Matthew Shepard Act brings hope for the future
Ari Ballaban
Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: Opinion
By Ari Ballaban
I look forward to a day when coming out of the closet will not be such an ordeal for members of the LGBT (that's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, for those of you who aren't savvy) community. As people mature into adults and start to understand their sexualities, I do not believe that there should be any hurdles for them to cross like this. Unfortunately, we live in a world where peoples' aggressive natures don't allow this. We live in a world where being oneself as it relates to being LGBT can result in not just social stigma, but also physical harm.
Luckily, America has just recently taken one small step towards eliminating this situation. In case you didn't know, Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 featured the historic signing of the Matthew Shepard Act. The Matthew Shepard Act is a comprehensive federal hate crimes bill that will, finally, include sexuality and gender identity as types of hate crimes. The name for this piece of legislation comes from the name of a 21 year old university student who was violently killed for his sexuality.
Please humor me. Take a moment and think about this: Someone who was about the same age as most Bellarmine students was violently killed. For... his sexuality? This strikes me as a fairly despicable reason to be murdered. Matthew did nothing within his control to provoke this crime. He was tricked into leaving a bar with two men whom he had met earlier in the evening, and was subsequently brutally beaten, tortured, then chained to a fence to be left for dead. By the time that Matthew was discovered, there was no help to be given for him even though he clung to life for a short while.
Matthew Shepard passed away about eleven years ago. The Matthew Shepard Act was just passed this Wednesday. How could we, "civilized" society that we are, legitimize an injustice like this by taking this long to react to it? In a perfect world, proactive education might have prevented this crime. In lieu of that, I would have at least hoped that we could be more fruitfully reactive. So far, I have learned that we can't.
I look forward to a day when coming out of the closet will not be such an ordeal for members of the LGBT (that's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, for those of you who aren't savvy) community. As people mature into adults and start to understand their sexualities, I do not believe that there should be any hurdles for them to cross like this. Unfortunately, we live in a world where peoples' aggressive natures don't allow this. We live in a world where being oneself as it relates to being LGBT can result in not just social stigma, but also physical harm.
Luckily, America has just recently taken one small step towards eliminating this situation. In case you didn't know, Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 featured the historic signing of the Matthew Shepard Act. The Matthew Shepard Act is a comprehensive federal hate crimes bill that will, finally, include sexuality and gender identity as types of hate crimes. The name for this piece of legislation comes from the name of a 21 year old university student who was violently killed for his sexuality.
Please humor me. Take a moment and think about this: Someone who was about the same age as most Bellarmine students was violently killed. For... his sexuality? This strikes me as a fairly despicable reason to be murdered. Matthew did nothing within his control to provoke this crime. He was tricked into leaving a bar with two men whom he had met earlier in the evening, and was subsequently brutally beaten, tortured, then chained to a fence to be left for dead. By the time that Matthew was discovered, there was no help to be given for him even though he clung to life for a short while.
Matthew Shepard passed away about eleven years ago. The Matthew Shepard Act was just passed this Wednesday. How could we, "civilized" society that we are, legitimize an injustice like this by taking this long to react to it? In a perfect world, proactive education might have prevented this crime. In lieu of that, I would have at least hoped that we could be more fruitfully reactive. So far, I have learned that we can't.
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