April 15, 2000 -- Award-winning documentary film maker Arthur Dong had a simple idea for a film. Do interviews with people in prison who have killed gays and ask them to explain why they did it. The resulting electrifying film, "Licensed to Kill, is far from simple.

Working with a limited budget and working under very difficult conditions imposed by police and penal authorities, Dong, himself a homosexual who was once assaulted, has come up with a very powerful film.

Perhaps the most troubling interview of all was the one done with Jeffrey Swinford, sentenced to 20 years for robbing and killing Chris Miller, 23, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He and two accomplices sought out homosexuals at a local park, lured them to a house where they would rob them. After a fight, Miller was killed. Swinford said, "By the time we got arrested for it, tell you the truth, I'd really almost forgot about it -- wasn't in my mind anymore. I thought about it, you know, a little bit after it happened. But (sighs), I don't want to sound like it wasn't a big deal, you know, but just one less problem the world had to mess with." The "problem" he solved was killing Miller, a gay man.

The idea of gays as "easy targets" for criminals is emphasized by Donald Aldrich, sentenced to death for killing a gay man, he said, "If you can walk into a 7-11 and rob a 7-11 for 15, 20 bucks, get your face on videotape, have somebody that's gonna call the police; or if you can go to a park, rob somebody that's out in the dark, come away with a hell of a lot more--because of the fact that they're a homosexual and they don't want people to know it, they're not gonna go report it to the police. Who you gonna go rob? Where you're gonna get in the least amount of trouble?"

Aldrich, along with two accomplices, kidnapped Nicholas West, 23, from a park in Tyler, Texas where gay men hung out. They took him to a gravel pit outside of town, harassed him, beat him, and finally, shot him dead. Aldrich, talking behind a glass barrier, coldly says, "If I beat the death penalty part of it, they can still hang me with capital murder, stick me in prison for the rest of my life--I'd rather them take me over there and shoot me in the head first. My life's been fucked up since I was a small kid (he says he was molested by a homosexual cousin at the age of nine). I've wanted to die several times since I was a small kid. I'm not scared of death. If there's nothing after you die, I'm not going to know it because I'm dead. If there is an afterlife, it's got to be a hell of a lot better than this place."

Sgt. Kenneth French, a member of the U.S. Army became enraged at President Bill Clinton's plans to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military. On the evening of Aug. 6, 1993, after watching the violent western, "The Unforgiven," and drinking a fifth of whiskey, he walked into Luigi's, a family restaurant in Fayetteville, North Carolina and killed four people and wounded seven others, none of them homosexual. At the trial, witnesses testified that French shouted "I'll show you Clinton about letting gays into the army" while shooting patrons randomly.

He said in the film, "I'm not gonna apologize for the views that I hold towards gays or homosexuals but...I don't think that I went in with the intention of just singling out any certain group of people, be it black, white, male, female, gay, or straight. I was just angry at the world I guess at the time, I don't know. I was just taking out aggression and hatred on whoever was there."

About letting gays into the military, he said, "If you're introducing a minority group that's frowned upon and looked upon as being weak, and your commander's saying it's fine for him to be here, guys are saying, 'Guess the military isn't really as tough and bad as we thought it was.' Everybody's wanting acceptance. It's a one-world system -- global unity. Well, at what cost? Our military going down the drain?"

Jay Johnson, himself a gay man, murdered two other gay men in Minneapolis. He said, "I believe I was a very confused person. I wasn't exactly black or white, I'm half. And I don't belong specifically to the black community or the white community. I have gay preferences, but I don't really embrace the gay community -- I'm religiously hostile to them. There's a lot of contradictions there." He said the murders were his attempt to create a reign of terror to shut down the reign of terror in parks which tempted him. He said he got some of his ideas from the TV show "The 700 Club."

The religious angle is played up in the film with short clips from "The 700 Club," Jerry Falwell, various other leaders of the Religious Right broadcasting attacks against homosexuals, attacks which help legitimize these physical attacks and killings. At least that's what we're supposed to think. This is the one part of the movie not based on fact, police crime scene photos or the actual words of the killers. It is editorial comment. It may well be an accurate supposition that the rhetoric of televangelists and the Christian Right helped legitimize some murders of gays, but it is nonetheless supposition and editorial comment.

I remember well the very unholy stink raised over the proposed lifting of the ban on gays in the military. Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, veterans organizations, people within the military establishment and every right wing nut on talk radio and television caused more of that stink than the televangelists did, although the latter certainly did their part. Religion certainly has its place in the debate about homosexuality in society, but there is much more going on here than just religion. It runs a lot deeper than that. Religion is used, unfortunately, to justify hatred of homosexuals.

Dong has created a powerful film here under very difficult circumstances. Dong said in many cases he had less than two hours to set up his equipment and take it down. The interviews were done "cold" with only a letter or two as in introduction. Interviews could only be done once a year in most prisons. It was a one-shot try. Jay Johnson, however, was interviewed again after the film was done. Dong screened a 14 minute tape of the second interview for an audience in Laramie, Wyoming, on April 14, 2000. The tape was made after Johnson had seen the entire documentary, and it showed his reaction to the film.

Johnson seemed more worried about the neatness of his room in the film than the murders he had committed. He admitted that he doesn't think much about the men he killed. He feels "disconnected." He also said other prisoners tend not to bother him because killing homosexuals is considered a "cool" crime, worthy of respect. The fact that he has AIDS also tends to put him off limits. He said prison might be a lot tougher for him if he had committed a different kind of crime. He said he ought to think more about the people he killed.

Dong (who wrote, directed, produced and distributed the film) seems to be the exact opposite of the serious tone of his film. He is a very funny guy, very lighthearted, but he is not carefree. He is still afraid of vicious attacks that may come out of the dark of night, by people who feel they are licensed to kill. His next project: To try to find a common ground between homosexuals the Christians who don't accept them. Based on what he's done in the past, including this film and "Coming Out Under Fire," he will undoubtedly come up with something very interesting. "Licensed to Kill" rates a B.

For more information on this film, including biographies of Dong and the killers and information on how to buy the video (available only to institutions and non-profit organizations, etc. willing to sign an agreement not to copy or distribute it) click on this link to the home page of Licensed to Kill.