Thursday, August 25, 2022

BlackRock 401(k) Suits Pressure Labor Department to Act

Aug. 25, 2022,

Glide path strategies a key point of legal contention

A surge in new lawsuits challenging workplace retirement plans over the set-it-and-forget-it funds they default investors into is renewing calls from industry critics who say the US Labor Department should be doing more to protect 401(k) savers.

At least 11 companies, including Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Citigroup Inc., and Microsoft Corp., have been named in a spate of almost identical lawsuits going after a target-date index suite operated by BlackRock Inc.

Retirement plan participants at those firms claim their current or former employers mismanaged the plans by choosing BlackRock funds over better-performing market options. Retirement plan sponsors who are held to a strict fiduciary standard of prudence under the law failed to adequately track those investments over time, which resulted in a loss of savings potential, the lawsuits claim.

Target-date funds are the most common investment vehicle marketed to participants at work, but the one-stop-shop darlings of the retirement investment industry are confronting an unexpected set of challenges this year that cast a shadow over more than $1.8 trillion in savings. The litigation, new research suggesting most employers don’t use TDFs effectively, and lawmakers’ calls to investigate the way they’re managed are putting pressure on regulators to weigh in.

“The Department of Labor is supposed to be the regulator of fiduciary responsibility law in the United States; it’s their job,” said Daniel Aronowitz, managing principal and owner of Euclid Fiduciary. “I feel like they’ve abdicated their responsibility in this particular context, allowing plaintiff lawyers to serve as the regulator of fiduciary law.”

‘To’ vs. ‘Through’

A key component of the lawsuits targeting BlackRock’s index suite is the low-cost “to-retirement” glide path the company’s money managers use to balance underlying investments.

To-retirement TDFs stop trading once the target retirement date has been reached, but “through retirement” funds assume investors will keep their savings in the plan post-retirement. They keep trading, and have a different risk portfolio than to-retirement plans at different savings stages.

The Labor Department issued guidance for plan sponsors on “to” and “through” plan comparisons in 2013, and at least twice proposed and then delayed a set of specific disclosures sponsors would provide participants about the risks associated with funds before abandoning the rulemaking effort entirely in 2017.

“The department needs to resurrect the notion of putting some risk disclosures in plans, because these are inherently risky products,” said Ron Surz, president and CEO of PPCA Inc. and its division, Target Date Solutions.

Surz has spent years calling on the agency to do more to protect participants from TDF money mangers who he says have a financial interest in stacking plans with riskier investments near the target date. In July, he wrote an open letter to the Employee Benefits Security Administration in which he said fiduciaries should be forced to make an “explicit choice” between “safe” and “risky” target-date investment strategies.

No Action

Surz isn’t alone.

Morningstar Inc. published research in July recommending that the Labor Department issue more guidance clarifying the role sponsors need to play in the review and evaluation of target-date glide paths, and even amending the default investment rules to make customizable target-date options more appealing.

“This is an area that we haven’t seen guidance from the department since 2013,” said Lia Mitchell, a Morningstar retirement policy analyst. “I do think there’s a contingent of plan sponsors who are misunderstanding these products, and we’ve seen the industry change a great deal recently.”

Plan sponsors overwhelmingly default their investors in “through-retirement” glide paths, even though a minority of plan participants keep their savings in the plan after retirement, the Morningstar research shows.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called for a government watchdog review of target-date funds last year. The pair asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the predominance of TDFs in the market, investment selection, marketing, and recommendations for future legislation or regulation.

“The millions of families who trust their financial futures to target-date funds need to know these programs are working as advertised and providing the retirement security promised,” the lawmakers wrote.

BlackRock isn’t named in any of the lawsuits, because the money manager doesn’t serve as a fiduciary to the plans whose investors access its funds. The company said it is deeply committed to retirement investment research and has a long history of working closely with plans and their consultants.

“Our investment process takes into account multiple factors, including return objectives, market cycles, time horizon, and risk management,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg Law. “As a result, BlackRock’s LifePath Index funds are highly regarded by many fiduciary decision-makers and independent evaluators of investment products for delivering consistently strong outcomes for plan participants over time.”

Labor Department Responds

DOL officials this week said they have worked closely with the Securities and Exchange Commission to help clear up confusion about different target-date options in the market.

