Issue date: 11/5/09 Section: Perspective

Media Credit: Courtney Daniel

More than two hundred years ago, the United States was founded on the principles of freedom for all and a pursuit of happiness that would be unimpeded by anything - no law would keep Americans from pursuing that which fulfilled them.

Sometimes, though, Americans need laws to keep their journey to that elusive happiness as steady as possible.

Sometimes they need to be protected from things in life that seek to spread fear and hate and make people too afraid to even try and achieve the principles of that declaration given to all Americans, past, present and future.

People like Matthew Shepard needed those protections under the law.

Eleven years ago, Shepard, a young, openly gay man from Wyoming, was kidnapped, beaten severely, pistol whipped and tied to a fence post where he was left for dead in the cold of a Wyoming night.

He wasn't found until more than 10 hours later, when a cyclist noticed what she thought was a scarecrow tied to the fence.

Later, it would be reported that Shepard's face was so blugeoned that he was unrecognizable - the only clean parts of his face were two streaks running down his cheeks, where his tears had washed the blood away.

He died several days later as a result of the injuries sustained during the beating. His skull was cracked in two different places.

Shepard's attackers were convicted and charged with murder, but this crime could not be considered a hate crime because sexual orientation wasn't a part of the list of minorities protected within hate crimes laws.

Sadly, Shepard's story is not an isolated case.

There are the stories of Brandon Teena, a transgender man who was raped, shot and killed because the people he was friends with found out he was born a girl.

Lawrence King was 15 when he was shot and killed for giving another boy a valentine.

Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, protests funerals for soldiers claiming they died in vain protecting a "country of fags."

These stories don't even include the countless acts of hate that go unreported every day: LGBT people suffering onslaughts of hate speech, being called "dyke" and "fag" in unwarranted acts of intimidation.

These tactics are meant to shock LGBT back into the proverbial closets from which they came.

Continued...

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