AKA William

Jake Raynard, the man who was brutally gay-bashed in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and suffered a broken jaw, broken eye socket and broken upper palate, has posted a video to YouTube.

And the video is remarkable. And it’s a must-watch. In three minutes, Raynard delivers an eloquent, passionate, and inspiring call to action for all people who have been victims of hate crimes:

I believe that I am a human first, and as it stands now, I am an uncle, an educator, an artist, I’m all these things, and I am much more than the sum total of my sexual desires, even though some people would like to boil me down to something as that simple.

It’s overwhelming the amount of support that’s coming in from everywhere. We’ve got emails coming in as far as Hong Kong, and Brooklyn, and all over the United States, and Australia, and the UK. They’re coming from everywhere. And that’s good. But what that says to me is there are a lot of voices globally that aren’t being heard, and that need advocacy, and are starving for someone like myself to stand up and fight for these rights, and say ‘no, this isn’t right’ and ‘no, I’m not going to be quiet about this’, and no I’m going to make a media stink about this until I need to stop, because the problem’s not resolved.

You must watch this video. Not only are his words remarkable, they are coming from a man who, after being attacked for being gay, was put back together with two metal plates, nine screws and wire.

Watch.