Is There a Difference in 10 Years?

Today is the anniversary of a horrific hate crime on a member of the LGBTQ community. Mathew Shepherd died in 1998 bound to a fence Laramie, Wyoming. Shepherd had been beaten by two men just because he was gay. Many news stories today are asking if anything has changed since Shepherd’s murder.

Have they?

“I think if you ask the average American, they think Matthew Shepherd was the last person killed in this country for being gay,” said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a national group that focuses on gay issues in schools. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case,” reports Ryan Lee on the Washington Blade website.

Since Mathew Shepherds murder there have been over 50 confirmed deaths caused by anti-gay hate crimes. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s senseless to use violence to object to someone’s lifestyle and morality. In my opinion it is senseless to have a majority legislate a minority’s morality when that minority is adult and doing nothing to harm a person in the majority.
I’d like to share an extreme notion of hate, which purports to adhere to the Bible and God’s word.Here is hate:

The anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, led by Fred Phelps, picketed Shepherd's funeral as well as the trial of his assailants displaying signs with slogans such as "Matt Shepherd rots in Hell", "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" and "God Hates Fags.” When the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that it was legal to display any sort of religious message on city property if it was legal for Casper's Ten Commandments display to remain, Phelps attempted and failed to gain city permits in Cheyenne and Casper to build a monument "of marble or granite 5 or 6 feet (1.8 m) in height on which will be a bronze plaque bearing Shepherd's picture and the words: "MATTHEW SHEPARD, Entered Hell October 12, 1998, in Defiance of God's Warning: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.' Leviticus 18:22."

- I got this from wikipedia and verified it on CNN

I know this is an extreme case, but I think it is fair to share and to show what was happening 10 years ago. Still, the LGBT community is still harassed, victimized, beaten, and sometimes murdered for being themselves.

In better news, Michelle Bruce who identifies as a transgender woman in Georgia won a case against her brought forth by two politicians who said she misrepresented herself as a woman.
“Gay rights groups said the lawsuit appears to be a first in the country.” quoted in an AP article By Greg Bluestein.
"I still have a dream to serve my community,” She is quoted in the article.

Why not let her?