On Oct.6. Wyoming college  student Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence in the middle of an agricultural nowhere and bludgeoned nearly to death. His attackers then took his leather shoes and wallet, and left him to perish in the morning’s near-freezing temperatures. Only a few days later, he died in a local hospital. As if that wasn’t bad enough, outside his funeral, another ten days later, anti-gay protesters held up signs like ‘Fags Damn Nations.’

Mearly five months earlier, a similar incident occured in Jasper, Texas. James Byrd, an African-American, was tied behind a truck and dragged to death by three men who were later found to be connected to a white supremacy organization
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Even the liberal halls of Gonzaga University in Spokane cannot escape the surge of minority intolerance seeping through the cracks of America. At a Holocaust panel discussion, two men, presumably not students, passed out anti-Semitic fliers though they did not initiate violence of any sort.

Montana, like nearly all states in the country, has passed the Hate Crimes Statistic Law. Unfortunately, it works just like it sounds, keeping records of hate crimes. 

The solutions on the horizon of peacefulness don’t look too hot either. The Hate Crimes Bill, a recently presented bill to Congress, only mentions stricter sentencing, just the kind of law defense attorneys would love to manipulate.

Still, stricter sentencing is a start for the ultimate solution to this very current problem. Perhaps if a loud, clear message is sent to hate-crime criminals that their actions won’t be tolerated, similar violent incidents will be limited. Maybe the days of hate-based violence won’t end, but at least they will be reduced.

The only way to really accomplish this goal, to the dismay of many, is the death penalty for criminals like the killers of Byrd and Shepard. Sad, but true, the penalty seems better than the alternative of minority slayings.
Often, the real tragedies in cases like those of Shepard and Byrd go beyond just the deaths themselves. The real tragedy is the kind of political indifference that followed these cases.

Sometimes the best way to show you care isn’t just with flowers for the victim’s gravesite or financial compensation for their family. Sometimes you have to lay down the law.

Scott Bennett, The Arrow