Media framing of Matthew Shepard

With the case of Matthew Shepard it was such a big deal because he was an openly gay man who was killed for the fact that he was gay and beaten to the point where he could not be recognized . To me if you’re an openly gay man in the 90’s then you had to be very brave because even just 15 years ago you were discriminated against even worse than openly gay people today. So for the whole nation to get behind Matthew was a great thing when he was a live but after he passed and the trials of his assailants, people went back to the old ways. With the law that would make it a hate crime to abuse gay people was supposed to be passed after Matthews’s death but was dropped by congress. It seems like we toke a giant step back from where we were in support of Shepard 2 years prior. Where Was the support to pass this law. It just goes to show people how fast the media can get ahold of us and makes us feel for someone in need but then after words we just turn our back on the story after it got old. So when the media gets a hold of a story like Shepard’s they would use key words to catch our attention and keep us intrigued in the story. Most of the headlines didn’t mention that Shepard was gay it used the words to describe how he was found. We use his story more or less for sympathy and the way he was treated should have been a big red flag for the passing of hate crimes against openly gay people. Instead in went tin the opposite direction where we backed off of the completely. Much of the nation is still against the thought of same sex couples. Hopefully times have changed in 2013 and allow for the law of same sex marriage to pass and we as a nation aren’t as not stubborn and old fashion and we should be more accepting.