One-Two Punch: Man Is Beaten In Anti-Gay Hate Crime and Also by America's Sick Health-Care System

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AlterNet / By Joseph Huff-Hannon

One-Two Punch: Man Is Beaten In Anti-Gay Hate Crime and Also by America's Sick Health-Care System
After a brutal attack, Barie Shortell is taking a whipping from one of the insidious antagonists of 21st century American life—the health-care system.

March 31, 2011 |


During a recent evening at the Blackout Bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, up to 100 people are milling about and drinking beer after paying $35 at the door to attend a party billed, with tongue firmly in cheek, as a “Gay Bash.”

Toward the back of the bar I spend some time talking to 29-year-old Barie Shortell, who points to the place on his face where surgeons inserted a metal plate over his shattered cheekbones. The few bruises on the bridge of Shortell’s nose are the only visible remnants of the savage beating Shortell received from a group of teenagers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on February 22, in an apparent anti-gay hate crime. After blacking out, and spending 10 hours in surgery and five days in the hospital, Shortell is now taking another whipping from one of the insidious antagonists of 21st-century American life—the private health-care system. Shortell, like many of his fellow American twentysomethings, is uninsured.

“Everything that happened; happened on my face. They broke my eye sockets. They broke my jaw. It actually feels pretty amazing now that I can talk. I had my jaw wired shut for a month.”

Friends and strangers interrupt us on occasion to come by and hug Shortell, and a number of men and women wearing name badges work the room, selling raffle tickets. The raffle tickets and the cover charge are all going to the same cause—to pay for the tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills Shortell has incurred after having the crap beaten out of him in the middle of the street because he was perceived as gay. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/150461/one-two_punch%3A_man_is_beaten_in_anti-gay_hate_crime_and_also_by_america%27s_sick_health-care_system/

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