From e-mail from poet C A Conrad

TEN YEARS AGO TONIGHT...

...Matthew Shepard was driven out to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming and tortured and beaten and left to suffer and fight for his life until found by another young man on his bicycle.

TEN YEARS AGO TONIGHT, after torturing Shepard, and beating him over and overhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif with his pistol, Aaron McKinney would decide to go back into town, go to a bar, get into a fight with a man much bigger than himself and be beaten so badly that he would also wind up in the emergency room three beds away from Matthew Shepard. Shepard would die five days later.

TEN YEARS LATER, queer teens still have the highest suicide rate. Queers of all ages, but especially African American transgendered people, continue to be murdered more than any other group. No one else I knew had the stomach for keeping track of this carnage like my friend, our friend, poet/artist/musician kari edwards. Up to the day she died she maintained blogs with the most harrowing evidence, which you can see

HERE