Just before 1 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2008, it will be 10 years since the death of Matthew Shepard. There is little need to recount the details the brutal beating and death of the young man from Wyoming who became an international symbol of homophobic hate.

As we approach a presidential election in which the stakes could not be higher, there may be no better story that exemplifies the state of our movement.

In order to do that, we must look at the unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated media and community response to a gay murder. We also must examine our community’s response in the context of the ongoing epidemic of hate crimes against GLBT people.

It is easy to do the analysis. We have been unable to pass a federal hate crimes bill inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity. There is still no state-level hate crime legislation in Wyoming. On a sickeningly regular basis, those of us who work in the movement hear about individuals who are killed in hate crimes: Lawrence King, Sean Kennedy, Sakia Gunn, F.C. Martinez, and Amancio Corrales are some recent victims.

Other incidents include the Orlando couple that returned home to find their house in flames and the words “Die Fag” spray-painted on the steps; the recent taunting of an eight-year-old Massachusetts girl by classmates because she has a lesbian mother.

The sense of being “other” is still a constant feature for many of us, even those who try to assimilate as much as possible and proclaim that they’re just ordinary citizens like everyone else.

A more optimistic analysis would say that the waves of cultural visibility we saw in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s have brought unprecedented change.

The world knows who we are in a more substantive manner than ever before, however underrepresented our community’s diversity may be. We can now get married in California and Massachusetts, although the lack of federal benefits is the big hurdle that will take many years to overcome.

It is worth looking at 1998 a bit before we consider 2008 and the current state of GLBT politics and culture. In 1998, the country had already been shocked by the grisly dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. in June of that year. Also in 1998, we had a president who picked up the phone and called Matthew’s parents to offer his condolences. The family of Lawrence King, who was killed in a recent incident, could not have dreamed of getting a call from the current President.

Indeed no such calls have issued from the White House for the past seven-plus years.

Moisés Kaufman, the writer and director of The Laramie Project, remarked that it seemed to him that the country was finally ready to talk about our issues in 1998, after six years of Clinton and increasing community visibility. It’s an argument that has its merits, coming from someone who created the most forceful work of art to come out of Matthew Shepard’s death. Call it a tipping point.

NEXT PAGE: Missed opportunity