Rush Limbaugh Demeans Matthew Shepard’s Hate Crime Murder
Attempts to demean Matthew Shepard and his murder are a Right Wing fetish.
Palm Beach County, Florida – Conservative radio bombast Rush Limbaugh attempted to undercut the powerful anti-gay hate crime narrative of the murder of Matthew Shepard during a broadcast on Monday, February 24, from his top secret studio in Florida. In the show, entitled “When did the ‘hate crime’ concept begin?”, Limbaugh launched a diatribe against Jason Collins’s decision to wear Number 98 on his basketball jersey in memory of Matthew Shepard who died because of anti-LGBT bias in 1998. Collins, the first openly gay person to play on an NBA court this past Sunday for the Brooklyn Nets, came out back in April 2013 to both accolades and brickbats.
According to the broadcast transcript, Limbaugh attempted to win sympathy and outrage from his Dittohead audience for being the “original” target of hate crime language back in 1998. He had one major problem, however–the internationally embraced story of Matthew Shepard’s hate crime murder for being gay by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney in October 1998. So, Limbaugh proceeded to undermine the hate crime dimension of the Shepard murder that gripped the nation and the world and galvanized the human rights movement, eventually leading to the passage of the Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. Limbaugh said to his audience:
“[Jason Collins is] the first openly gay player to actually play in a professional sports game. It happened last night, the Brooklyn Nets against the Los Angeles Lakers. This is the Nets play-by-play announcer Ryan Ruocco, as Jason Collins — who, by the way, took the number 98 in solidarity with Matthew Shepard, who it’s now been proven didn’t happen, but was reputed to have been beaten up by a bunch of anti-gay bigots.” In the transcript, Limbaugh provided readers with a hotlink to a book by right wing darling Stephen Jimenez purportedly “disproving” the anti-gay hate crime aspect of the Shepard case.
As Unfinished Lives reported last year at the publication of Jimenez’s book, these rather tired arguments are part of the continuing scheme to erode all anti-gay hate crimes narratives by attacking the archetypal Shepard story. Some of Jimenez’s own major sources have decried and disavowed his use of their names in his book of allegations, among them Henderson’s defense attorney who said that none of the “evidence” Jimenez advances was admissible in court when he was defending his client, and it is without merit now. The Matthew Shepard Foundation, where Matt’s memory is making a difference by saving lives throughout the world, issued a strong rebuttal to this problematic book Limbaugh takes as gospel. In the New York Daily News, the Shepard Foundation statement reads, in part: “Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law.”
The extremist Right Wing, epitomized by Limbaugh, famously called “Comedian Rush Limbaugh” by Keith Olbermann on Countdown, has made a virtual cottage industry out of demeaning the lives and deaths of LGBT people for over 16 years. Their agenda is running out of gas. This latest attempt also fails to obscure the ugly truth that Matthew Shepard and over 14,000 other American queer folk have been murdered for their sexual orientation and/or their gender identity and expression since 1980.
The Shepard murder captured the world’s sympathy, outrage, and imagination as no other anti-gay hate crime murder story had done before. As Gay Star News reports in its story on the Limbaugh allegations: “Shepard, a 21 year old college student, died after being tortured in a hate crime in Laramie, Wyoming. Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson each received two consecutive life sentences for his murder. The prosecutor in the case alleged that McKinney and Henderson pretended to be gay in order to gain Shepard’s trust so they could later rob him. McKinney originally pleaded the gay panic defense, arguing that he and Henderson were driven to temporary insanity by alleged sexual advances by Shepard. After meeting Shepard at a bar, the pair took him to a remote area outside of Laramie. Once there they robbed him, beat him severely, and tied him to a fence with a rope from McKinney’s truck while Shepard pleaded for his life.”
As Dr. Stephen Sprinkle explains in his award-winning book, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims (Resource Publications, 2011): “The public outcry at [Matthew Shepard’s] cold-blooded killing meant the hate crime that cut his young life short became the holotype in the American psyche for all instances of oppression against people in the sexual minority. It also sent a chill into the bones of the religio-political Right Wing. Power to enact protection statutes for LGBT people coalesced around Matt’s death so swiftly that the Wingers feared anti-LGBT hate crime legislation might actually become law. Their strategy was to kill the story, or failing that, change the narrative. Cut the power of moral outrage out from under Matt’s murder, they reasoned, and they would blunt the mounting public sentiment for an end to anti-LGBT oppression.”
