Broussard 1964-1991 by John Aston, Ph.D.

This10th anniversary memorial article is dedicated to Paul Broussard’s mother, Nancy Rodriguez, in honor of her continuing activism in the cause of Parents of Murdered Children, and for the passage of hate-crimes legislation (hats off to Senator Rodney Ellis and the Texas legislature of 2001), and in heartfelt sympathy with a mother’s grief over the loss of her child. It is also dedicated to all the victims and families and friends of victims of anti-GLBTH crimes, and to the courageous activists who have kept up the fight for the cause of complete civil rights and liberties for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the transgendered and HIV-positive at great personal risk to themselves. –John Aston

On the night of July 4, 1991, Paul Broussard, a 27-year-old gay banker in Houston, and two of his friends, Cary Anderson and Richard Delaunay, were assaulted as they traversed a parking lot in the Montrose area. Their assailants were 10 youths from the Woodlands, an upscale suburb north of Houston. The boys (all but three were only 17, the eldest was 22) had been cruising the Montrose area earlier that evening, harassing those they presumed gay by throwing rocks at them. With their "queer rocks" as they called them, they had already smashed the windshield of a car and hit a passing man in the mouth. When the attackers encountered the three men, they began by asking for the directions to Heaven, a nearby gay nightclub. Upon being told the directions, the boys leapt out of their two cars and assaulted Broussard and his friends with fists, steel-toed boots, two-by-fours studded with nails, and at least one knife. Broussard’s two friends, Delaunay and Anderson, although injured, managed to escape. Broussard, however, was trapped and subjected to a vicious beating.

As they assaulted Broussard, according to Delaunay, the boys were cheering and yelling wildly, roaring like the crowd in a football game. "We were the football," as Delaunay later said. In the end Paul Broussard suffered multiple cuts and abrasions, a puncture by a nail driven through a board, a broken rib, bruised testicles, three stab wounds–and death. As he lay almost unconscious on the ground with his hand raised as if pleading for mercy or for help, two of the assailants rifled his pockets and took his comb as a "souvenir." Then the boys drove off, still yelling and cheering. As they returned to the Woodlands going north up I-45, the two carloads of assailants drove side-by-side down the highway, leaning out of the windows and slapping palms together in noisy "high-fives." They capped off the evening with a pre-dawn breakfast at a Denny’s restaurant. According to later depositions, it was at the Denny’s that Jon Buice showed a knife to some of the others, and bragged that with it he had "stuck the queer."

After being treated by EMS on the spot, Paul Broussard was transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital. Although medical and hospital staff did all they could to save his life, in the end the bleeding from the wounds could not be stemmed. Broussard died in the hospital an agonizing eight-and-a-half hours later. Nancy Rodriguez, Broussard’s mother, flew into Houston the next day from Atlanta. She met with the Houston police, along with Richard Delaunay and Carey Anderson. The newspapers originally carried the story as just another murder, an all-too-common occurrence in Houston. However, the gay community was alerted by local activists. Large-scale public protests followed, some in front of the home of the mayor, with Nancy Rodriguez and Queer Nation participating. Due to the resulting media attention, a girl who dated one of the assailants, reacting to a story on Crime-Stoppers, called the police and turned the boys in. Within days, all were arrested.

Although the wheels of justice ground slowly, all were eventually convicted, some with pleas of guilty, others in criminal trial. Jon Buice, who confessed to having wielded the knife that apparently made the fatal wound, received the longest sentence–45 years for murder. Another of the assailants, Paul Chance Dillion, was convicted on one count of attempted murder served concurrently with one count of aggravated attempted murder, and was released March 2000.

Five of the boys received probation or deferred adjudication. Nancy Rodriguez and her family, aided by Andy Kahan, of the Houston Crime Victim's Office, worked with the D.A. on setting the terms–the first time this had been done in Harris County. Sentences included boot camp in summer, 500 hours of community service to the gay and lesbian community in Houston, and attending a Parents of Murdered Children meeting. The court also ordered them to pay for Anderson’s hospital bill and Broussard’s funeral.

The three other primary assailants received 15-year (and one day) prison sentences for their admitted participation in the beatings. At the time of the sentencing, Nancy Rodriguez protested that the sentences for the three were too light. "Nothing is enough," she said. "They’ve been walking around now for 18 months while my son’s been lying in the ground." Brian Bradley of Queer Nation said, "Fifteen years and one day with the possibility of parole in 15 months is not right." Those three with 15-year sentences might serve as little as three years in prison. Jon Buice himself is currently up for parole consideration in 2003, after serving only 12 years of his 45-year sentence.