In May, the SEC proposed a names rule (RIN 3235-AM72) that would force companies to reevaluate not only the names but the underlying investment strategies they use to market target-date products, among others.

“I think it’s very confusing for individuals,” said Ali Khawar, acting assistant secretary for employee benefits. “We’re paying attention to this. I don’t have a promise of guidance, but I don’t have a promise of not guidance either.”

Khawar said he and the Solicitor’s Office have been monitoring the spike in cases targeting BlackRock funds to identify areas of general confusion where the department’s amicus guidance would be helpful.

“One of the questions we’re asking ourselves and talking to the Justice Department about is whether or not there’s an interest in the government participating in some way,” Khawar said.

Khawar stressed, however, that it’s exceedingly rare for the department to weigh in on cases at the district court level.

DACA Rule Release Aims to Bolster

Program for ‘ Dreamers’

Aug. 24, 2022, \

Administration aims to fortify program’s legal standing

Fifth Circuit considering arguments on policy’s legality

The Biden administration on Wednesday released the final version of regulations intended to fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program against legal challenges.

The program, launched in a 2012 memo by the Obama administration, offers protection from deportation and the ability to work legally to some 600,000 undocumented young people who came to the US as children. The regulation replaces the Obama-era memo and takes effect Oct. 31.

The Biden administration crafted the regulation in response to legal challenges that have plagued DACA since its inception. The rule doesn’t make the program bulletproof, however, as some litigants and judges question whether the Department of Homeland Security has authority to issue broad deportation protections at all.

“Today, we are taking another step to do everything in our power to preserve and fortify DACA, an extraordinary program that has transformed the lives of so many Dreamers,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

Mayorkas called on Congress to pass legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, often known as Dreamers. Many lawmakers quickly echoed that sentiment, pushing the Senate to take up House-passed legislation (H.R. 6) protecting Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants.

“This step forward does not take away from the urgency for 10 Senate Republicans to join all Democrats to pass the House-passed bipartisan Dream and Promise Act and provide certainty and a pathway to citizenship for our hardworking Dreamers across the country,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

The legislation would need the support of 10 Republicans and all Democrats to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold—an uphill battle amid increasing Capitol Hill polarization on immigration policy ahead of midterm elections.

Inside the Rule

The DHS’s final regulation maintains existing criteria for DACA status and the process for seeking work authorization. The rule will apply only to DACA renewal requests, not to new applications, while a federal court order remains in place barring DHS from granting new requests for status.

DACA has faced challenges in court from Republican-led states even after a Trump administration effort to rescind the program was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2020.

Last year, Houston-based US District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled the program was unlawful because it was created through a secretarial memo and not a formal rulemaking process. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard arguments in an appeal of that ruling in July.

“DHS has carefully and respectfully considered all aspects of the analysis in that decision, including that decision’s conclusions about DACA’s substantive legality,” the agency said in the final regulation Wednesday, adding that it “respectfully disagrees.”

The Department of Homeland Security received more than 16,000 comments in response to a draft rule released in September. The proposed rule largely codified the 2012 memo that created the program.

However, the draft regulations allowed recipients to apply for deferred action and work eligibility separately, to the chagrin of immigration advocates and business groups who feared that could ultimately undermine employment authorization. The final version retains the existing process.

(Updated with additional reporting throughout.)

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS RELUCTANT TO BE WOKE?

The Party’s Fear of Alienating White Voters Is Misplaced—And Creating a Missed Opportunity

The Democratic Party’s reluctance to take stronger positions on racial justice removes opportunities to connect with core voters, writes political scientist Ashley Jardina. Courtesy of AP Images.

by ASHLEY JARDINA | AUGUST 18, 2022

Recent debates over how race fits into American politics have centered on one word: “woke.” Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” which took effect in July, is intended to restrict how schools and businesses can talk about race. While this policy was part of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against critical race theory, Democratic Party members have used similar language to argue against making race a central issue of their political platform. In November 2021, long-time Democratic Party strategist James Carville claimed “stupid wokeness” was to blame for the party’s loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election.

