One night several weeks ago in a nice area of downtown Philadelphia – and on the 13^th anniversary of 9/11 – a group of about fifteen well-dressed white men and women in their twenties, who during the previous hour were seen enjoying drinks and dinner at a popular restaurant nearby, confronted a gay male couple their age on the street and beat them severely. One of the leaders of the group allegedly shouted to one of the two men: “Is he your fucking boyfriend?” whereupon he and many of his group began to relentlessly pummel them. The couple was then rushed to the hospital where one had to have his jaw wired shut and the other was photographed with a deeply lacerated black eye, among other injuries.

There are numerous videos and photos of the group accused of doing the damage and they seem like any other normal crowd of young people out for the evening. The guys are alternately wearing button downs, khakis, jeans, shorts and pressed sport shirts and the girls are in dark dresses or nice pants and are wearing makeup and jewelry. As for the gay men – there are no photos of them other than a close-up of a distorted, sliced eye of one. Though there is a descriptive comment from a police officer who spoke anonymously about the case to Philadelphia Magazine referring to the gay men as “two little guys.”

To be fair, let me give you the exact quote:

P Mag: What of the early report indicating that they (the accused) were trying to claim self-defense?

Officer: You have two little guys who are gonna pick a fight with a mob, a bunch of meatheads? I haven’t seen that happen.

This last exchange really pisses me off. Not as much as the three people (one woman and two men) in the group who have thus far been taken to court where they were promptly released on bail within a day. And certainly not as much as the homophobic Twitter rants of the aforementioned young woman, the daughter of a local Police Chief (!), who has typed into the world such missives as: The ppl we were just dancing with just turned and made out with each other #gay #ew and Why do Asians always put their kids on a leash? Or as completely as their attorneys, who variously claim that their clients never touched the two gay men or see the disagreement as either unprovoked or mutual. One can just hear their reasoning now:

The fact that no one in the larger group had more than a scratch on them and that the gay guys were bloody and disfigured is just confirmation of what we all know deep down inside – gay guys, especially little ones, really can’t fight so they should think extra hard before they invite one.

Okay, certainly they would be clever enough not to say this out loud but that would be their clear implication. Just as clearly as the arguments on recent past legal cases which implicitly argued that young black boys who wear hoodies are ominous interlopers or a group of rude mixed race kids in cars who answer back a middle-aged white man with an obnoxious retort can justifiably be shot. Since you never know just what else any of them have up their sleeves that can endanger the well being of the average citizen – who is certainly not Black, mixed race and definitely not gay.

But back to the little guys.

I suppose that as a smaller than average gay guy myself, I should cut Officer Anonymous a little slack since he seems to be on the height challenged side of us “little guys” – which is not to be confused with the commonly used phrase of the little guy we use when speaking of a working class Joe or Jane who can barely make ends meet. No – these are the kind of little guys who are literally, well – diminutive, small in stature – and power. Or, as the dictionary says: small in size, amount or degree. In some cases all three.

It’s my belief that Officer Anonymous needs a little training himself. Referring to a gay couple who were just savagely beaten as two little guys or their attackers as a mob of meatheads is the kind of thinking that is a small but significant building block to this kind of crime in the first place. It’s a way of reducing people to a stereotype of their specific group and, in turn reducing the validity of them and their lives and any crime they find themselves a willing or unwilling participant in – as victim or perpetrator.

As a homosexual male who is just below the average height of the American male in 2014, I haven’t been a little guy since about, oh, 1962. And even then I didn’t think of myself as little even though you might have. Nor, I’ll bet its safe to say, do the two gay guys who were outnumbered by that gaggle of fifteen meatheads. On the same token, I wouldn’t presume to generalize about the motives or IQ brain functions of 15 people I didn’t know who either watched or engaged in a fight that landed two young men in the emergency room – especially if I was an officer tasked with upholding the law. That would reduce a very serious crime that will undoubtedly happen again in some other form, and admittedly could have been and inevitably somewhere again will be worse, to a frat level scuffle on the scale of, let’s say, jock vs. nerd. This is the kind of reasoning that leads us to wonder whether extreme domestic violence in an elevator between a husband and wife is really the typical private business of a married couple or if the sexual assault of a teenage woman wearing a sexy dress on a date with a hormone fueled, red-blooded all-American boy should merely be seen as an unfortunate example of benign signals at cross purposes.

Perhaps I’m being too picky but you have to start somewhere. Until we see the connections we won’t begin to solve the issue. The hoodie, the elevator assault or the terrorists who hate our way of life who it turns out aren’t terrorists at all but the children of immigrants who were born here. Several of the latter, in fact, might have even gone to medical school and become doctors at work in several of the nation’s five-star hospitals, one of which was able to restore my second Mom’s breathing this week through brilliantly new surgical techniques. But I digress.

I’ve never been beaten up physically for being gay. Only been called names, laughed at, mocked and imitated in school by teachers and classmates alike, as well as by coworkers, neighbors and random passersby on the street. I’ve also been told numerous times over the decades by people older than myself to keep my private life private, to rethink my sexuality, that I need to give the opposite sex more of a chance, that I am living a sinful life and that any expectation that the world should at all change to accommodate my choice is misguided and threatens the very existence and continuation of the world as we know it.

Luckily, through a lot of therapy, reading, experience and love I knew enough not to let these misguided judgments about who I am prevent me from having what I now consider to be an extremely happy life. But these experiences and accusations – every single one of them – hurt deeply and cut me to the quick at the time. That I can remember each and every one of them decades later and not all of the many wonderful supportive words sent my way speaks to the power of just how much psychological damage negative words and hate-filled verbal exchanges with others can do. I can’t even imagine what the effects of a physical encounter would be – especially one as vicious or even more vicious that those described on the streets of Philadelphia and elsewhere around the world – now or in the future.

It’s something to think about as we sound off anonymously, reaching people and places we have never seen – or to be mindful of when we’re face-to face with friends and neighbors in locations closer to home.   I laughed as I heard Sen. Cruz categorize Iran as swilling chardonnay in NYC with the US this week during nuclear talks, knowing full well the representatives of a strict Muslim government would, if nothing else, clearly avoid the public consumption of alcohol. But it’s just another generalization of yet another entire group of people we might not like but most certainly have not taken the time to fully understand. And it’s not particularly funny, especially when it comes from a bigot. It’s dangerous.