Three people followed Patrick down the 1300 block of South Rockford Avenue about 11:45 p.m., yelling homophobic slurs and threats, he said.

Patrick, who is gay, said he ignored the group until they closed in and then asked why they were accosting him without provocation.

The assailants then started beating, biting and slashing at Patrick with a blade, he said, leaving him with several cuts on his head and body.

The 23-year-old has been peppered with insults before, but he said he never thought they would escalate to violence.

“I’ve never felt scared or feared for my safety before,” he said. “You brush it off and walk on. That’s what you’re taught to do.

“This time, it didn’t work.”

Tulsa Police Officer Leland Ashley said the people who are accused of attacking Patrick are at large and were seen in a maroon Ford Mustang from the late 1990s or early 2000s.

Patrick described them as a woman in her early 40s and another woman and man, both in their late teens or early 20s.

Patrick said he regularly walks through the neighborhood and doesn’t know his attackers. They might have seen him previously and decided to act Sunday, he said.

After his trip to the emergency room, Patrick saw an outpouring of support from across the country as his story was passed along via the social networking Web site Facebook.

Much of the support has been from Oklahomans for Equality, a Tulsa-based group that promotes fairness for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, the group’s president, Toby Jenkins, said.

Oklahoma’s hate-crimes law makes it a crime to “intimidate or harass another person because of the person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin or disability.”

Jenkins noted that the state law excludes sexual orientation from the qualifiers for a hate crime. As a result, police are investigating the case only as an assault and battery.

Designation as a hate crime would allow for punishment beyond what would be imposed for the assault.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill earlier this month that would make assaulting someone because of his or her sexual orientation a federal crime.

The Senate is expected to approve the measure, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it into law.

Patrick said it’s frustrating that race and ethnicity are taken into account by state lawmakers but sexual orientation is not.

He said he hopes his ordeal will draw attention to the issue and lead to a change in state law.

Although Oklahoma isn’t known for being particularly gay-friendly, gay men and lesbians are attacked at about the same rate as their urban counterparts in places such as New York and Chicago, Jenkins said.

“Hate crime, where people are targeted because of their sexual orientation, happens everywhere,” he said.

“The kid was just walking down the sidewalk and got targeted,” Jenkins said. “This raises the issue that we need to work on a more civilized society and a safe society for all of our citizens.”
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Apparently, the lack of major coverage of this event caused some to doubt that it happened.  Patrick’s boyfriend has posted pictures online to verify the extent of Patrick’s assault and to shock people into realizing that this very brutal attack happened because of Patrick’s sexual orientation.  I live about four blocks from the scene of the attack.

More to follow,
Beamish

P.S. Perhaps you have encountered people, as I have, who oppose Hate Crimes Legislation because they are afraid that it will suppress their beliefs (i.e. intolerance). Here is a helpful link from religioustolerance.org to share with such people.