Yes, Matthew Shepard's death has been enormously successful in highlighting the senselessness of gay bashing with global proportions a million times more impactful and far reaching than advertisements taken out by so-called Christian groups in national newspapers. The embracing of Matthew Shepard to push an agenda, however, is distasteful and unfair, whether it's to advocate gay marriage or strong-arm legislation unrelated to his killing. The impact of speeches by the likes of Trent Lott, Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and others that have likened homosexuality to kleptomania and alcoholism is clearly evident, and speaks volumes for itself. Harboring hateful sentiments, or acting upon them will not help the targets of that hatred if the sentiments are simply masked in niceties, cloaked in hypocrisy or forbidden outright. If nothing else, the simmering anger and hatred beneath the surface denied any form of expression, will eventually explode in ways even uglier and deadly than what we're seeing now.
Victimization is a double-edged sword.
As long as gays define themselves as victims, they will continue to be victimized. Women discovered this phenomenon in the workplace when the very legislation and thought paradigms inextricably associated with feminism that they had fought so hard for, or at least embraced, were suddenly being used against them. To victimize by applying the very label 'victim' to their predicament, and by ironically, creating a misogynist and patronizing role for the biggest offenders, as protectors. Gay efforts to define themselves as victims are in danger of yielding the same unfortunate result. The day after Matthew Shepard died, a divided U.S. Supreme Court let stand a voter initiative that barred Cincinnati from protecting gays against discrimination.