None of Comedian Rush Limbaugh’s or Stephen Jimenez’s allegations concerning Matthew Shepard’s murder hold water. It seems the extremist Right Wing is all out of ideas.
Matthew Shepard Fatally Attacked 15 Years Ago Today
Matthew Wayne Shepard (1976-1998), victim of anti-gay hate crime murder.
Laramie, Wyoming – Fifteen years ago today, Matthew Wayne Shepard took his fatal ride with two young men from the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, and suffered the savage attack that changed the world–for LGBTQ people, for sure, since the issue of LGBTQ hate crimes murder would never be seen in the same way again–but most of all for his family, who have been embroiled in a struggle over the story of their elder son’s life and death. From the very beginning, powerful people saw Matt’s story as something they HAD to control. Anti-gay forces have consistently deployed journalists with an agenda: remove “hate crime” from the Matt Shepard story. Today’s popular revision of the motives for Matt’s murder is making sensational news, but it is actually part of a right wing cottage industry seeking to rewrite a history all the major law enforcement investigators are agreed about–Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay.
In 2011, Dr. Stephen Sprinkle, who visited Laramie personally to investigate the claims for himself, wrote a chapter about the determined effort to rewrite Matthew Shepard’s story, and excise the issue of anti-gay hate crime from it. Entitled “The Second Death of Matthew Shepard,” Sprinkle details how revisionists during the trial of Aaron McKinney, and later in the infamous creation of the muckraking 20/20 “special” (in which current revisionist Stephen Jimenez played a significant role as a re-writer), continue to attempt an undercut of the most effectively reported anti-gay hate crime murder in history.
Responding to this latest wave of revisionism seeking to warp the story of Matt’s death, the Matthew Shepard Foundation issued this rebuttal, reported in the New York Daily News. We at Unfinished Lives Blog could not agree more: “Attempts now to rewrite the story of this hate crime appear to be based on untrustworthy sources, factual errors, rumors and innuendo rather than the actual evidence gathered by law enforcement and presented in a court of law.” ~ Matthew Shepard Foundation statement
As a tribute to Matthew Shepard and his courageous family, Judy and Dennis, his parents, and Logan, his brother, Unfinishedlivesblog.com shares this excerpt setting up the argument of Sprinkle’s thesis: that nothing can change the exhaustively investigated findings of the case. Matt Shepard died because of unreasoning hatred, heterosexism and homophobia. The full chapter can be read in Sprinkle’s award winning book, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims (Resource Publications, 2011).
The excerpt:
Murdering Matt’s Story
“Revisionists are getting away with murder, working to change the subject of Matthew Shepard and alter the impact of his story for LGBT Americans. It is not just that they are trying to shift the conversation to something more palatable to the cheerful, “Good Morning, America” attitude so prevalent in this country. Another sort of murder is afoot. The revisionists are working to change how Matt is remembered—to revise his story into the image and likeness of what queer folk are to them: people of bad character, the sort of anti-saints whom Judy Shepard suggested face suspicion and revulsion. In science, if the epitome of a whole species is found to exist in a particular specimen, then that individual becomes the “holotype” for all that follow it. All other specimens are compared to the original that set the standard. Weaken the holotype, distort it, and you inevitably revise the meaning of everything else in its class.
“The public outcry at Matt’s cold-blooded killing meant the hate crime that cut his young life short became the holotype in the American psyche for all instances of oppression against people in the sexual minority. It also sent a chill into the bones of the religio-political Right Wing. Power to enact protection statutes for LGBT people coalesced around Matt’s death so swiftly that the Wingers feared anti-LGBT hate crime legislation might actually become law. Their strategy was to kill the story, or failing that, change the narrative. Cut the power of moral outrage out from under Matt’s murder, they reasoned, and they would blunt the mounting public sentiment for an end to anti-LGBT oppression.
