qPDX.com – Queer news, views and events for Portland

Photo by Dan Ostergren from the "Holding hands in solidarity" Facebook page

This is the first I’m hearing of this story, but I feel it is important for the community to know, so I’m going to leave it up to the great reporting of Just Out‘s Erin Rook to detail the events on an attack on two gay men this past Sunday night. You cab read more on the Just Out website.

Brad Forkner, 23, and Christopher Rosevear, 25, were walking across the Hawthorne Bridge hand-in-hand after taking in an evening show at Darcelle’s Sunday, May 22, when they were assaulted by three men, Forkner says.

Bias crimes detective Kevin Warren said officers responded to an assault near the Eastbank Esplanade that night around 8:35 p.m. He could not confirm that the incident was being treated as a bias crime because he had not yet interviewed the victims. According to Forkner, however, officers at the scene said the circumstances suggested a bias crime.

“They deemed it a bias crime seeing how the men followed us for so long, nothing was stolen, and there seemed to be no other provocation than Christopher and I holding hands,” Forkner said. He added that the alleged attackers were yelling at them during the assault, but they couldn’t make out what the men were saying — Rosevear thought they could have been speaking another language, such as Russian.

Continue reading »