Soc 314
Social Class and Inequality
3-27-03
-Elinor Fine
Far From Heaven
A sociological investigation into stereotypes of a universal yet invisible minority.
On October 11th 1998 I celebrated my 18th birthday. As my family and I cleaed up the mess from my party a young man named Matthew wandered into a campus bar in Laramie Wyoming. At an unknown time that young man left the bar with two men named Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. On October 11th Matthew was found tied to a fence where the two men bludgeoned him with a gun, tortured him and left him. Matthew died of his wounds at 12:53a.m. After never regaining consciousness. Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney each received two life sentences without parole. Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was homosexual and lived his life with out covering up this fact.
The funeral service was held with hordes of protesters outside carrying signs with such sayings as �Fags Burn in Hell.� The protests at the funeral caused the news media to arrive and to cover this tragic and groundbreaking event. For another moment in our history, the world saw yet another act of hate against a person who did not advocate hate himself.
In Topeka, Kansas, a student of Topeka West High named Sam Phelps received extra credit for doing �community service� as well as receiving an award from the mayor for his efforts. The �community service� performed was carrying picket signs that read �DEATH TO FAGS� at funerals held for victims of the AIDS virus. When he was not picketing funerals he was seen with his family harassing gays at Barry Manilow concerts, and harassing openly out county judges and officials. When the school board refused to reward Sam extra credit for his �community service� Sam turned to his grandfather, Reverend Fred, who was running for the US Senate at the time. Reverend Fred placed heat on the school board and the board eventually backed down, granting Sam his Extra credit (Moore, 1996).
These are examples of hate crimes comitted against homosexuals. In both of these cases a great injustice has been made against the homosexual population. In the case of Matthew Shepard, the individuals who were responsible for the actual murder were arrested and given justice. However, the protests, though legal, were just as harmful to the homosexual population as the murder itself. I need not point out the disturbing issues of the Student receiving �extra credit� as reported by Michael Moore.
Each of the protesters speaks out against what they believe to be a immoral, sinful lifestyle. Each individual who protests, or takes action against the homosexual population, does so with a theme of unacceptence, as most hate groups do with any other minority groups weather it be racial or ethnical.
One can claim that there are many reasons for the fact that so many people don�t like minorities. However, they all break down to a simple matter of socialization. A person can claim to have been wronged by a member of a minority group, and therefore doesn�t �trust� or �like� that group, but this is not enough form personal prejudice against an entire social subgroup. If a person has been wronged by a member of a minority group and takes a stand in personal prejudice, then that person chooses to use that situation to reinforce what he or she has been told.
James Keller mentions that in 1999 Mississippi passed a bill banning adoptions by homosexual couples. He then goes on to say, �The new law must, therefore, have an exclusively performative significance, publicly conveying the continued hostility of the state to what religious hysterics have characterized as the �gay agenda��. (Keller, 2002)