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Remembering the LGBT Heroes, Victims of 9/11
FDNY Chaplain Mychal Judge, Flight 93 Passenger Mark Bingham Made Ultimate Sacrifice 15 Years Ago Today
On the 15th anniversary of the terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001, the nation pauses again to remember all who lost their lives in the assaults on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and in the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. Among the most celebrated heroes of 9/11 are two gay men, Father Mychal Judge and Mark Bingham.
Judge (pictured), a Franciscan friar and a Roman Catholic priest who served as chaplain to the Fire Department of New York City, rushed with some off-duty firefighters to the North Tower of the World Trade Center, which had just been hit by the first hijacked plane, American Flight 11.
Soon after, Judge became the first recorded fatality of the attack. (He was not the first person to die in the attack — that distinction probably belongs to flight attendants on American Flight 11 — but his was the first officially recorded death.) He was struck by falling debris in the tower while administering the last rites to another victim.
Judge, a gay man who ministered to AIDS sufferers and served as chaplain to Dignity, an organization of gay Roman Catholics, exemplified a Catholic ideal of service. As biographer Michael Ford has noted, Judge’s “ministry … helped many gay people, alienated from the church, reconnect with their faith. Father Mychal was a living symbol of the church as it ought to be.”
Even before his death, many considered Judge a saint because of his compassion and service to others, especially his embrace of the homeless and those suffering from AIDS, as well as the deep spirituality he exhibited.
His former teacher and spiritual advisor, John J. McNeill, a Jesuit who pioneered the development of “queer theology” before being expelled from the order, told Judge’s biographer that he achieved an “extraordinary degree of union with the divine. We knew we were dealing with someone directly in line with God.”
Judge is the subject of a documentary film, Saint of 9/11 (2006, directed by Glenn Holsten). Narrated by Sir Ian McKellen, it is a touching portrait of Father Judge, capturing the man not only in his enormous sense of duty and service to others but also in his gifts as a witty storyteller with an irrepressible sense of humor and an abiding belief in hope.
In June 2002, Congress passed the Mychal Judge Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush over the objections of Attorney General John Ashcroft. The legislation authorized the payment of federal death benefits to anyone named as a beneficiary on the insurance policy of a firefighter or police officer who died in the line of duty. Previously, only spouses, parents, and children had been eligible. The passage of the Mychal Judge Act meant that, for the first time, gay and lesbian partners could receive a federal benefit.
Mark Bingham, an openly gay businessman who owned a public relations firm and was an avid rugby player, was the last passenger to board United Flight 93 in Newark, New Jersey. Soon after the doomed flight began its journey to San Francisco, it was hijacked by terrorists who redirected toward Washington, D. C., where they apparently planned to crash it into either the Capitol or White House.
Flight 93 passengers learned from cell phone conversations that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had already been attacked. Bingham and three other athletic young men sitting in the rear of the plane — Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick — are believed to have stormed the cockpit and forced the plane to crash into an empty field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Although all passengers on the plane were killed, the actions of Bingham, Beamer, Burnett and Glick undoubtedly saved the lives of many more.
The heroism of the brave passengers of Flight 93 has been celebrated in a number of films and television reenactments, including Paul Greenglass’s feature film United 93 (2006) and Peter Markle’s TV film Flight 93 (2006), as well as a memorial at the crash site.
Bingham has been memorialized in a number of ways, including the establishment of the Mark Bingham Leadership Fund at the University of California at Berkeley and the naming of a San Francisco gym in his honor. Along with the other passengers on Flight 93, Bingham was also posthumously presented the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2002.
Most fittingly, given his passion for rugby — as an undergraduate at Berkeley, he played on two national championship teams, and later for the San Francisco Fog, a predominantly gay team — the International Gay Rugby Association has named its biennial tournament the Bingham Cup.
Bingham’s heroism on 9/11 came as no surprise to his former partner, Paul Holm, who told Jon Barrett in The Advocate‘s Sept. 11, 2002 feature on Bingham as “Person of the Year,“ that, in addition to the physical courage he showed on the rugby field, Bingham had also foiled mugging and robbery attempts, including one at gunpoint. Many others also attested to the 6-foot, 5-inch, 220-pound Bingham’s protectiveness and love of action. (Barrett’s feature story was expanded into a book entitled Hero of Flight 93: Mark Bingham. A Man Who Fought Back on September 11 [2002]).
Bingham’s mother, Alice Hoagland, a former United Airlines flight attendant, has been an unfailing supporter of LGBT rights and a fierce protector of her beloved son’s memory.
Melissa Etheridge’s “Tuesday Morning” is a tribute to Bingham that specifically contrasts his heroism with the denial of equal rights that he experienced as a gay man.
Bingham is the subject of a documentary by Scott Gracheff, The Rugby Player (2013). Below is a trailer for the film, which was formerly titled With You.
Among other LGBT victims of the terrorist attack are the following: Carol Flyzik, passenger on Flight 11; David Charlebois, co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon; Graham Berkeley, passenger on United Flight 175, the second hijacked plane that crashed into the World Trade Center; Ronald Gamboa and Dan Broadhorst, a gay couple who were traveling with their adopted son, David, on Flight 175; James Joe Ferguson, a passenger on Flight 77; Jeffrey Collman, a flight attendant on Flight 11; and Waleska Martinez, a passenger on Flight 93.
The following LGBT victims of 9/11 worked at or near the World Trade Center: Pamela J. Boyce, John Keohane, Eddie Ognibene, Eugene Clark, Wesley Mercer, Luke A. Dudek, Michael Lepore, William Anthony Karnes, Seamus O’Neal, Catherine Smith, Patricia McAneny and Renee Barrett.
Sheila Hein worked at the Pentagon. When Virginia’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund administrators refused to recognize Hein’s partner Peggy Neff as anything more than a “friend,” she sued. In January 2003, the federal government’s 9-11 Compensation Fund recognized Neff as Hein’s partner and approved compensation for her.
It is believed that several of the firefighters, police officers and rescue personnel who perished on 9/11 were also members of the LGBT community, but have not been identified as such. More information about the LGBT heroes and victims may be found here.Â
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
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Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.
Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.
But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”
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“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.
“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.
SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “If the president … orders someone to assassinate [a rival], is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
Trump attorney D. John Sauer: “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.” pic.twitter.com/RddEEYIUrR
— The Recount (@therecount) April 25, 2024
Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.
“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.
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U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.
“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.
“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”
Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.
“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”
The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”
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Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”
Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”
“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”
NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”
Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.
During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”
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Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”
But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.
“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”
Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward.
It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/F3qXi47ZT6
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) April 25, 2024
NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”
The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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