Part of my history, and hopefully not part of my kids'

Twelve years ago this past evening, a young man named Matthew Shepherd was kidnapped from a bar in Laramie, Wyoming by two men. He was savagely beaten, tied to a fence far from town, and left. Some time later, a passing biker spotted him (at first thinking him to be a scarecrow), and he was taken to a hospital in Colorado, where he died five days later.

This year, for the first time, that brutal attack could have been prosecuted as a federal hate crime, because Matthew was killed because he was gay. It took twelve years for the government to accomplish this. Twelve years.

If my math is correct, Matthew would be in his mid-thirties had he lived. What would he think about the pace of progress on LGBT issues in this country?

In recent months, at least five gay youths have committed suicide, a desperate solution that they reached as a direct result of homophobic bullying in school. Will we have to wait a further twelve years to see anti-bullying efforts? As a former recipient of some fairly significant homophobic bullying, I hope that it doesn't take that long, and that it doesn't take the deaths of hundreds of other youths to achieve progress.


I was lucky. They may not be.


For more information on the epidemic of gay youth suicide, and what you can do to help, visit www.thetrevorproject.org.