Hate Crimes
Dateline: 03/12/99
It hasn't even been a year since Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered and the voices cried out from across the country, "No more violence against gays and lesbians."
Yet we're treated to more crimes after crimes after crimes against gay men and women for no other reason than that they are gay, as the killers of Billy Jack Gaither (in Coosa County, Alabama) admitted, a heinous crime as noted by no less than President Clinton.
People are being killed, fires are being set, teens are having homophobic epithets carved in their bodies, and protestations of "It's not a hate crime" are being made.
That's right, the man who was decapitated, and his head left on a stake at the entrance of a well-known gay beach in Florida was neither a hate crime, nor a warning. Just a brutal murder, unrelated sexual orientation. Right. I believe that. The word "fag" carved into 17 year old Colton was meaningless.
Just as with Shepard, the Gaither murder brings us vigils and coverage by the traditional press.
What it doesn't seem to bring us is any closer to a passage of Hate Crimes legislation. I'll tell you, while I don't necessarily believe that one murder is any worse (or better?) than any other --- it's getting to be pretty clear that unless there is some sort of law letting certain folks know that it is NOT all right to kill somebody because they are different, they'll continue to think that it is.
Heck, Wyoming, the state that was quick to let us know that the killers of Matthew Shepard were not representative of Wyoming residents remains one of only nine states to not have any bias crime legislation; having just killed two new bills. What kind of message does that send?
In Pride,
Deborah
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