By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Some 175 people in Cincinnati took out a full-page ad in the city’s daily newspaper May 1 to press police into pursuing hate crime charges in the slaying of a gay man in March.

James McGee, 43, died April 22, almost a month after he was brutally beaten by two teenage boys after he had walked from his home to a convenience store to buy beer and cigarettes.

The boys implicated in the attack are ages 13 and 14. They face murder and robbery charges, but gays in the River City say they believe anti-gay bias was a motivating factor in the crime.

“This man was singled out,” Mark Kallich told the Gay People’s Chronicle, an Ohio GLBT newspaper. “It’s a horrible incident, it’s a hateful incident. …It’s intimidating to the overall community.”

Kallick organized the effort to buy an ad in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The ad decries anti-gay hate and urges the city to do more to alleviate it. Kallick said he thought it was important for concerned members of Cincinnati’s GLBT community to speak out.

“There should be a full-page ad that says Cincinnati is much better than this and people in the community should have the opportunity to put their names to this,” Kallick told a reporter at the Enquirer.

Kallick said violence motivated by anti-gay hate is a serious issue in Cincinnati. He said he and his partner were threatened at a restaurant in downtown Cincinnati last year.

“People are bigoted in every walk of life,” Kallick told the Chronicle. “But in some echelons where we have bigoted people, this hatred is kept under wraps because it won’t fly.”