In late August 2001, Michigan rural gay couple Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm were gunned down at their Rainbow Farm home after escalating hysteria about their advocacy of cannabis decriminalisation. This is their story. I'm not a wholesale libertarian about drug decriminalisation myself, but I do favour cannabis decriminalisation, provided there are safeguards for teenagers and people who experience schizophrenia. Added to which, there is increasing evidence that in pursuing anti-cannabis prohibition, the crystal meth epidemic's distribution and supply networks will be reinforced, and that is a far deadlier drug. That caveat aside, Tom and Rollie were a working-class rural Michigan gay couple. Tom was a hard-drinking, brawling bear of a man who just happened to want sex with other men, until he met Rollie, a solo dad, and settled down with him in Vandalia, South Michigan. Tom was a working-class libertarian, which tended to mean that he supported decriminalisation and legislation of cannabis and provided some entrepreneurial flair when it came to rockfests that spread the message of marijuana law reform. If the audience had remained just potheads, cannabis law reform advocates, closeted gay men and others, then Tom and Rollie might still be alive today. Unfortunately for them, Tom also had strong libertarian right beliefs about gun ownership, and regarded outlaw groups like the militia movement with too much sympathy than he should have. Added to which, due to class, politics and rural location, the couple were isolated from significant gay social networks and support and advocacy groups. In the end, those associations were to light the funeral pyre for Rainbow Farm. Incidentally, it wasn't called 'rainbow' due to the LGBT Rainbow Flag either- it symbolised hippie anarchism and laidback lifestyle laissez-faire. While the couple held their rockfests for five years, there was a serpent in this rural paradise. His name was Dean Teeter, and he was the fundamentalist Cass County District Attorney, fanatically opposed to women's reproductive rights and as supportive of cannabis prohibition. For several years, Teeter maintained a campaign of harrassment against the couple, until he found what he was looking for, when one of his agents found a handful of scraggly pot weeds in a Rainbow Farm basement. Given Tom's foolhardy Michigan Militia associations, the situation spun out of control from that point. Certainly though, Teeter precipitated the situation. He was responsible for seizing custody of Rollie's beloved eleven year old son Rob, which led to assumptions that there would be a violent Michigan State Police raid on Rainbow Farm, and that under draconian US anti-cannabis laws, the couple would face the confiscation of their farm, be rendered homeless, face lengthy prison sentences disproportionate to the pot on their property, and Rollie would lose custody of his son. As a libertarian, Tom owned a gun himself, and this only worsened the standoff that emerged between him, the Michigan State Police, and FBI. While trying to destroy onsite cannabis plants, Tom was killed by a sniper, and Rollie died a day later, defending their property against an onslaught. While Tom's problematic associations contributed to the final crisis in August 2001, the two men were also the victims of hysterical overkill and disproportionate response to cannabis. If this had happened at any other time, there would have been an uproar about the violation of civil liberties and human rights. As it is, though, only the US cannabis decriminalisation lobby has known about this tragedy, and it is instructive to read their sad fate. Tom and Rollie weren't angels, and made some fatal errors, but neither man deserved to die that way. Read this book, and you will appreciate the essential inhumanity and barbarity of remaining apologists for maintenance of cannabis prohibition. Dean Kuipers: Burning Rainbow Farm New York: Bloomsbury: 2006. Craig Young - 30th September 2006