Billy Jack Gaither spent his 39 years of life caring for family, worshiping God and quietly harboring a second, secret existence.
Both lives ended on Feb. 19, 1999 because Gaither was gay, something two men viewed as a crime worthy of death.
Gaither’s murder sparked a national outcry and a movement to include sexual orientation in Alabama’s 1994 hate crime law.
Former State Rep. Patricia Todd, Alabama’s first openly lesbian lawmaker, tried for years to amend the law. Today, 31 states and Washington, D.C. include either sexual orientation or gender identity in their hate crime laws. Alabama still does not.
Todd’s newly-elected successor, State Rep. Neil Rafferty, an openly gay former Marine, has no plans to push that legislation, but is exploring options.
“Alabama has come a long way through the hard work of a lot of people and grass-root groups and while things may have changed for the better, there are kids still suffering," Rafferty said.
“We have in Alabama a legacy of bias-motivated violence against marginalized communities. What makes those acts of violence different is that the intention is to terrorize and silence a marginalized community."
Gaither was silenced forever in an act of violence that shocked Alabama and the nation.
‘He didn’t have no respect'
Steven Eric Mullins, then 25, and Charles Monroe Butler, then 21, told Coosa County Sheriff’s Office investigators they plotted Gaither’s death because he made a pass at Mullins a week earlier. They later denied the murder was premeditated, saying instead Gaither was killed because he came on to Butler the night of the murder.
The Fayetteville men lured Gaither from a Sylacauga bar to a boat launch, stabbed him, beat him with an ax handle, put him in a car trunk and drove him to a creek. They beat him again and then placed him on two fiery, kerosene-drenched tires.
“Billy Jack started talking about some gay issues. . . . wanting to have a threesome, or whatever," Butler said in a PBS Frontline special in 2000. "Steve jumped on him, and cut his throat there. I didn’t even know the man, for him to be hitting on me. . . . Tempers just flared. It’s like he didn’t have no respect.”
Gwendolyn Griffin, far left, and LeAnne Owen, hold each other while joining in a protest against hate crimes at UAB Mini-Park. Approximately 70 people came out to hear speakers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama and the National Coalition Building Institute. They honored the memory of Billy Jack Gaither, who was killed in a hate crime on Feb. 19, 1999. '[I feel] angry and sad,' said Owens when asked about Gaither's death, 'like getting squeezed by the buckle of the Bible Belt.'
Gaither tried to run. Mullins told him it was useless, according to a 1999 interrogation shared by Frontline.
“I was still beating him and when I gave out of energy and couldn’t do it anymore, um, the fire got to going and the tires started burning real well and I drug him into the flame and uh, we stood there for a few minutes and then we left,” Mullins said.
The two were soon arrested.
‘In times like this...’
Gaither died eight months after James Byrd Jr., an African-American man, was dragged behind a truck in Jasper, Texas and four months after Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man, was beaten, tied to a fence and set on fire near Laramie, Wyo. President Obama in 2009 signed into law a hate crimes measure named after Shepard.
“This heinous and cowardly crime touches the conscience of our country, just as the terrible murders of James Byrd in Texas and Matthew Shepard in Wyoming did last year,” President Clinton said after Gaither’s death.
“In times like this, the American people pull together and speak with one voice, because the acts of hatred that led to the deaths of such innocent men are also acts of defiance against the values our society holds most dear."
Clinton in 1994 implemented “Don’t ask, don’t tell" -- repealed in 2010 -- and in 1996 signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act, which allowed Alabama and other states to ban same-sex marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down that part of DOMA in 2015.
Gaither’s murder shows just how dangerous it was to be gay in Alabama in 1999.
''I would consider it difficult to live anywhere in Alabama other than Birmingham,'' David W. White, the Birmingham coordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Alabama, told The New York Times in 1999. ''Even in Birmingham, I would never in a public place grab my partner’s hand and walk down the street. It would literally be a death wish in the state of Alabama.''
‘We will not go back into the closet’
Despite such risks, people filled Birmingham’s Covenant Metropolitan Community Church weeks after Gaither’s death to urge legislators to add sexual orientation to the state’s hate crimes law.
Across the street, protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., held signs attacking Gaither. “We are outraged at this violent crime, but the issue is the homosexuals are exploiting it,” said the Rev. Fred Phelps. “It is no longer merely an event for the family and friends to grieve.”
Marchers make their way down Broadway through Times Square in New York, Monday, March 15, 1999, as they take part in what organizers called a "political funeral" held for Billy Jack Gaither, killed in a beating in Coosa County, Ala., as well as for all victims of hate violence. (AP Photo/Lynsey Addario)
Events for Gaither were held across Alabama and across America.
“We will not go back into the closet. We will not be afraid to be identified, to have our picture taken. What you see here tonight is light. It is the light of resistance,” student Bruce Haga said at another Birmingham event in Gaither’s honor.
“I am deeply grieved by the senseless murder of Billy Jack Gaither because it strikes at the very heart of what it means to be an American,” then-Cal. Gov. Gray Davis told a crowd in West Hollywood. “If any man or woman cannot walk safely down our streets for fear of violence simply because of his or her sexual orientation, then none of us are truly free.”
‘That’s not acceptable here’
Gaither’s family and friends grieved the death of a man who read the Bible each night and drove 60 miles each day to load trucks at Russell Athletic’s Distribution Center in Alexander City.
“I don’t believe he was gay, but whether he was or not, God is the only one who has the right to take a life. The devil might have taken my son, but God’s got him. I believe to my soul, he is in heaven," Gaither’s father, Marion Hughes Gaither, said.
Efforts to reach Gaither’s family for this article were not successful.
Some of Gaither’s friends and family members said he went to Atlanta clubs to live his secret life.
“At a (Sylacauaga) tavern Gaither frequented, a waitress recalls how he admonished an openly gay person. ‘He told him, ‘That’s not acceptable here,’" The Birmingham News reported.
Mullins and Butler were sentenced to life without parole. Gaither’s family asked that Butler be spared execution.
“I can’t see taking another human being’s life, no matter what,” Marion Gaither said.
On Feb. 26, 2019, exactly one week after the 20th anniversary of Gaither’s murder, Mullins was stabbed to death at the St. Clair Correctional Facility.
‘We are still fighting’
As they have each year since Gaither’s death, LGBTQ activists gathered Saturday at the Alabama State Capitol to demand the state’s hate crime law be expanded to include sexuality and gender identity.
“Alabama often times seems like -- and probably doesn’t -- care about black lives [or] care about LGBTQ lives,” Jose Vasquez, president of Montgomery Pride United, said. “We are still fighting.”
More than 90 people gathered there observed a moment of silence for Dana Martin. The 31-year-old black transwoman from Hope Hull was found shot to death in a crashed car in Montgomery on January 6.
Martin is reportedly the first transgender person killed in America in 2019.
AL.com journalist Jonece Starr Dunigan contributed to this report.