Sunday, December 07, 2008

What The Hell Is THIS About??

I ran into this story on the internet this morning. Right in my own back yard the Gestapo are arresting innocent people for the fear that they MIGHT be having illegal sex at PSU?...

Homophobia In Portland!!

On December 3 2008 Taylor Vineyard,a successful artist turned civil rights law student, my husband of 5 years accompanied me to Portland State University's Smith Center while I rehearsed scenes with a classmate for a theatre class. At 5:08 he headed out for coffee and to smoke a cigarette, he would be missing for the next 7 hours to me. I thought the love of my life, my husband, my best friend, was dead.

At approximately 5:30 pm PSU security began a witchhunt arresting gay men and accusing them of being involved in various sex acts on campus. While they were in the process of arresting another student my husband happened to be walking by in the park blocks, returning from his coffee run. He was arrested. He was read his miranda rights and told to sit while they went to talk to "a witness" to see what the charges were.

accused of criminal trespassing and public indecency.

He was mocked and laughed at by security as he pleaded his innocence. The Guards taunted their victims with promises of "If you tell us what we want to hear we'll let you go home right now"

and "It's up to me if you go to jail or not tonight so you should do what I say"
One student crumbled under the pressure and told the Campus security that he'd been masturbating- he was promptly released.

My Husband was then accused of the same , when he denied it the charged were escalated, culminating in the claim he was involved in a group orgy in a mens room in plain view of others students having group sex in front of the urinals . Since he was innocent of any of this ridiculous false charges he refused to change his story to fit their pink panic witchhunt so he spent the next 6 hours in Multnomah County Jail, where he was not allowed to call me.

In 5 years he has quite literally never been late. In fact he's always early, so by 6:10 pm I was frantically calling friends knowing something was wrong. he'd left his backpack and a bag of Hanukkah gifts. I spent until midnight calling friends, the police, all area hospitals, and campus security themselves who blatantly lied about having any knowledge of his whereabouts.

After finding him in jail and getting him home safe I spoke to PSU representatives and Mike Sotto head of campus security who rudely "corrected" " your friend,partner whatever" when I referred to Taylor as my husband when I discussed the matter with him. When I asked him to stop doing that as it was demeaning and disrespect ful Mike Sotto replied "Sorry I didn't know how you'd perceive your relationship with this man"

This is Portland Oregon in 2008 and he was treated like bar raid in 1965. This is unacceptable.

If you'd like to discuss further details please let us know.
dreamsofsleep@gmail.com




Andrew Klaus

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I am looking for help/direction. I am a friend of a brain injured woman who resides in a nursing home here in Virginia. Every time I go to visit her there, I leave angry, upset, feeling hopeless because of the way that they treat-or don't treat her. The hospital won't work with me due to confidentiality issues. How can I help individuals that I know in nursing homes (mainly brain injured) if I am not family?
My email is mimirogers67@yahoo.com. Thanks for your help.

DA English said...

I happened to see this over on Blue Oregon as it was posted by Carla. This is just nuts. I'd encourage you to try to get some of the larger blog groups like Kos or TMP to do a story on this.

I'm a PSU Alum and lived on campus for 5 years and always thought the security there was pretty good.

The other thing I'd suggest is a letter writing campaign to pressure the president of the school to launch a full investigation, especially among PSU Alumni. Things like this tarnish the reputation of the school which I love so dearly. If indeed these people did not follow procedure and abused someone's rights, then they should be fired.

Anthony Stine said...

I'm a graduate student at PSU and have NEVER heard of this kind of nonsense going down. Quite simply I'd sue the university and make it a BIG fuss in the media. Take no prisoners. The new university President, Wim Weiwel, will have heads rolling in no time.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I guess it would be too much actual "work" for Carla Assman to ask the writer of this post where they got their info. from.

That's one of the problems I have with Blue Oregon. Laziness