Friday, March 30, 2012

Blog 10: Outpouring in Chile Over Gay Man's Death


          Recently in Chile, there has been an overwhelming amount of grief over the death of a young gay man in their community. According to the article the victim Daniel Zumudio was killed by a group of neo-Nazis who beat him for an hour, burned him with cigarettes, and carved Nazi symbols on his body—all because of his sexual orientation. Many have recognized this tragic event as a catalyst to inspire Chile to change its ways. The article states that, “A hate crimes bill was introduced seven years ago but has languished as conservative groups blocked its passage” and many human and gay rights activist groups believe that this needs to be brought back into the attentions of the legislature.
            This is a subject I am very passionate about—equal rights. It astonishes me that all people aren’t given the same rights, and I find what’s going on today with LGBTQ rights to be akin to the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960’s. Even though were are in such a modern and technologically advanced society, we’re still socially practicing moral conducts from 50 plus years ago. In the article it mentions that, “A U.N. report on the issue released last month found evidence of "startling high levels" of homophobic violence around the world.” This issue is one that unfortunately is being difficult to eradicate. The first action people around globe need to take is to acknowledge this as a real problem and a real crime, then take action against it. In our textbooks Hate Crime isn’t even mentioned in our crime section, even though it’s such a prevalent problem to our society and has been for years. I’m hoping that new laws can be passed to prevent these crimes from getting any worse than they are now.

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