Serenade

I was cruising the Daily Star site to see if they ever published my last article for them (by the way, the Star has a sharp new layout), when I came across this story: Court issues indictment in case of homosexual composer's murder. Readers of James M. Cain's neglected gay-bashing classic Serenade will recognize some major plot points, and the underlying presumption that it's really the victim's fault for staining the other guy's honor:

On Wednesday, the Mount Lebanon court issued an indictment saying the killer of composer Samir Qobt was a 17-year-old young man whose poverty led him to satisfy Qobt?s homosexual pleasures.

According to the indictment, the young man left his family in the North and headed with his uncle to Beirut to look for work. One day, while he was walking in the street, a luxurious car stopped near him. The driver, Qobt, asked him to get in and offered him a job as a bodyguard and an actor in return for $10 per day, the indictment said…

"The relationship deteriorated," the article notes, "when Qobt failed to keep paying."

With crowds of Tennesseans trying to ban gays from the Volunteer State, it's no use looking down our noses, but still, this notion that killing your partner is the way to exorcise that "five percent in all of us" Cain wrote about is one blast from the past nobody needs.