To Find a Killer (The Homophobic Murders of Norma and Maria Hurtado and the LGBT Rights Movement)

Despite monumental gains in legal equality over the past decade, including the landmark Obergefell ruling on same-sex marriage, the LGBTQ community still faces harsh disparities in physical and mental health, economic status, racial stratification, and hate crimes victimization. These factors compound for LGBTQ persons of color, low income individuals, immigrants, and members of the transgender community. In To Find a Killer, a finalist in the Writers’ League of Texas 2021 Manuscript Contest for Nonfiction, Doug Greco explores the next phase of the LGBTQ rights movement and how issues of race, class, sexuality, gender identity and economic status often intersect to often produce negative outcomes for members the LGBTQ community. Beginning with a gripping, firsthand account of the 2011 anti-gay murder of twenty-four year-old Norma Hurtado, a student the author taught in an Austin high school ten years earlier, this series of interwoven essays employs a mix of narrative nonfiction and political analysis to uncover the intersectional nature of the disparities impacting the LGBTQ community. Drawing from his fifteen-years’ experience as a grassroots organizer in Texas and California, Greco argues for the types of political organizations and public policies necessary to address these challenges. To Find a Killer charts a robust but pragmatic course for the LGBTQ movement today: investing in grassroots leadership development, rooting organizations in local civic and religious institutions, and focusing not just on legal equality, but a wider set of socio-economic issues.