“Since Matt’s story looms larger than any other account of anti-LGBT hate murder, attempts to discredit Matt and lessen the moral impact of his death are archetypal, as well. The first attempt to kill the story and change the subject was made public during the trials of Henderson and McKinney. With the death penalty staring down at them, they swore they had never intended to kill Matt—just rob him. Henderson and McKinney and their attorneys entered the primal homophobic defense ploy into the public record: Matt was actually responsible for his own murder. He hit on them in the pickup truck, making sexual advances. His abductors panicked, assaulted him without mercy, got on with their thefts, including his wallet, credit card and shoes, drove him for miles and tied him up in the remote Sherman Hills area east of Laramie, leaving him to die in near-freezing temperatures—wouldn’t anybody, in their situation?
“As absurd as it sounds, the ‘gay panic’ defense is a homophobic classic, and as the Matthew Shepard case shows, it can rise to dizzying heights of absurdity. In order for it to work, either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion, the gay panic defense must feed off of the irrational fear of homosexual latency, especially in males. Its fabricators bet that men are so terrified and insecure about their masculinity that making a charge of sexual aggression against a Gay hate crime victim will infect the prosecution’s account of the facts just enough to skew a verdict. It puts the victim on trial instead of the perpetrators.”
End of excerpt
Rest in peace, Matt. Your story does not belong to the revisionists. We who believe in Justice cannot rest…we who believe in Justice cannot rest until it comes.
Matthew Shepard’s Fatal Beating, 14 Years Ago
Matthew Wayne Shepard, (1976 – 1998).
Laramie, Wyoming – October 7 marks the 14th anniversary of the fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old gay man who became the icon of the movement to stop anti-gay hate crimes in the United States and around the world. Shepard was bludgeoned senseless with a .357 Magnum pistol and tied to the foot of a buck fence on a cold Wyoming night. Two local men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, picked Shepard up from the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, abducted him to a high ridge outside of the university town, and brutally attacked him. They stole his shoes. Blood spatter at the scene covered a fifty foot radius. Drag marks investigators found indicate that Shepard had to be bodily forced out of the pickup truck cab by his victimizers. After he was discovered nearly dead the next morning, Shepard was rushed first to Laramie’s emergency facility, and then to Fort Collins, Colorado where he lingered a full five days before dying on October 12, 1998. He never recovered consciousness.
Rather than leave Matthew as a two-dimensional icon, no matter how compelling, this anniversary, the Unfinished Lives Project offers a video of him taken two years before his death while he was attending Catawba College, a small United Church of Christ affiliated school in Salisbury, North Carolina. Ironically from our present time, Matthew was interviewed briefly along with his then-boyfriend, Lewis Krider, about the anti-gay policies of North Carolina U.S. Senator, Jesse Helms. For a brief moment, we see and hear the young man whose death raised the world’s consciousness to the horror of hate crimes. Today, the Matthew Shepard Foundation continues the work Matthew surely would have longed to see done for the sake of peace, justice, and human freedom to love and be loved. An award winning book authored by the founder and director of the Unfinished Lives Project, Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle, Unfinished Lives: Reviving the Memories of LGBTQ Hate Crimes Victims, opens with a chapter on the struggle to maintain Matthew’s legacy and witness against the forces of right wing revisionism. Matthew lives on in the hate crimes prevention act that bears his name and the name of James Byrd Jr. His memory is strong in the LGBTQ community, and he is a continuing inspiration to everyone who loves peace and justice in a violent world. Rest in peace, Little Brother. Rest in peace.
20 Years of Effort Led to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act of 2009
Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr.
