From Hate Crimes to Human Rights: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard [Paperback]

Mary E Swigonski (Author), Robin Mama (Author), Kelly Ward (Author), Attn:Matthew Shepard (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1560232579 | ISBN-13: 978-1560232575 | Publication Date: August 9, 2001

Fight for the human rights of LGBT individuals with strategies from this powerful book!

From the intimate horror of domestic violence to the institutionalized heterosexism of marriage laws, this volume takes an unsparing look at the interconnections of prejudice and hate crimes in the lives of LGBT individuals. Bringing together original research and solidly grounded theory, From Hate Crimes to Human Rights: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard also offers fresh strategies so you can work effectively for social change.

This moving, thoughtful volume begins with a friend's memoir of the murdered Matthew Shepard; this intimate glimpse is powerful testimony that hate crimes affect individuals, not just symbolic martyrs. From Hate Crimes to Human Rights drags hidden homophobia from the closet and examines it with clean, incisive intelligence. It tackles taboo topics, including:

• what the Bible really says about homosexuality
• how minority cultures sometimes foster hatred against the LGBT individuals in their midst
• why child welfare services don't protect LGBT youth from peer violence
• how internalized LGBT self-hatred can be expressed as domestic violence
  
  Hate crimes do not occur in a cultural vacuum. From Hate Crimes to Human Rights searches out the roots of hatred and suggests ways to eradicate them, drawing on economics, theology, and linguistics as well as sociology, history, and political science. Specific suggestions include:
• how to use language as a social and cultural change strategy
• what individuals and universities can do to promote human rights
• how to make use of the intersection of difference and tolerance to prevent hate crimes
• why equal treatment for LGBT individuals is a human rights issue, not a special-interest advantage
  
  From Hate Crimes to Human Rights provides powerful explanations of the ways hatred generates hate crimes and proposes positive action you can take to validate human rights.
  
  A Statement from the Authors One of the premises of this book is that if we want to progress from hate crimes to human rights, we must learn to respect, honor, and celebrate diversity. The chapter authors exemplify a rainbow of ethnicities, sexual orientations, and gender identities. Each of us is committed to advocate for human rights and to work to end hate crime. Toward those ends, the royalties from the sale of this book will go directly to a memorial fund that has been established at Monmouth University in Matthew Shepard's honor. The proceeds from that fund will be used to support students in their preparation for human rights advocacy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (August 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560232579
• ISBN-13: 978-1560232575
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #687,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Full of Information, July 1, 2002

By A Customer

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This review is from: From Hate Crimes to Human Rights: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard (Paperback)

I am a grad student in psychology doing a thesis on gay/lesbian hate crimes. This volume is moving and insightful. I wish the editors had included info from Gregory Herek, who is a leader in the field. All in all a good read with good info.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From fear to action, February 24, 2003

By 

Christopher M. MacNeil "Chris M" (Fort Wayne, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: From Hate Crimes to Human Rights: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard (Paperback)

This scholarly work, dedicated to the memory of Matthew Shepard, whose brutal homophobic killing mobilized a nation to cry out in anger and shame, is an important contributor to the understanding of the basis of crimes of violence against minority groups targeted by a shameful segment of the majority. As a research project with multiple contributors, the legal definition of a hate crime is provided as the basis of explaining the reasons that acts of violence against minorities qualify as hate crimes, the origins of various prejudices that fuel and "justify" acts of violence and how many states have failed or ignored the cry to enhance the legal sanctions for acts of violence based solely on prejudice, racism, homophobia and other dynamics that figure into the equation. In addition to addressing prejudice as it applies to the individual, the research here also addresses the prejudice that is inherent in society and some of its institutions and how their discrimination against certain minorities constitute a form of violence (societal vs. individual). It is somewhat disgraceful how many are the states which have not even acknowledged the existence of institutional hate crimes much less provided equal redress. One cannot help but be moved by either anger or shame at the violence perpetrated on people solely on the basis of their sexual orientation, religion, gender, race and national origin, among others. But as other public figures through U.S. history turned their anger and shame into action for equality, this project issues a call to action that empowers the targets of hate crimes with judicial and societal equality. That action alone may well be the optimal expression to the memory of a young, young man whose ultimate death began tied to a fence on a cold, wind-swept Wyoming prairie.