Los Angeles father charged with killing son for being gay

There's a lot that this article isn't saying. Yahoo news is reporting that the dead son was a violent drug addict who had moved back in with his parents. The parents tried to evict the son. That didn't work. They even tried to sell the house out from under the "kid", so he vandalized the house so nobody would want to buy it. Obviously the family was severely dysfunctional. The mother "had been dead for some time" before the son was killed. The father has not been charged with her murder. I suspect the "because he's gay" fact had less to do with the crime than the overzealous prosecutor believes.

Reminds of that ole' saying: "I brought you into this world and I'll take you out of this world" . . . . or something like that.

If I had a son who was gay, I'd disapprove but I certainly wouldn't shoot him.

No no Cleo. If It's an Arabic name, it must be an honor killing. There is no room for other possibilities. None. Otherwise, how could people make judgements based purely on a name?

Granted, don't know the full details.

Said that any killing to preserve the family name, etc can be viewed as 'Honour killing' any action that brings disgrace murder, getting a daughter with child, etc has been used as a justification in the past.

Most people that have a strong faith, etc see family that don't follow it as sinners who might be saved and are better of dead.

According to the son's FB page, he was the one with the 'strong faith', giving all his money to the church and wanting to 'see Jesus'. He hinted that his parents were not all that strongly religious.

From what I've read here and elsewhere, it seems to me the parents were already at the end of their tether with a violent parasite-single son; the neighbours say there was lots of yelling and arguing. The father comes home to find his wife stabbed dead, then sees his son holding a knife (no knife has been found so far, I understand), something finally snaps and he shoots him. It's possible the son has a previous conviction for cutting an ex-boyfriend in San Diego, though reports aren't clear as to whether it's the same Amir Issa. If the son did already have a history of knife use, the father's snapping is all the more plausible.

It certainly is a broken family, but I'm not so sure about the 'honour killing' part.

I agree broken family, or an 'honour killing' as seen globally.

Most people that have a strong faith, etc see family that don't follow it as sinners who might be saved and are better of dead.

Honour killings are not just confined to the ME and some religions.

I do agree with you though, that assuming this is simply a case of 'he shot him for being gay' is sloppy.

That's the point I was trying to make. Instead of the media making it a "sensationalized" story about a supposed hate crime because someone it gay, they should say that a father shot a son. That in itself is a tragedy, but in this day of "hits" for a website they need to do it this way. Regardless of what the religion was. I also blame the LA DA in this case. They are being politically driven by the Mayor and others. If you keep up with LA politics, the Mayor (Eric Garcetti) is the son of the LA DA who was in charge during the whole OJ trial. It doesn't help that he is a total "smart buffoon" and continuing to run the city into the ground, but the current drama on American TV on the OJ case and how they blew that case, he will need to make another name for himself by 2018 when he runs for Gov of CA. What better way to jump out and say that he ordered his DA to vigorously protect the civil rights of gays, all the while LA crumbles around him.

Just my opinion on the case. The real tragedy is, a family is broken. And this just goes into the FBI crime statistics that will show, most people (not all) murdered in the USA, will be killed by someone they know. Whether it was by a gun (the father in this story) or if the son had succeeded in stabbing him with the knife he supposedly had, the end result would have (and is) a death among parties that knew each other.

It is my job to look at what is presented

But you didn't. You looked at what you perceived the media was not reporting, and made up your own totally unsupported story about the family being Muslim.

I do agree with you though, that assuming this is simply a case of 'he shot him for being gay' is sloppy.

Before you complain of the media not doing background research, it might help if you do a bit of background research yourself.

@ cleo: It's not my job to do the research and print the news. That's the medias job. It is my job to look at what is presented, and if I have the time or inclination to look further to delve into it to get some of the real truth.

It can be said that "the media used to be the 4th Estate, now it is the 5th column" by a popular radio host in the USA. In other words, the press used to be about the truth, and not some hidden force designed to "bring it all down."

But the bottom line is this father killed his son, probably in part because of his sexual orientation, but probably due to a long standing disagreement between the two. The fact that the parents were evicting the son, and he was victimizing the parents indicates that there is a lot to this story, and just trying to get after him because of the hate crime angle is pretty sloppy by the DA. I would imagine that they are under pressure to prosecute from that angle due to pressure put on them from the LGBT community once it comes out during the trial that one of the areas of discontent between the two was his sexual orientation.

my guess is that the family is Muslim

For what it's worth, on the son's FB page he mentions that he was born into the Seventh Day Adventist Church, hints that his family are not devout churchgoers, rants about wanting to 'see Jesus' and of ridding the world of the demons that attack him and says the he has given all his money to the church. No wonder he couldn't afford to move out of the family home.

