South Carolina: 3 years for gay murder

If one thing is apparent, it is that the U.S. Midwest and Southern states have a long, long way to go for LGBT rights..... let alone marriage equality.

I remain surprised that most LGBT advocates in those areas don't even like to place the words "gay" and "marriage" in the same sentence. In addition to marriage equality, hate crime laws, discriminations laws, and domestic partner benefits seems a long way off.

A couple of days ago, the first state of leave the Union sentenced a man for killing a gay teenager to 3 years in prison. Yes, 3 years. The State of South Carolina has no hate crime law that covers LGBT people.

The brutality of the telephone call the man made after hitting the victim, Sean Kennedy, has kept this blogger awake [it is now nearly 4 AM EST].

“Hey, I was just wondering how your boyfriend’s feeling right about now [laughter]. The f___ing faggot..... Yeah boy, your boy is knocked out, man. The mother______. Tell him he owes me $500 for breaking my g__damn hand on his teeth, that f___ing b____.”

As one local told me in an email: "Equally troubling to me is that not one single LGBT organization has spoken out about this, organized protests, sent out fliers, issued an action alert to promote new hate crime legislation, used a damn phone, or even send flowers to the victim’s family to show that they care. What happened to that joke we call the Human Rights Campaign or the South Carolina Equality Coalition? Why isn't someone screaming in Columbia that this is wrong?"

Click here to read the story by Matt Comer.