When President Obama signs the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act of 2009 into law sometime next week, that moment will be the culmination of two decades of tireless work at the federal level to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people from violent, bias-motivated crimes. The term “hate crime” did not enter the American lexicon until the 1980s, though crimes of violence against minorities that caused whole groups to live in fear. First introduced in 1989, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) of 1990 which mandated the that U.S. Department of Justice collect statistics on crimes that “manifest prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity” from law enforcement agencies across the country and to publish an annual summary of the findings. In the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Congress expanded coverage of the HCSA to require FBI reporting on crimes based on “disability.” Pursuant to the passage of the HCSA of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General of the United States, the FBI first gathered and published this data in 1992, and has done so every year since. The collection and publication of data supporting the claims of the LGBT community, that they were indeed being targeted by terror-attacks, set the stage for all subsequent federal legislation relating to the protection of people who were being physically harmed because of actual or perceived sexual orientation. Transgender persons have been left out of any data gathering done by the federal government right up until the present, as if there were no violent crimes perpetrated against this important population of gender non-conformists. The FBI Sexual Orientation Hate Crimes Statistics for 2007, published in October 2008, recorded 1,512 persons or 11% of the total of the 9,535 persons victimized in physical attacks classified as hate crimes. This number of individual victims was the third highest of all victims of hate crimes, after race and religion bias crimes. Further, the 2007 figures show that two and a half times more Lesbians, Gay men, and Bisexual persons were victimized by murder or non-negligent manslaughter than any other group on whom the FBI kept statistics that year. Though flawed and under-counted according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, the incidence of violent crime against the LGBT community recorded by the FBI established something of the magnitude of the national crisis brought on by homophobia and heterosexism. In 1993, the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act was enacted into law, allowing judges to impose harsher penalties for hate crimes, including hate crimes based on gender, disability and sexual orientation that occur in national parks and on other federal property. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, predecessor of the Matthew Shepard Act, was first introduced in the 105th Congress. At that time, 1997-1999, both houses of the federal legislature had Republican majorities. Successive attempts to pass federal hate crimes legislation covering LGBT people were frustrated until the 111th Congress. First named the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, then the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and finally the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (in memory of Shepard, a gay 21-year-old student murdered in Wyoming and Byrd, a 49-year-old African American dragged to death in Texas), the legislation moved steadily through Houses of Congress. The vote in the United States Senate on October 22, 2009 was the “14th and final time” this legislation faced a vote on the floor in either the House or the Senate.
See How Your Senators Voted on the Matthew Shepard Act
Visit http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2009-327 for more information.
Standard projection from GovTrack
Senate Acts on Matthew Shepard Act: Bill Goes to Obama’s Desk
Washington, DC – In a historic vote Thursday, the United States Senate voted 68-29 to approve the Matthew Shepard Act, broadening federal protection from hate crimes to LGBT people. The Shepard Act, which had already passed in the United States House of Representatives two weeks ago by a similarly wide margin, was approved by the upper house as a part of a mammoth Defense Appropriations Bill. President Obama has repeatedly signaled that he favored extending hate crimes protections to LGBT people, and is expected to sign the bill as early as next week. Senator Patrick Leahy, (D) Vermont, a sponsor of the bill, said to the New York Times “Hate crimes instill fear in those who have no connection to the victim other than a shared characteristic such as race or sexual orientation. For nearly 150 years, we have responded as a nation to deter and to punish violent denials of civil rights by enacting federal laws to protect the civil rights of all of our citizens.” Leahy also noted how appropriate a tribute the passage of the Shepard Act is to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who championed the cause of equality for LGBT Americans for many years. Ten Republicans voted with the Democratic majority for the passage of this historic legislation. The lone Democratic Senator to vote against passage was Russ Feingold, (D) Wisconsin, who favored the Shepard Act, but opposed the increased funding of the military action in Afghanistan. The Shepard Act commits $5 million annually to the Justice Department to assist local communities in investigating hate crimes, and it allows the agency to assist in investigations and prosecutions if local agencies request help. It also permits the Justice Department to carry out hate crimes investigations in localities where law enforcement neglects or stymies such action for prejudicial reasons. Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old University of Wyoming student for whom the Act was named, has been a tireless advocate for the passage of hate crimes protections for LGBT people since Matthew was slain by two young men in Laramie in 1998. Speaking to the press, she said, “Dennis and I are extremely proud of the Senate for once again passing this historic measure of protection for victims of these brutal crimes. Knowing that the president will sign it, unlike his predecessor, has made all the hard work this year to pass it worthwhile. Hate crimes continue to affect far too many Americans who are simply trying to live their lives honestly, and they need to know that their government will protect them from violence, and provide appropriate justice for victims and their families.” All eyes now turn to President Obama for his signature that will enact the Matthew Shepard Act into law, the most significant lift to the LGBT community in the United States in forty years.
