Today is Matthew Shepard Day. Or, at least, it should be.
Eleven years ago, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was beaten and left to die on the side of the road outside Laramie, WY for the crime of being himself. One of the persons convicted in this horrible murder shows no remorse, and even says that Shepard "needed killing."
It is long past time for a hate-crimes bill to be passed, to draw a line in the legal sand that insists that we, as a society, will not allow those who violently attack others because they are alive and different from others.
Let us not allow Matthew do have died in vain. Let us remember him, the horrible way he died, and insist, "Never again."
