Napoleon Bonaparte once said that “it is the cause, not death, that makes the martyr.” Matthew Shepard was just nineteen years old when two men brutally beat him and tied him to a fence on the prairie simply because he was gay. He ultimately died from his injuries, his life and future stolen due to prejudice and ignorance. Shepard thus became a martyr, a symbol of the cause and a rallying cry for equality within the LGBTQ+ community in the late 20th century. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIn the late 1980s and early 1990s, the LGBTQ+ community faced many issues, the biggest being the AIDS epidemic. (insert information about the first published news about AIDS) After this information was published, many people began to refer to AIDS as a "gay disease" and a "gay scourge" for many years. By correlating this illness with the very closed LGBTQ+ community, many Queer individuals felt that the community was gaining a bad reputation. Gay rights activists organized the second national march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights in 1987, providing the "first national coverage" of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Free Power, which was fighting to “improve the lives of AIDS victims”. The AIDS epidemic has made people aware of a part of society that was previously closed off and voiceless. People can no longer ignore homosexuality because the disease does not discriminate and infects everyone. But because AIDS was incurable and had been attributed to homosexuals who had lived in hiding for so long, it created a perfect storm that spread fear and panic. Even though the AIDS situation raised awareness among the Queer community, they still remained very closeted. Transition towards the absence of laws protecting homosexuals, insert on the scandals of homosexual marriage. Perhaps one of the most important people in the LGBTQ+ community was Matthew Shepard. Shepard was born in Caspar, Wyoming on December 1, 1976, to Judy and Dennis Shepard. Throughout her life, Shepard has faced several traumatic events. During his senior year, he went on a trip with his school friends to Morocco where he was raped, beaten and robbed. Throughout his childhood, Shepard moved several times, once to Saudi Arabia during his junior year of high school, then to Colorado with his friends, then back to Caspar. He also attended several colleges before settling at the University of Wyoming where he was active in many LGBTQ+ rights groups. Shepard believed that attending school in his hometown would keep him safe, which ultimately turned out to be the opposite of the truth. On October 7, 1998, Shepard was lured from the Fireside Lounge, a local bar, by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson who viewed Shepard as an easy target to rob. McKinney and Henderson then drove Shepard to a "rural area" where they beat him severely with the butt of a gun, tied him to a "split-rail fence" and left him to die in the cold. Shepard was only discovered 18 hours later by a cyclist who thought he was a scarecrow. He was rushed to the hospital in a coma and hypothermia. With a severely damaged brainstem and several injuries, Shepard was announced dead on October 12, 1998 at 12:53 a.m. Almost immediately after Shepard's death, a bloody weapon and numerous »..