The idea of “staying woke” became an important refrain among Black Lives Matter activists after a spate of police killings of Black men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. These debates over “wokeness” are the latest in a long history of Republican efforts to win over white Democratic swing voters with racially conservative attitudes that political scientists call “racial resentment.” Democrats have often tried to maintain support from these whites by staying silent on racial issues.

But my research shows that racial resentment among white Democrats is at all-time low and by failing to take stronger positions on racial justice—out of concern they could alienate moderate whites – the party is missing a historic political opportunity.

Since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Democrats have taken gradually more progressive positions on racial justice issues, social welfare programs, and immigration policies than Republicans. As a result, majorities of racial and ethnic minorities have increasingly supported the Democratic Party and self-identified non-Hispanic white voters have steadily allied with the Republican Party. According to data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), in 1968, 52 percent of white Americans identified as Democrats and 37 percent as Republicans; by 2020 those values had reversed: 53 percent of white voters were Republicans, while only 37 percent of white voters aligned with the Democratic Party.

By comparison, 80 percent of Black Americans and nearly 60 percent of Hispanic Americans currently identify as Democrats.

There is empirical evidence that Democrats could see gains if they embrace the progressivism of their core constituencies: racially liberal white voters and people of color.

But even as the party’s non-white voter base grows, Democrats have continued to express concerns about losing white voters because of racial positions. In 2017, a former Bill Clinton pollster blamed identity politics for weakening the party’s electoral chances. Earlier this year, racial justice activists like Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, chided President Biden for omitting racial justice issues in his State of the Union Address, even as he addressed his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

My research suggests, however, that when Democrats stay silent on race to appease white moderates, they are making a tactical error. It’s a lose-lose situation for Democrats who are soft on racial justice because Republicans will still attack them for being too liberal. In Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, and elsewhere, Republican candidates aligned with former President Donald Trump continue to take aim at Democratic positions on identity politics, regardless of Democrats’ reluctance to raise the issue. Additionally, when Democrats avoid racial issues, they fail to address the needs of their large, and growing, constituency base of people of color and risk alienating their own base of support.

Social scientists such as Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders introduced the concept of white “racial resentment” to describe the more subtle forms of racial prejudice that emerged after the civil rights movement. Instead of extreme beliefs about biological inferiority and preferences for segregation, racial resentment addresses a more covert type of racism that is expressed in the language of personal responsibility and denial of racial discrimination.

Researchers measure this form of prejudice primarily through survey research. Respondents are asked questions about perceptions of work ethic and personal responsibility. For example, respondents are asked how strongly they agree with statements like, “Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black people should do the same without special favors.” And: “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Black people to work their way out of the lower class.” Individuals who deny the consequences of racial discrimination and blame Black people’s poor work ethic for racial disparities receive a higher “resentment score.”

Using data from the ANES, which has routinely measured whites’ levels of racial resentment since the 1980s, Duke University graduate student Trent Ollerenshaw and I analyzed how white Americans’ levels of racial prejudice have changed over time. Our findings showed that racial resentment among white Democrats is at an all-time low.

This suggests that Democrats have an historic opportunity to advance more racially progressive policies. By leveraging burgeoning white progressivism on race, Democrats may also serve the interests of—and thereby, attract—another crucial constituency: people of color, whose support for the Democratic Party appears to have eroded somewhat in recent years.

We find that during the 1980s and 1990s, white Democrats had only slightly lower levels of racial resentment than white Republicans, and both were more politically conservative than now. The two groups began drifting apart in the early 2000s, a trend that accelerated at the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2008 and became a gulf by 2016. By 2020, the two parties were further apart than ever. While white Democrats’ resentment scores declined dramatically, white Republicans’ racial resentment scores in 2020 had not changed much since 1986, the same year Howard Beach race riots in Queens, New York, killed a Black man and the state of Arizona rescinded the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

There are two likely explanations for this trend: More racially prejudiced white Democrats have left the party in recent years, or they have substantially changed their views. Multiple surveys of the same individuals between 2011 and 2020 provide evidence for the latter explanation: they show that whites who remained Democrats have expressed less racial resentment over time.

The next critical question for political researchers and Democratic strategists is: Does declining racial resentment among white Democrats suggest there is greater support for specific policy solutions?

Our analysis shows that many white survey respondents in 1980s and 1990s opposed policies that are perceived to benefit Black people, disproportionately, such as affirmative action and welfare spending increases.

