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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

New Yorkers protest slaying of gay man

Officials denounce rise in hate crimes

Pedestrians pass a makeshift memorial for 32-year-old Mark Carson on Monday in New York. Police said a man yelled anti-gay slurs before shooting Carson. (Associated Press)

NEW YORK – Thousands marched the streets of Manhattan on Monday to protest the killing of a gay man allegedly taunted with homophobic slurs – the most recent in a spate of bias attacks stirring up anxiety, disbelief and outrage in a famously gay-friendly neighborhood.

“We’re here! We’re queer!” and “Homophobia’s got to go!” were among chants as a crowd marked the death of 32-year-old Mark Carson in Greenwich Village – not far from the site of 1969 riots that helped give rise to the gay rights movement.

Christine Quinn, the city’s first openly gay City Council speaker, marched along with Edie Windsor, whose pivotal case to win the same rights for gay couples as heterosexual couples is before the Supreme Court.

Carson was killed Saturday as he walked with a companion through the Village. Police say a man charged with murder as a hate crime shot Carson in the head in the heart of one of the city’s most progressive neighborhoods.

In the wake of the deadly shooting, officials said Monday that police would increase their presence there and in nearby neighborhoods through the end of June, Gay Pride Month.

A group that combats anti-gay violence planned to fan out to various areas on Friday nights through June to talk to people about safety. And public schools are being asked to hold assemblies or other discussions of hate crimes and bullying before summer break.

City officials, gay-rights advocates and others joined the march Monday evening to denounce a rise in hate crime reports in a city that generally sees itself as a capital of diversity and tolerance.

One of Carson’s aunts, Flourine Bompars, was among the marchers.

“The family would like to have justice be served, so that Mark’s death is not in vain,” she said at a rally at the march’s end. She described her nephew as “a loving and caring person.”

Fabio Cotza, a gay member of an interfaith Bronx church, said the killing “really makes me scared … especially since it happened in this area.”

He said he looked around cautiously when he got off the subway train to march.

“You feel like you’re making headway and then it seems like there’s a backlash,” he said.

The city and especially the Village have long been beacons for gay people. The gay rights movement crystallized in the Village in June 1969, when a police raid at the Stonewall Inn touched off a riot and demonstrations that came to symbolize gays’ resistance to being relegated to society’s shadows.

Yet gay-bashing has continued to flare up in New York at times in recent years. In one particularly sinister case, three men connected with a 28-year-old man online in 2006, lured him to a rest stop off a Brooklyn highway with a promise of a date, and mugged him, chasing him into traffic; he was hit and killed.

Police say there has been a rise in bias-related crimes overall so far this year, to 22 from 13 during the same period last year. The New York City Anti-Violence Project, a nonprofit group that tracks police and other reports of hate attacks against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, says its numbers rose 13 percent in 2011 and 11 percent the previous year.

But officials can’t pinpoint a reason for the recent rash of attacks or even whether it reflects more violence or more aggressive reporting of incidents.

Elliot Morales is being held without bail in Carson’s death. He hasn’t yet entered a plea, and his lawyer didn’t immediately return a call Monday.