Two gay teens killed in just two weeks
Attacks in Calif., Fla. prove young gays remain vulnerable
By RYAN LEE
MAR. 7, 2008
http://www.sovo.com/2008/3-7/news/national/8231.cfmThe defining setting for anti-gay violence for the last decade was a rickety fence in a desolate Wyoming field.
But a string of anti-gay beatings, shootings and killings in recent months shows that homophobic hatred didn't disappear when Matthew Shepard was killed 10 years ago this October, nor is it confined to rural pockets of America's heartland.
In the last year alone, young gay people have died at the hands of straight friends in central Florida, been beaten to death after leaving a bar in Greenville, S.C., and assassinated in an eighth grade classroom in California. Last weekend in Athens, Ga., a 17-year old gay man carrying a purse was beaten and verbally gay-bashed by three boys he knew, according to a March 4 report in the Athens Banner-Herald.