My guess is that the media are running with the 'shot him because he was gay' story because 'shot son was a violent, Christian wacko known to the police' isn't as sexy.

Before you complain of the media not doing background research, it might help if you do a bit of background research yourself.

Sad story. But my guess is that the family is Muslim. Not to say that Christians can be just as guilty of this type of intolerance, but looking at this story objectively and realizing how the media operates in the USA one can determine this pretty accurately.

The fact that it wasn't mentioned in the story that the father was Christian is a major key. In most cases, sometimes the writers or editors would like to put in the fact that the father had a religious belief or belonged to some church that has strong anti-gay sentiment when they go through the background of the family. This is not the case with this story so far. They have gone and talked to neighbors and talked about other issues the family may have had, but they are steering clear of the religious aspect. This tells me that the reason for this is because they may be Muslim, and sadly this goes against the agenda that a lot of the media wants to present. Like it or not, many Muslims would be viewed as strict "conservatives" in their beliefs in regards to sexual orientation and family values. That's jus the way it is.

Without that background research done by the reporters, one could surmise that the father was Muslim. Just my opinion.

Jews and Christian have Amir as names and very common actually.

http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-0403-gay-son-killed-20160403-story.html

Those problems were evident, among other places, on Amir Issa's Facebook page. In his last post, 10 days before his death, he said he worried that his parents, brother and sister were "literally controlling me in my sleep" and that "they tell people to rape and molest me and make it seem like I enjoy that." "If there is a devil or evil spirit, I truly believe it manifests itself in my family," he wrote.

Amir also posted a video to his Facebook page in which he interrogates his parents about whether they had performed certain sex acts. "That's not appropriate for a child to ask his parents," Rabihah Issa says to the camera as she sits on the sofa, a large crucifix on the wall behind her.Shehada Issa responds more angrily to his son, calling him a "pervert" and saying, "None of your relatives want to have anything to do with you."

According to court records, a man with the name Amir Issa whose parents live in Los Angeles was convicted in San Diego of assault with a deadly weapon in 2010. He had slashed his ex-boyfriend across the face with a knife, leaving him hospitalized. Issa, who fled to Las Vegas during jury deliberations, was sentenced first to treatment at a state mental hospital and then to three years' probation with further mental health treatment. Police declined to comment on whether the victim in last week's killing was the same Amir Issa convicted in the knife assault.

The Issa family were members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Glendale.

Again, some cultures mix just as oil and water does. In USA arranged marriages take place from imported cultures. Honor killings as we read here with a different twist take place at a much lower incidence, thankfully, but are not part of the Judaeo Christian culture in USA.

USA was full of cultures which were predomonently European and today it is now from every continent bringing some cultural practices I prefer not to have here and I am not the minority in that thought.

Issa" derives from the Ecclesiastic Late Latin Iesus, which is from the Ecclesiastic Greek Iēsous, a name derived from the Hebrew yēshū'a, a contraction of yehōshū'a (help of Jehovah, God is salvation); it is an equivalent of Joshua as well as Jesus and is found in both Middle Eastern Christian and Muslim societies. The father of Congressman Darrell Issa, for example, was a Lebanese American of the Maronite Catholic faith. Remember, many Christians can be as conservative as Muslims.

And Amir? What about that?

You say "Los Angles father" but it appears to be another case of "Muslims living in the 14th century, but just happening to be in Los Angeles."

RIP to the son.

Doerbecker told the Daily News that there had been problems between the father and son, including the son reportedly vandalizing the home. He said the couple was evicting the son.

People are trying to parade this as a "gay" issue, but there is more going on here than that.

"Issa" derives from the Ecclesiastic Late Latin Iesus, which is from the Ecclesiastic Greek Iēsous, a name derived from the Hebrew yēshū'a, a contraction of yehōshū'a (help of Jehovah, God is salvation); it is an equivalent of Joshua as well as Jesus and is found in both Middle Eastern Christian and Muslim societies. The father of Congressman Darrell Issa, for example, was a Lebanese American of the Maronite Catholic faith. Remember, many Christians can be as conservative as Muslims.

Some cultures have no tolerance for differences.

His name suggests that he's probably a muslim and death seems to be the only remedy they can think of for, well, pretty much anything.

More like he killed the wife because she was trying to defend the son.