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Living in truth means being on guard

My pals and I were walking up 13th Street on a Center City Saturday night. It was the '80s; we were young, possibly loud, and most definitely gay.

My pals and I were walking up 13th Street on a Center City Saturday night. It was the '80s; we were young, possibly loud, and most definitely gay.

From out of nowhere came a carload of young women, pointing and laughing at "those faggots" on the sidewalk.

"I guess they mean us," one of my friends said wryly.

Then a wonderful thing happened: The nastymobile slammed into a parked car at 13th and Walnut.

Just a fender-bender, really, but as we walked by, we could see the party girls' evening had been ruined. One of them was sobbing.

I occasionally recall those unforgettable tears - the cosmic, if not karmic (or perhaps, comic), justice of them. Such as when we LGBT people are forced to confront the fact that claiming our freedom can bring out the worst in some of our fellow humans.

Like the guy in Center City, whose face I'll never forget, who stopped to ask for directions, called me a name, and spat in my face.

I had said and done nothing to provoke anyone. I was simply a guy walking in the Gayborhood - although we didn't call it that back in the '70s.

A few years later, in Provincetown, Mass., someone yelling faggot blah blah blah abruptly opened a car door to clobber me as I walked on Bradford Street.

A mere flesh wound, but it hurt. I realized that someone had looked at me and spotted a target. Like those two young gay men as they walked near Rittenhouse Square about 10:45 p.m. Sept. 11.

In a Philadelphia Daily News interview, the victims in what's now a national social-media-driven drama said the assault began after someone in a group of perhaps a dozen men and women brushed shoulders with one of the gay guys.

Someone demanded to know whether the victims were boyfriends - and an affirmative answer apparently was all that was needed to transform the group into a gang.

The couple were beaten and facial bones were fractured in one man's face. The attackers allegedly took one victim's backpack before running away in the dark.

Classy.

Unfortunately for the perpetrators, a video released by the Philadelphia police, clearly showing the faces of possible suspects, is all over the Web.

Twitter has become the department's digital eyes and ears. Some suspects apparently have secured lawyers and given police statements.

And a part-time coach at Archbishop Wood High School in Bucks County is out of a job for allegedly participating in the attack. Other suspects are believed to have a connection to the school.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, the archfoe of same-sex civil marriage, has put out a carefully worded but nonetheless strong statement condemning the attack. So has a spokesman for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, who called the beatings "reprehensible."

Which they are.

Unremarked upon by the archdiocese is the question of whether Pennsylvania ought to have a hate-crimes law that includes LGBT people as a protected group. Efforts to pass such legislation have been stymied, in Harrisburg and the courts; on Thursday, Philadelphia Councilman James Kenney called for prosecuting the case as a federal hate crime.

All I know is, two guys got beaten bloody by a mob last week after acknowledging - refusing to hide - the truth. If that isn't a hate crime, what is?

One of the two men, who have been partners for six years, said something in the Daily News that will stay with me. Like the memory of that mean girl's tears, but better.

He insisted that the attack won't "change the way we live our lives."

Mine either.