Most everyone has
heard of and knows about Matthew Shepard, but for those of you who don’t,
Matthew, or “Matt” for short, was a 21 year old student at the University of
Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and tied to a barbed-wire fence and left to
die near Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 6, 1998. Matt was found by a cyclist who thought Matt
was a scarecrow. He died six days later in
a Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, from severe head injuries. Shepard was gay, so this was considered a
hate crime.
One of the two men
convicted of the murder said it wasn’t a hate crime, but that they “just wanted
to rob him and beat him up.” Coincidentally, after leaving Shepard to die, these two men went back into
town and beat up two Hispanic men. I
suppose that wasn’t a hate crime either.
But I ask you, how
is this okay?
Kim and I lived in
Southern California during the Rodney King riots. One of the graduates in my counseling
caseload, a young lady, came home from her shift at a fast food restaurant and
told her parents that she was going to sit on the front porch and eat her
dinner before she went to bed. Her
parents found her beaten body on the front porch steps the following
morning. She had died and no one knows
why. No one knows who did it. Her parents are left with many questions and
precious few answers.
To be very clear,
I’m not taking any sides other than to say that we have a growing problem in
our society where people are attacked and hurt . . . sometimes killed . . . because
he or she is somehow different from us, or because he or she has different
beliefs than we do, or because he or she looks different than we do.
I’m worried that
we’ve “accepted” that people aren’t worthy of respect because of these
differences. And how is that even
possible? How is it that individuals or
groups of individuals are not worthy of respect?
I'm fully aware
that there are groups who espouse hate simply because of differences in race,
in religion, in politics, in just about anything that isn't equal to or the
same as their own race or religion or political belief. I don't understand them and I don't know that
anyone does. I kind of shake my head in
wonder at them, perhaps shake my head in equal parts of disbelief and disgust.
But, I think I’ve
become Intolerant of Intolerance. I
sincerely hope I’m not the only one.
There is no excuse
for unkindness. There is no excuse for
disrespect. None.
I think there are
many teachable moments where we can help kids . . . and each other . . . to
understand that sometimes our words and our actions hurt others. I think it is important to teach each other
that it is simply unacceptable to be disrespectful of another or to withhold
acceptance of an individual or a group simply because he or she or they is
somehow different from us. If we ignore
these teachable moments, if we accept the ugliness of others and if we ignore
acts of unkindness and disrespect, we become just as unkind and just as
disrespectful because we ignore it.
Ignoring and doing
nothing, saying nothing is passive acceptance.
Is that what we want? Is that how
we want to be measured? Is that how we
want to be seen and be judged? I’m
hoping that you and I, each of us, grow to be Intolerant of Intolerance. Otherwise, we really have no future. None.
Something to think about . . .
Live Your Life,
and Make A Difference!
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Thank you for your comment. I welcome your thought. Joe