I first became aware of the Paul Broussard murder case in early May 1999, when I was searching for a suitable topic for my doctoral research and dissertation. At that time I came upon an article in the Houston Chronicle summarizing an April article in the Houston Voice in which Jon Buice expressed his remorse for the crime he had committed eight years previously. He expressed "repentance for an act of atrocity." "Remorse," he wrote in a letter from his prison cell, "could not adequately describe the feeling of horror, anguish and disbelief I now carry with me every day of my life. . . . If it were possible, I would sacrifice my own life to bring Paul back." He recognized the prejudice and oppression inherent in his murderous assault. He ended with an apology to the gay and lesbian community, and an offer to make amends: "It would please me to be allowed to offer myself for the service of the gay and lesbian community, and to tell my story to prevent others from making the same mistake I have." I decided to take Buice up on his offer.

As a long-time educator, the assault on Paul Broussard and the nature of his assailants had already engaged me. I had heard that, in their criminal depositions and testimony in civil trials the Woodlands Ten (as they came to be known) had asserted that, for most of them, gay-bashing was not a new thing. They had engaged in it before, coming repeatedly down to the Montrose area to harass gays. It had become a weekend "sport." In addition, they said, others at their school, McCullough High School, had known about what they were doing. Not just classmates and friends, but also other school personnel, such as teachers and coaches, had likely heard them talking and bragging about their gay-bashing activities, they said. They had even taken to wearing identifying markings to school, such as black bandanas, to signify that they were members of the "gay-bashing gang." Yet no one, they said, had done anything to stop them.

At the time of reading Buice’s letter, I lived in the Woodlands. I had also previously taught in secondary schools for several years in the same school district the assailants attended, Conroe I.S.D. I had heard for myself the almost daily expression of antigay remarks by students in classrooms and hallways and lunchrooms and common areas in the school. I had also overheard homophobic remarks in the teachers’ lounges and other presumably "private" spaces at school–sometimes even when students were present. As an educator, then, I was concerned. In addition, I am the parent of two young boys, both of whom, if our family had remained in the Woodlands, would have ended up going to the same school that Buice and his fellow assailants had attended–what was then McCullough High School. Therefore, as a parent, I was also deeply concerned. When I read Buice’s letter, I knew in my gut I had found the topic for my research. I would approach Buice if I could and take him up on his expressed offer to make amends to the gay community. I wanted to find out what made young men like Buice and his schoolmates act as they did. More importantly, I wished to ferret out in what ways schooling itself might be complicit, wittingly or unwittingly, in such crimes. In the course of my research I discovered that an important question to ask was: "In what ways do schools and school personnel contribute to the societal sense of permission to harass and assault gays?"

I contacted Jon Buice and told him about my project. Buice, after assuring himself that I was not just a curiosity seeker or a sensation-monger that might further hurt his already devastated family, was very willing to help. He agreed to correspond with me and to let me interview him in prison. Eventually he also corresponded with my education students at Texas A&M University, accepting all their questions and answering with apparent openness. I have interviewed and corresponded with Buice for the past two years. Although the dissertation has now been completed, I continue to communicate with him, hoping to learn even more.

I have found out some startling things in the course of the research. First of all, I found out that Buice, in spite of his crime, did not consider himself homophobic. He had, he told me, close relatives and friends who were gay. He liked them. Why, then, I asked him, did he do what he did? His reply was that, primarily, it was thrill-seeking, peer-pressure, and the influence of drugs and alcohol. Nearly all the assailants that night had been terribly drunk. Some, like Buice, were also high on marijuana and hopped up on LSD.

When I asked Buice about the "societal sense of permission," he immediately agreed this was very much in the air. He said he and his friends had picked up on the reining wisdom that gays are weak and won’t fight back. Also, the victims probably won’t report attacks, due to fear of being outed. Furthermore, the police probably won’t pursue the offenders. Therefore, gays are likely targets for assault. I discovered in the research literature (much of it from the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network and other activist organizations) that all this was borne out by public health studies. Schools, too, I found out, were generally heterosexist and homophobic institutions, very conservative, unlikely to intervene to stop heterosexist or homophobic remarks or actions. The very frequency of antigay verbal and physical assaults in schools nationwide is astounding. (Click here for: "Basic Facts about Heterosexism in our Schools.")