During the Obama era, however, white Democrats’ support for these policies increased substantially. A 2020 poll by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute revealed that more than 73 percent of white Democrats supported affirmative action policies in college admissions and more than 66 percent supported them in hiring practices. More white Democrats support affirmative action now than ever before.

Our analysis suggests that the Democratic Party’s reluctance to take stronger positions on racial justice due to concerns about racially resentful whites is a lost opportunity. There is empirical evidence that Democrats could see gains if they embrace the progressivism of their core constituencies: racially liberal white voters and people of color.

ASHLEY JARDINA is a political scientist at Duke University, a fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute and the author of White Identity Politics.

Kim Cheatle: Biden taps PepsiCo executive to head Secret Service

Sravasti Dasgupta - 4

Biden© AP

US president Joe Biden has appointed Kimberly Cheatle as the new director of the Secret Service.

Ms Cheatle has served in the Secret Service for 27 years and was the first woman to be named assistant director of protective operations, the division that provides protection to the president and other dignitaries.

In 2021, she was awarded the Presidential Rank Award by Mr Biden.

She is currently working as as a security executive at PepsiCo.

Ms Cheatle will become the second woman to head the Secret Service after Julia Pierson who was appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.

“Kim has had a long and distinguished career at the Secret Service, having risen through the ranks during her 27 years with the agency, becoming the first woman in the role of Assistant Director of protective operations,” Mr Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Jill [First Lady] and I know firsthand Kim’s commitment to her job and to the Secret Service’s people and mission. When Kim served on my security detail when I was Vice President, we came to trust her judgement and counsel.

“She is a distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills, and was easily the best choice to lead the agency at a critical moment for the Secret Service. She has my complete trust, and I look forward to working with her,” he added.

Prior to her stint as assistant director of protective operations, Ms Cheatle served as Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Office, providing oversight for all mission-related investigations, protective intelligence and protective visits in the state of Georgia.

Her appointment comes as the Secret Service is at the centre of growing criticism after admitting that text messages from around the time of the Capitol riot in January last year were deleted.

In a statement on 14 July, a spokesperson for the Secret Service denied that personnel “maliciously deleted text messages”.

“In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the [DHS inspector general] in every respect – whether it be interviews, documents, emails, or texts,” Anthony Guglielmi said.

In addition, personnel from the Secret Service personnel were invoked in several testimonies to the House select committee probing insurrection last year.

This has raised serious questions about the behaviour of former president Donald Trump and his attempts to provoke a mob and subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Welcoming Ms Cheatle to lead the Secret Service, Mr Guglielmi said she “is a law enforcement veteran and served as the first female assistant director in charge of all protective operations for the agency before retiring”.

“We are ecstatic to welcome her back as the next Director of the United States Secret Service,” he said in a tweet.

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I STOOD IN LINE FOR THE MONKEYPOX VACCINE. ALL AROUND ME WERE ECHOES OF OTHER EPIDEMICS

From AIDS to COVID-19, Gay Men Have Found Camaraderie Amid the Barrage of Threats to Their Health

Robert Whirry couldn't find a place to get his monkeypox vaccine—until, finally, a friend texted with a fresh tip: a nearby hospital had doses. He dropped everything to stand in line. "I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I have a work Zoom scheduled later, but this may be my only chance," he remembers thinking.

Courtesy of AP Images.

by ROBERT WHIRRY | AUGUST 25, 2022

It is early August 2022 and I am in San Francisco for a few days. In urban areas with large gay populations such as Los Angeles, where I’m from, and here, monkeypox is on the mind of all my gay friends, and a topic of great interest among my straight ones. As with the first days of COVID-19, this consciousness seems to have come out of nowhere. Only weeks ago monkeypox seemed like a minor issue. Now there are more and more stories of friends of friends who have contracted it—experiences of the worst pain ever, like broken glass scraping on skin, and of the horror when the lesions travel to the genitals and anal canal, where the pain is constant and agonizing.

For those of us who are sexually active gay men, the timing seems particularly cruel. It was only recently that the shadow of COVID lifted a bit, giving something of a return to normalcy in regards to sexual practices. Monkeypox spreads through close contact, particularly sexual contact, and many gay men have contracted it. Sex and physical intimacy are dangerous again. It’s time to once again limit sexual contact—to heave another sigh, accept the new reality, and try and find a way to get the vaccine.

