Matthew Shepard Case

On October 6,1998, Matthew Shepard was left to die after accepting a ride home from two Caucasian males who beat and tortured him in Laramie, Wyoming. These two men assumed Matthew Shepard was gay and decided it was their duty to rid him of his existence. The two men who inflicted this gruesome act on Matthew Shepard weren’t prosecuted because of the law from 1969. About 35,000 hate crimes go unreported every year and this is for the LGBT communities alone, (LGBT Foundation, 2015). So many hate crimes go unreported because of fear, even though there is a better law in place called; The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Even though it is 2016, people still attack communities for their race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, and disability; and the world has yet to see the seriousness of these crimes. In 1969 The Hate Crime Prevention Act, was enacted to protect those being targeted by bias-motivated people, only this act didn’t protect everyone it needed to. For the law to be put into …show more content…
Not to mention that this is only for the 5,462 crimes that were reported to the authorities in 2014, (FBI, 2015, p.1). As a consequence, so many hate crimes go unreported due to fear, the enforcement of the hate crime prevention act alone is not enough to protect those it was designed to protect. More awareness about the severity of hate crimes should be raised, the enactment should be better enforced as whole. How many black, white, gay, lesbian, or even Muslim lives will it take before the government realizes something needs to be done? Does another person have to be to be tortured? Does someone else have to die? We can fix this by coming together and raise awareness about hate crimes and bias motivated