In addition to interviewing Buice, I also interviewed his father, his mother, some schoolmates of his, and teachers and school personnel who knew or had taught Buice and the other assailants. I found out that McCullough High had officially denied any probable connection to the case, and had labeled Buice and the others as troublemakers totally unrepresentative of the school. This in spite of the fact that one of the Woodlands Ten was the son of an assistant district superintendent at the time!

I also found out that, despite the official denials, most of those interviewed believed that there was indeed a homophobic and heterosexist atmosphere that pervaded McCullough, sometimes even expressed openly by some teachers and coaches. When several gay activists from the Montrose community visited the high school after the murder to offer their services for diversity awareness workshops, they were told by school representatives that there was no problem at the school–thanks but no thanks for the offer. However, the activists were later contacted privately by three different school representatives who had been at the meeting. Requesting anonymity, each one said that, although they didn’t feel safe to say so at the meeting (there were only eight school personnel present), in their opinion there was indeed a problem with homophobia at the school. They had kept quiet at the meeting for fear of losing their jobs.

These and many other findings implicating schools, law enforcement, and the larger society as contributing to anti-GLBTH crimes became part of my research and dissertation. However, out of all the interviews and findings, one in particular stands out. I had also sought to include in my research the viewpoint of the victim. I could not locate either of the two survivors of the attack that night, although I tried. I contacted Nancy Rodriguez to get the mother’s point of view. Although we were finally able to talk at length right before this article went to press, she was not initially available as a source. However, I was offered the opportunity to interview Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard, the murdered gay Wyoming college student.

Judy Shepard was incredible. I came away from the interview profoundly struck by her demeanor. I sensed underneath everything she said a terrible sadness that will probably never go away. However, in spite of her personal pain, which I am sure is reawakened every time she must again talk about her son, she carries on with great love and courage the struggle for awareness to help right this great wrong. What Judy Shepard had to say in her interview was to me the most significant finding of all. As an educator, and as a message to all educators, parents, and the society as a whole, I wish to highlight and underline what she had to say.

Shepard felt that schools were absolutely essential places where heterosexism and homophobia had to be addressed and stopped. When I asked Shepard what schools could/should do to help stop the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, she replied that there were two things. One was to establish and maintain gay-straight alliances, where students and staff, whether gay or straight, could get together for mutual support and understanding without being branded or labeled as one or the other. Sadly, such allliances, I found, are frequently against school and/or district policy. Indeed, any mention of homosexuality, whether in sex ed, health, history, or any other subject, is frequently not allowed.

Most of all, however, Shepard said, "Stop the language."

"The language is pervasive," she emphasized. "Even when kids say things like ‘that’s so gay’–they probably don’t really mean it, but it is very hurtful."

This struck me right between the eyes. How many times had I heard not only my students at school say these types of things (at the university as well as in high school and junior high school), but even neighborhood children–beginning at a very young age. What had I done, I reflected, as an educator, or as a parent, to put an end to such expression? Not nearly enough, I had to admit. How could I, with all my liberal sentiment, have been so blind? I resolved to henceforward never keep the peace. My published research would be only just the beginning. I would continue to research and write on this topic. I would teach about this to all my university students, my wonderful and giving teachers-to-be. But even more importantly, I would never again let another bit of such "language," no matter how seemingly innocent, go unchallenged, so help me God. I would speak up, and out, and add my voice to all those who seek full civil rights and liberties for the GLBT community. I would no longer remain silent, or in any way equivocate. Please join me in this commitment, so that we can together say to Paul Broussard and to his grieving mother: Paul’s death has not been in vain.

(Click here for: Letter From Mother of Paul Broussard.)

John Aston, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Education at Southwest Texas State University. He has been an educator since 1976, teaching and administrating in both public and private schools and junior colleges before beginning his collegiate teaching career at Texas A&M University in 1996 and the doctoral research on the Paul Broussard murder that resulted in "Deconstructing Heterosexism and Homophobia in our Schools: Case Study of a Hate Crime by an Adolescent Offender" (available through Dissertation Abstracts International www.lib.umi.com); he is currently at work on a book on the subject. He is still seeking information from anybody who was present or nearby the scene of Paul Broussard’s murder or the aftermath. Readers may contact him at ja18@swt.edu.

To read John Aston’s interview with Judy Shepard, "Visions of Peace: The mother of Matthew Shepard talks about her son’s life, some of the experiences that preceded his murder, and how to teach love and respect," which ran in December 2000 OutSmart, click here: http://www.outsmartmagazine.com/issue/i12-00/shepard.html.