It isn’t easy. I had registered for the vaccine in Los Angeles and in nearby Long Beach, but had been unable to obtain it. Now, in San Francisco, at a little after 8 in the morning on a Tuesday, a friend texts me that he’d gotten out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to get in line at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Rumor was, they had a batch of monkeypox vaccine—maybe 600 doses, no one knows for sure—which they were going to start giving out at 8 a.m.

When my friend arrived at 5:30 a.m. there was already a two-block line, and he was lucky number 125—assured he would get the vaccine that day. His text urges me to get down to SF General ASAP. I pull on some clothes, call a Lyft, and rush out the door. I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I have a work Zoom scheduled later, but this may be my only chance.
Sex and physical intimacy are dangerous again. It’s time to once again to limit sexual contact—to heave another sigh, accept the new reality, and try and find a way to get the vaccine.

When I get there, the line is down to one block long, and there is a moment of joy and relief when a smiling health outreach worker hands me a paper slip: number 531. I will get my first monkeypox vaccine dose that day! She also gives me a questionnaire to fill out and a small, bright yellow pencil, as if I were about to commence a round of miniature golf. I try to remember the last time I have used or even held a pencil. Filling out the form in faint graphite feels somehow inadequate to the importance of the moment.

The vaccine line snakes along slowly but constantly. It is a warm day in the city, and it’s nice to be in the sun. I look around at my companions in line. We are all of us gay men, most alone, some in pairs. I have flashbacks to the early days of the AIDS crisis. The desperate waiting for initial treatments, taking an early HIV test and waiting an unnerving two weeks for the result, struggling to get the first doses of combination therapies. We were stigmatized in those early days, and we fear we could be stigmatized anew.

And of course there are more recent flashbacks, to COVID-19—the confusion and anxiety for everyone seeking to get vaccinated and the glorious memory of getting that first dose, and the sense of liberation and newfound safety that came with it.

About halfway through the line, an earnest young activist hands each of us a card urging us to sign a petition demanding the government take more urgent steps to fight monkeypox, including making more vaccine doses available immediately. Later, near the vaccine site entrance, I come across a huge pile of petition cards discarded on a bench. Political apathy will always exist to some degree, but I wonder how much this castoff mound may also speak to the number of gay men who feel exhausted and overwhelmed in the face of a seemingly endless barrage of political and health threats.

Getting the vaccine goes amazingly smoothly. I walk to a numbered table where an intern in scrubs greets me warmly and transcribes the information on my penciled questionnaire into a database. I go upstairs to receive my vaccine. An older, jovial male nurse smiles broadly at me, offers me a seat, and asks: Which arm? The injection is painless, and I do not at first realize it is over. I see the nurse toss my used syringe into a gigantic red sharps box, on top of hundreds of other spent doses. There we are, thrown together, as we were in line.

I think of all the death and suffering among gay men that the organized, friendly health professionals at San Francisco General Hospital must have seen since the first days of the AIDS epidemic. In some ways this is just another response to a health crisis, offered generously and efficiently, without judgment, and mustering the greatest resources they are capable of providing.

I walk out of the vaccine facility with a lightness in my step, knowing that I am one of the lucky ones. There are still vaccines available today, just as there had been when my friend texted me a few hours earlier. I text other friends to tell them to come down here, and see other men doing the same. We are in this together—men who are still in many ways outsiders to mainstream American sexual culture, who have achieved a certain level of liberation in our celebration of the joy and intimacy of sex, and who, if we are lucky, have good friends who reach out in a time of crisis and tell us to get our ass down here right away.

ROBERT WHIRRY is a freelance grant proposal and report writer who has worked in HIV and public health since 1985.

On this day: Lucien Carr, the Beats & gay panic defence

DESTINY ROGERS 25 AUGUST 2022

On August 25, 1944, newspapers reported the indictment of 19-year-old Lucien Carr on a charge of second-degree murder for the ‘honour killing’ of David Kammerer. Over the previous months, Lucien Carr brought together the men who would later comprise the leading authors of the Beat generation: William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Herbert Huncke. All had some connection to the murder.