The End of the Beginning: How the Passage of the Matthew Shepard Act Transforms Us
Researching LGBT hate crimes for four years has changed my life. Now that the passage of the Matthew Shepard Act is imminent, I feel another sort of change coming: to my work, to the LGBTQ community, and to my country. For decades, families, loved ones, law enforcement officers, and social justice advocates have prayed for, labored for, and agitated for a federal law extending protection to queer folk victimized by anti-LGBT violence. Tens of thousands of Americans, straight and gay, have labored tirelessly for this result. Our well-practiced shoulders are again set to the task, and with one more great heave, the first major expansion of legal protection against physical harm for vulnerable Americans in the 21st century will make it across the finish line. The end of the beginning has come at last. No more than that, and no less.
The dead are beyond further physical harm. So many hundreds have died at the hands of the ignorant, the malicious, and the sincerely bigoted. Gay Charlie Howard drowned in Bangor, Maine. Lesbian Talana Kreeger, manually disemboweled in Wilmington, North Carolina. Navajo Two-Spirit youth, F.C. Martinez, Jr., brained with a 25-pound rock in a blind canyon in Cortez, Colorado. African American transwoman, Duanna Johnson, shot down in a Memphis, Tennessee alley. Pfc. Barry Winchell, murdered by a fellow soldier with a baseball bat at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on the suspicion that he was gay. And the archetype of them all, young Matthew Shepard, pistol-whipped into a coma and left to die, tied to the foot of a buck fence in Laramie, Wyoming. For every victim whose name is remembered, scores of anonymous others have died, their agonies unreported, their names forgotten.
What will change for all these victims of hate, once the Shepard Act becomes law? And, what about their families, lovers and spouses—what will change for them?
For the dead, the change will come subtly, like a gift of dignity. The Shepard Act is not only for the living. Those who have died at the hands of hatred will finally receive a measure of vindication. No longer will they be merely the debris of social history. Their stories will be told with renewed passion, and more and more people will want to know who they were. Their lives will take on a greater sense of meaning to the LGBTQ community, who will find encouragement to embrace these dead as their own—just as blacks, Jews, and other besieged peoples have embraced their fallen friends and family members. As these LGBTQ victims have become my teachers in my quest to recover their stories and the meaning of their lives, the queer community will find new strength for justice by remembering them.
For the families and loved ones of these victims, perhaps a measure of peace will come at last. Their loss, of course, is incalculable. Their pain is beyond reckoning. I have seen the furrows in their brows, the lingering sadness in their eyes. As Ryan Skipper’s mother Pat said to me, there is no closure for her and those like her. The change will come, I suspect, with a sense of honor, and a quiet assurance that their beloved will have not died in vain. When the Shepard Act finally passes, I will think first of all about the valiant witness of the mothers—women who never sought the spotlight, but who fought back tears to learn how to speak out for their children and for everyone else’s children. Signing day in President Obama’s office will be most of all for Judy Shepard, Pat Mulder, Elke Kennedy, Pauline Mitchell, Denise King, Kathy Jo Gaither and everyone else whose flesh and blood have consecrated the moment of passage.
Those who believe in justice will feel the change, too. The LGBTQ community will be challenged to mature and take their place among communities of survivors, witnesses who understand that it takes hard work to make hope become real for everyone. At the stroke of a pen, the entire LGBTQ community will experience the greatest lift since the Stonewall Rebellion forty years ago. But that will not be all. The America I know and love will encounter change on the day the Shepard Act becomes law, too. Summoned by the angel of justice, the American people will face the challenge to make the promise of the Constitution come true for their transgender, gay, bi, and lesbian neighbors and friends.
Passage and signing the Matthew Shepard Act into law will not magically stop the killing. Record numbers of LGBTQ Americans, especially young transgender people of color, are dying violently all across the land. But the high water mark of hatred will be scotched with the stroke of a pen on the day President Obama keeps his promise and signs the bill. The end of the beginning of full equality for my people will come. And we who believe in justice will not rest until it comes.
