Lisa Linsky takes the piss out of the New York legislature for failing to legalize gay marriage in the Empire State. She does so by speaking frankly, persuasively, and about how the institutional bigotry practiced by 44 states affects families like hers. She’s convincing, eloquent, and goddamned right.
And then, when she should have ended the damn article, she throws the Matthew Shepard card.
Matthew Shepard was a 21-year old college student who was brutally murdered in Wyoming in 1998. There was no doubt that this was a hate crime committed because of Shepard’s sexual orientation as a gay man. His killing, and the trial of his murderers, highlighted the need for federal hate crimes legislation that would punish individuals for committing crimes of violence against others based on sexual orientation. (source)
I went from “right on sister” to “shut the fuck up, you crowing harpy” in three sentences.
Think about it. The douchebags who killed Matthew Shepard… do you think those hick assholes sat there and thought “well, we could get the death penalty for this, it being a murder and all, but by golly… at least we won’t get convicted of a hate crime. Lets kill the kid!” ???? Will the next Matthew Shepard style crime be prevented now that we have hate crime legislation that includes homosexuals as a protected class? Will some redneck piece of shit have a gun to a homosexual’s head, and just before he pulls the trigger, his buddy pulls up in a pickup truck (sporting truck nutz, no doubt) and say “Dag gum, don’t pull that there trigger! This here would be a hate crime!!!”
Equal rights? I’m all for them. Marriage should be extended to homosexuals, because there’s not a goddamned thing that is ambiguous about the word EQUAL in the “EQUAL PROTECTION” clause. That’s that.
And that’s the same word – EQUAL – that makes hate crime legislation constitutionally repugnant.