Born into a prominent St. Louis family, 14-year-old Lucian Carr met David Kammerer at a summer camp. The English teacher and Phys Ed instructor apparently became infatuated with the boy 13 years his junior.

According to Lucien Carr and his mother, Lucien moved states several times over the next few years to escape David Kammerer’s attentions.

He went from St Louis to Massachusetts, then to a college in Maine, and finally to the University of Chicago. In Chicago, he put his head in a gas oven. His mother blamed the probable suicide attempt on David Kammerer. He had followed Lucien to Massachusetts, Maine and then Chicago.

After a two-week stay in a psychiatric ward, Lucien Carr moved to New York and enrolled at Columbia University.

David Kammerer followed.

Not everyone sees David Kammerer as the villain of the piece. Some friends insisted he was straight. Others point to Lucien’s mental health issues. Or the, at times, chummy relationship between the pair.

“When you saw them together, they seemed to be the best of friends, drinking and horsing around.”

Some claim Lucien Carr led the older man on.

But blaming Lucien Carr for the unhealthy relationship — whatever it was — ignores two crucial points. Firstly, Lucien Carr’s age when the pair met. Secondly, David Kammerer’s relentless stalking of the kid. Surely it was not by coincidence that he turned up in every town Lucien moved to.

David Kammerer might have been, as some attested, a very nice man. But nice people sometimes do bad shit. Fact.

The Beats

Lucien Carr met Allen Ginsberg at Columbia University. Then, a girl he met during art class introduced him to her boyfriend, Jack Kerouac. Lucien introduced Allan to Jack and both to William Burroughs. Burroughs was an old friend, a member of another wealthy St. Louis family.

Burroughs brought in the fifth member of the group, Herbert Huncke, a gay Times Square hustler who sometimes scored drugs for him.

By all accounts, young Lucien Carr was brilliant, charismatic… and erratic. He was the glue that held the Beats together. But David Kammerer also hung around on the periphery, obsessed with Lucien and jealous of anyone close to the golden child. William Burroughs once caught him trying to hang Jack’s cat.

Kerouac and Carr decided to escape the drama. They boarded a ship for Europe but were kicked off before it sailed so went drinking. Jack called it a night first and Lucien was still in the bar when David Kammerer came looking for him.

They went walking in a riverside park where Lucien claimed Kammerer hit on him for sex. He said that over the preceding years he always successfully rebuffed Kammerer’s advances. But not this time. They began to struggle. When the older and bigger man, according to Carr, began to get the better of him, he stabbed him out of desperation. Carr then weighted the body down with rocks and threw it in the river.

Lucien Carr went to see William Burroughs and then Jack Kerouac, telling each what happened. Both counselled him to turn himself in but neither reported him to the police.

Lucien Carr did later turn himself in. Once they recovered the body, the police also arrested Kerouac and Burroughs as material witnesses. Burroughs’ father bailed him out but Kerouac remained in the Bronx prison with Carr.

Victim or villain?

At first, cops and prosecutors struggled to understand the crime. Was Lucien Carr, as he claimed, the heterosexual victim of a predatory older man who he killed in self-defence? Or was he a depraved psychopath who’d murdered his gay lover?

A picture taken of him and Kerouac previously (top of page), shows Lucien Carr as a cocky young delinquent, cigarette clinging to the corner of his mouth. But court photos reveal a more sensitive, even delicate, youth. The book in his hand — a philosophical treatise by Irish poet W. B. Yeats — questionable reading matter for a virile all-American heterosexual.

In one way, Lucien’s delicate clean-cut appearance helped. He looked vulnerable and incapable of fighting off a bigger man. But it also hurt. Because, according to the thinking of the cops and prosecutors, if Lucien was gay, he was guilty. His only possible defence — heterosexuality.

Jack Kerouac was a seaman and had a girlfriend. So he had to be straight! The cops checked him out just to be sure. They offered young, good-looking Mafia hit men remissions off their sentences if they could seduce him. Fore-warned, Jack resisted temptation.

Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg all later wrote about the murder.

In one fictionalised account by Kerouac, the Carr character whispers to him out of the corner of his mouth as they await a court hearing.

“Heterosexuality all the way down the line.”

Burroughs insinuated in his writing that he suggested that Lucien claim he killed Kammerer in self-defence after the older man attempted to rape him.