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project
U.S. House Approves Matthew Shepard Act
Washington, DC – In a vote that marks the first major expansion of protection under the law in 40 years, the House of Representatives voted to approve the Matthew Shepard Act on Thursday. The Shepard Act, attached as an amendment to a Defense Appropriations Bill, extends protection to LGBT people from bias-related physical violence. A similar provision faced the threat of a veto from President Bush in a recent Congress, even though it passed the House by a comfortable majority. This time around, President Obama has signaled his eagerness to sign the Shepard Amendment into law, as soon as it receives a favorable vote in the U.S. Senate. That vote is expect soon. Protections from hate violence for LGBT Americans have been opposed by congressional Republicans and their allies, usually on the pretext that the addition of the Shepard Act to a defense bill is inappropriate “social engineering,” a “poison pill,” and that the provisions of the Act would serve as a sort of Trojan Horse, making LGBT behaviors “normative.” Some religious critics have argued that the Shepard Act would gag ministers and priests who oppose homosexuality on moral or doctrinal grounds, abrogating their First Amendment right to freedom of speech and to the free exercise of religion, making vocal opposition to LGBT behaviors criminal. Proponents of the legislation counter that the language of the Shepard Act has been carefully crafted to criminalize only acts of physical violence, leaving all First Amendment rights fully intact. The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) and openly gay Congressman Jared Polis (D-Colorado) hailed the passage of the Act in the House. Pelosi said, “It’s a very exciting day for us here in the Capitol,” noting that attempts to pass such a law had gone on for her 22-year tenure in the House of Representatives. Polis argued that critics of the Shepard Act seem not to understand the impact of anti-LGBT hate violence beyond the individual victims. “What makes these crimes so bad is they are not just crimes against individuals; they are crimes against entire communities,” he said during the debate on the defense bill. The measure passed the House by a vote of 281 to 146. 237 Democrats and 44 Republicans voted in the affirmative. 131 Republicans and 15 Democrats opposed the bill. “We are closer than ever before to protecting Americans from hate violence thanks to today’s action by the House,” said Joe Solmonese, head of the Washington, D.C.-based LGBT advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign. “The day is within sight when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people will benefit from updating our nation’s hate crimes laws.”
Senate Passes DOD Bill with Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Amendment Attached
Washington, DC – Last night the U.S. Senate passed the mammoth Department of Defense Appropriations Bill with the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act attached as an amendment. HRC Backstory explains the process of reconciliation that this version of the bill will undergo in the Senate-House Conference Committee. According to HRC Senior Policy Analyst David Stacy, “During the month of August, while the Congress is in recess, House and Senate staff will work out differences between the House and Senate bills. Most of these decisions are unrelated to hate crimes and can be worked out at the staff level. Key decisions will be made by Senators and Representatives when they return in September. Most important among these will be the final decision about whether to keep the Matthew Shepard Act. Beyond that threshold question, which we fully expect will be an emphatic “YES,” decisions will have to be made about the amendments passed by the Senate this week.” This is great cause for celebration since LGBT people are very close to having federal protection in an unprecedented way in our history. Not only does this legislation honor Matthew Shepard, for whom it is named. It also remembers and honors thousands of other LGBT hate crimes victims for whom this legislative act is a vindication of sorts. But while there is reason for rejoicing, the ultimate passage of anti-LGBT hate crimes legislation is not a done deal yet. The DOD bill did attach other amendments, such as the Sessions Death Penalty amendments, designed to make the Matthew Shepard Act less palatable to sponsors and the public. The protections provided in the bill for LGBT people are limited, if still important and historic. Hate crimes against us are on the rise, and the old bromide activists rehearse, that as the younger generations take the reins of culture and government, the war against LGBT people will be over, is just not borne out by the facts. If younger Americans are more open statistically toward LGBT people and our relationships, then why is the profile of the people who actually kill us men from teenage to mid-30s, for one thing? So, we must keep at this work. Those of us who believe in justice cannot rest. Those of us who believe in justice cannot rest until it comes. [Illustration thanks to Advocate.com].
