R. Nesbitt | Red Phoenix correspondent | Maryland–

On June 1, the first day of Pride month of 2025, the same year that the White House refused to issue any statement for this historic period of LGBTQ+ Rights, the openly gay, Comanche actor, Jonathan Joss, of King of the Hill and Parks and Recreation fame, was murdered in his home by a neighbor in San Antonio, Texas. In January of this year, there was a sudden fire in his home that claimed the lives of his several dogs.

Both Joss and his husband believed the incident was likely an act of arson. They had been in a longstanding dispute with their neighbor, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, with the police called several times over the span of many months for welfare checks and domestic disturbances with claims by neighbors that Joss was seen brandishing a crossbow and yelling. Joss’ spouse claimed that the police did not adequately respond to their concerns of homophobic attacks and tensions between their household and their neighbor, Alvarez Ceja. 

The day of the murder, San Antonio PD were called to the scene in response to gunfire in Joss’ home, and the 59-year old Joss was pronounced dead on the scene with three gunshot wounds in his chest and neck. The suspect, Alvarez Ceja, was immediately arrested, reportedly confessing to the police, “I shot him.”

The skull of one of the family’s dogs who had gone missing in the house fire this January was found in their mailbox. In the days following the shooting, Joss’ husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, made several public claims that his husband’s murder was motivated by homophobia, while the SAPD has decided not to declare it a hate crime while the investigation is ongoing. 

Pride month, which is also Indigenous Visibility Month, is an awfully suspicious time for a proudly queer and indigenous actor to be murdered by his homophobic neighbor after months of altercations, fear, potential arson, and the mishandling by all of this from local police.

Liberal pundits are already dismissing Kern de Gonzales’ claims that this murder was sparked by a tirade of homophobic slurs and insults by the suspect. They, like the police, are so prepared to discount this very conspicuous and revolting crime as a simple domestic disturbance that spiraled out of control.

We cannot allow this crime to be shelved, to be categorically dismissed; we cannot bury our heads in the sand, as the liberals do, and pretend that simply because rights exist on paper (which are facing a veritable blitzkrieg by Trump’s blundering), that we are suddenly a free and equal society, a relative utopia. 

Pride month matters. Indigenous Visibility Month matters. The recognition and celebration of the most marginalized and oppressed strata of the masses matter because in this capitalist society, rapidly decaying into fascism, the inherent contradictions between classes must be channeled by the ruling class into national, sexual, and overall social hatred.

Small business owners and sole proprietors will be less of a threat to the ruling class if they believe that their rapid sink into working class is the fault of “woke culture” or “the invasion of immigrants” or the “radical left.” History has demonstrated that the petty bourgeoisie are susceptible to being used as tools of fascism against the masses of workers.

The attempts to dismiss and to downplay these tensions are intended to reassure, and at the same time to demoralize, working people of these strata, that all is quiet in our western liberal democracy. This is not the case, as millions of crucial immigrants are torn away from their homes, as millions of Black people are so incredibly vulnerable to systemic murder and hyper-exploitation, and as hundreds of hate crimes have been recognized in the last year alone, with hundreds of discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ bills flooding legislatures all over the country. 

Capitalism will not save us from the problems of its own making. Seeking only profit, there is too much money to be made in the weapons used to commit these terrible crimes, too much money in militarizing the police who will mishandle these abuses, too much money is ad revenue by the media downplaying and dismissing these daily atrocities. Major companies are focusing less and less on Pride-oriented advertisements in this year of Trumpite triumph, just as corporations like Google scurried to adapt to bombastic revisions such as the “Gulf of America” in their Maps application.

Politically, pro-Israeli pundits attack the left for supporting Palestine, solely because of the homophobic and misogynistic bigotry of Hamas which was not elected to power by the majority of Palestinians, ignorant of the budding culture of queer Palestinians at home and abroad, ignorant of the fact that there will be no development of these civil liberties from the wasteland being carved into the earth by Israel. Kamala Harris downplayed the threats to transgender rights on the eve of the 2024 election, in the Democrats’ foolhardy pursuit of the Republicans to the right-wing. The Democrats cumulatively have had over five years to pass the Equality Act to enshrine LGBTQ rights federally and they simply have failed; they have failed because the Democrats are the party of corporations, not people.

The hands that are laying off thousands, abusing migrant labor, driving down wages, destroying labor with AI and automation, are the same hands lobbying and benefiting from domestic regimes that gloss over these grotesque abuses with instigations of racist, sexist, and overall bigoted tensions and violence.

We must not allow our true social enemy to deceive us. We cannot afford the loss of so many of our siblings, neighbors, coworkers, and comrades. The ruling class of this country will make an inferno and call it freedom; they will build a graveyard and call it peace. The working people of this country must build real unity and real motivation for radical solutions to radical problems.

Jonathan Joss and the countless siblings we have lost are the victims not only of individuals — they are the collateral damage of an inherently antisocial system that imposes and manipulates its will over an inherently social species. We must be strong until there is justice, we must struggle until there is true peace, and we must be proud until we are free! 

Justice for Jonathan Joss!
Not one more life!
Queer rights are human rights!
The chains of one are the chains of all!

Categories: Discrimination, LGBTQIA+, U.S. News