How you hung?

Between the ambiguity over Lucien’s sexuality, the jumbled facts of the court case, conflicting narratives in the writings of the Beat authors, not to mention their inner conflicts over their own sexualities and their feelings for Lucien, it’s hard to make head or tail of it all.

Kerouac once wrote, in a different story, about a man trying to pick him up in the same park where David Kammerer died.

“How you hung?” the man asks.

“By the neck, I hope,” replies Kerouac.

Added details do not help explain this story. They just further confuse the narrative. That’s life, I suppose… and death.

Lucien Carr served two years for manslaughter. After his release, he remained friends with the Beat authors but chose a more settled existence than their much-chronicled life journeys through sex and drugs and rock & roll.

He began work as a copy boy at United Press and worked his way up to much-respected head of the news desk.

Lucien married and had three children. He wore a moustache and sometimes a full-face beard for most of his post-prison life, camouflaging his delicate features. Beards will do that.

It’s impossible to know now whether David Kammerer attempted to rape Lucien Carr on the night of his death. Whether Lucien genuinely needed to defend himself or if the killing occurred because of the young man’s own inner conflicts or simply a drunken misadventure.

But sadly, the case became a template for future instances of gay panic defence. Murderers escaped conviction by claiming a need to defend their heterosexuality against a homosexual advance.

Need a get-out-of-jail-free card and no witnesses to dispute your version of events? Claim the victim was gay.

Australia’s first known gay panic defence — The Cooyar Tragedy, the murder of a gay man in 1920.

For the latest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) news in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Pete Buttigieg sends letter to gay teenager after his amazing speech

JORDAN HIRST 25 AUGUST 2022

US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg has sent a heartwarming letter to a teenage gay activist who went viral for his graduation speech calling out homophobic censorship in his home state of Florida.

Zander Moricz went viral in May for delivering the speech at his graduation. The openly gay student had earlier led student protest walkouts against Florida’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law at his school in the state.

The homophobic “Don’t Say Gay” law bans discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms across the state.

Before the graduation speech, the gay teenager claimed his principal had banned him from mentioning the “Don’t Say Gay” bill or the student protests against it during the address.

So the student found a workaround: he substituted his curly hair as a euphemism instead of using the word “gay”. The graduating student’s speech subsequently gained worldwide attention.

Zander Moricz has also joined a major lawsuit to fight the law in Florida.

Zander Moricz’s speech ‘reverberated across the country’

This week, the teenager shared on Twitter that he’d received a personal letter from Buttigieg, thanking Moricz for his “voice and advocacy”.

“After Chasten and I saw your graduation speech earlier this year and heard about your appearance at the Department of Education, I wanted to be sure to personally thank you for your voice and advocacy,” Buttigieg wrote.

“Your combination of wit and courage has reverberated across the country in ways that will benefit people you’ll never even meet.”

Pete Buttigieg went on to say he was “mindful” his service as the first openly gay Cabinet Secretary was only possible thanks to the “activism and advocacy” of those before him.

“There is no doubt that your example will open doors for many others who now look up to you, even as you are just starting your own path forward following your graduation.

“Congratulations on distinguishing yourself so well already.”

Moricz thanked Buttigieg for his letter on Twitter, saying the “fight for Florida has only begun”.

Pete Buttigieg slams ‘dangerous’ Don’t Say Gay bill in Florida

The anti-LGBTQ+ so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation was signed into law by Republican governor Ron DeSantis in March.

Moricz is one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against it, which slams the legislation as an “unlawful attempt to stigmatize, silence and erase LGBTQ+ people in Florida’s public schools”.

In February, Pete Buttigieg also condemned the bill as dangerous because it sends a false message to queer kids that there is “something wrong with them”.

He also warned it would have a detrimental effect on LGBTQ+ youths’ mental health.

“And the reason is that it tells youth who are different or whose families are different that there’s something wrong with them out of the gate,” he told CNN.

“I do think that contributes to the shocking levels of suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts among LGBTQ youth.”

He added it should be appropriate for a kid of any age to be able to discuss their “mom and mom or dad and dad or whatever family structure” they live with.

“That’s part of what it means to be pro-family, is to be pro-every family,” he said.

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