~ Stephen Sprinkle, Director, Unfinished Lives Project
About
If you are a first-time visitor to the Unfinished Lives Project website, we invite you to read A Welcome Message introducing you to our project. We are truly grateful for your visit.
The Unfinished Lives Project website is a place of public discourse which remembers and honors LGBTQ hate crime victims, while also revealing the reality of unseen violence perpetrated against people whose only “offense” is their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender presentation. LGBTQ people in the United States are suffering a slow-rolling decimation of terror and murder all across the country. Every locale and demographic of society are affected: First Nations, Anglo, Black, Latino and Latina, South and Southeast Asian, Transgender, Bisexuals, Gay men, Lesbians, disabled, young, and mature. Homophobia has a long, crooked arm, and it is reaching out to snatch the life away from women and men whose tragic stories are under-reported to begin with, and whose memories are swiftly forgotten.
The horror of these killings transcends the shock and bereavement of loved ones and friends. These are not typical homicides; they are not killings for money or drugs, incidents of domestic strife, or crimes of passion. The vicious nature of hate crimes against LGBTQ persons is extremely brutal, grotesquely violent, and egregiously hateful.
Each murder serves the LGBTQ population as a sobering warning about the actual level of danger in our communities. The message these killings send is that freedom and open life for LGBTQ people is a cruel dream. Every time we remember one of these victims, however, the intentions of their killers are frustrated. To remember these women and men is to begin the process of changing the culture that killed them.
Our Project Director
Dr. Stephen V. Sprinkle (Keith Tew photo).
Stephen V. Sprinkle is Director of Field Education and Supervised Ministry, and Professor of Practical Theology at Brite Divinity School, Fort Worth, Texas, a post he has held since 1994. An ordained Baptist minister, he is the first open and out Gay scholar in the history of the Divinity School, and the first open and out LGBTQ person to be tenured there. Read More…
Recent Social Justice Advocacy Activity By Dr. Sprinkle
Summer 2009 – Dr. Sprinkle responded to the Fort Worth Police Department and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Raid on the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay bar, on June 28, 2009, the exact 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. Dr. Sprinkle was invited to speak at three protest events sponsored by Queer LiberAction of Dallas. Here, he is keynoting the Rainbow Lounge Protest at the Tarrant County Courthouse on July 12, 2009. Read More…
Contact Us
Communicate with the Unfinished Lives project team:
info@unfinishedlivesblog.com
Schedule a Presentation
Dr. Sprinkle will gladly present his acclaimed presentation to your organization. To arrange an Unfinished Lives presentation for your organization or group, please contact us.
Dr. Sprinkle has given his Unfinished Lives presentation to these and other community groups and organizations. Read More…
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Publisher: Steve Sprinkle (Project Director)
Steve Sprinkle
Unfinished Lives: Remembering LGBT Hate Crime VictimsBrite Divinity School/Texas Christian UniversityFort Worth TXprofessor, minister, author, blogger, LGBTQ advocate
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Unfinished Lives 
Remembering Matthew Shepard on the 12th Anniversary of His Murder
~ Stephen V. Sprinkle, Director of the Unfinished Lives Project
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October 12, 2010 Posted by unfinishedlives | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Bullying in schools, Colorado, gay men, gay teens, Gender Variant Youth, harassment, Hate Crimes, hate crimes prevention, Heterosexism and homophobia, Law and Order, Legislation, Lesbian women, LGBT teen suicide prevention, LGBTQ suicide, Matthew Shepard, Matthew Shepard Act, Matthew Shepard Foundation, Media Issues, Remembrances, Sakia Gunn Film Project, Social Justice Advocacy, Special Comments, transgender persons, transphobia, Wyoming | anti-LGBT hate crime murder, Bisexual persons, Bullying in schools, Colorado, gay men, gay teens, Gender Variant Youth, harassment, Hate Crimes, hate crimes legislation, Law and Order, Lesbians, LGBTQ suicide, LGBTQ suicide prevention, LGBTQ teen suicide, Matthew Shepard, Matthew Shepard Act, Matthew Shepard Foundation, Media Issues, Remembrances, Sakia Gunn Film Project, Social Justice Advocacy, transgender persons, transphobia, Wyoming | 1 Comment