Crimes of hate

Learning from the Matthew Shepard case

Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Shepard was found last week near a remote Wyoming ranch, tied like a scarecrow to the fence, beaten unconscious and close to death. The night before, Shepard had been sitting at a bar in Laramie, his college town. According to police, two men approached and, telling him that they, too, were gay, lured him out into their truck, where they began beating the international-relations student with a .357 Magnum. They then robbed him and continued to beat him with such fury that he slipped into a coma.

On Monday, surrounded by his family, he died, having never regained consciousness. The two suspects were quickly apprehended, as were their girlfriends, who police said had tried to help cover up the crime.

For all the tragedy of the case, there is some small solace in the wide attention it has drawn. The Shepard murder has put one of the country's most pressing civil-rights issues -- hate crimes against gays and lesbians -- on the national radar.

Even in relatively tolerant Massachusetts, gays face serious harassment and even violence. According to the state police, there were 44 anti-gay hate crimes reported in 1995 and 77 in 1996. (More-recent statistics are not yet available.) Even these figures do not capture the scope of the problem, though. The Violence Recovery Program at the Fenway Community Health Center reports that there were 228 anti-gay incidents in 1997, 49 of which turned violent and one of which -- the stomping of Lee Thompson in Boston's Back Bay -- ended in death. The year before, there were three gay-hate murders in the state, one in Taunton and two in the South End.

The problem, of course, is national in scale. In 1997 alone, there were 2445 incidents reported, and everyone agrees that the true figure is substantially higher. President Clinton has argued that sexual orientation should be included in the federal hate-crime statute. He is clearly right -- what is the sense of excluding from protection one of the most heavily targeted segments of the population? The federal laws, though, must not be used to retry failed state prosecutions, an approach that violates the Constitution's prohibition on "double jeopardy." Tough state laws that impose extra penalties on crimes driven by prejudice -- laws that Massachusetts has but that Wyoming, for example, does not -- have a greater chance of being effective.

In the end, though, hate-crime legislation is not going to solve what is, at bottom, a social pathology. As the Phoenix went to press, word came that the Reverend Fred Phelps, an infamous anti-homosexual protester, was planning a demonstration at Shepard's funeral service. Hate -- be it of blacks or whites, of Muslims or Jews -- flourishes when society allows a group of people to be treated as the "other," as something less than human. Dehumanization is the agenda of men like Phelps; it is the job of a civilized society to make those agendas unwelcome. In the case of gays and lesbians, the simple steps of recognizing marriage and striking archaic sodomy laws from the books would go a long way toward making it clear to all that they are full citizens.

But this is not fundamentally a case about gay rights. It is about human rights. It is about the constant struggle against what, unfortunately, seems to be a part of human nature. It is about making the American experiment work.

One of the case's most poignant aspects is that Matthew Shepard himself hoped to work in human rights abroad. So much remains to be done right here at home, where he once thought he was safe.

A candlelight vigil in Matthew Shepard's memory has been scheduled for Thursday, October 15, at 6:30 p.m., on the steps of the State House.

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