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Navigating Hate: The Public Deliberation Of Matthew Shepard And Hate Crime Legislation, Abigail Barnes
Navigating Hate: The Public Deliberation Of Matthew Shepard And Hate Crime Legislation, Abigail Barnes
Master's Theses
Since Matthew Shepard’s murder in 1998, his narrative has been recirculated to justify a federal hate crime statute and Shepard has been used as a symbol for the demand for hate crime legislation. This study seeks to evaluate how Shepard is used in public deliberation, the role of private organizations in the public deliberation of hate crime legislation, and the discursive history of the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009. Through a rhetorical criticism, this study finds that the nuances of Shepard’s narrative are abandoned in order to construct him as a “permissible” symbol for LGBTQ+ protections. However, if …