DAVID CRARY Associated Press It's been 25 years since Matthew Shepard, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, died six days after he was savagely beaten by two young men and tied to a remote fence to meet his fate. His death has been memorialized as an egregious hate crime that helped fuel the LGBTQ+ rights movement over the ensuing years.
People are also reading… Five people were killed last year in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado. More than 20 Republican-controlled states have enacted an array of anti-LGBTQ+ laws including bans on sports participation and certain medical care for young transgender people, as well as restrictions on how schools can broach LGBTQ+-related topics.
"What we've said in Florida is we are going to remain a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy," said Gov. Ron DeSantis as he signed such bills earlier this year."We're not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida." "We made so much progress as an LGBTQ movement, at a fast pace compared to other social justice movements," he said."You do have a minority who is overwhelmingly upset by it. They are fired up and they are well-resourced."
"But the other side pivoted to attacking trans people and seeking religious exemptions to get a right to discriminate against gay people," he said."Both of those strategies, unfortunately, have been quite successful." — The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2009. The act expanded the federal hate crime law to include crimes based on a victim's sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.