G'day JustinO,
Interesting you should resurrect the Matthew Shepard issue at this time. Here's what's happening in Ukraine at the mo. Check out the photo. “Oh what fools these mortals be,” quoth Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Gary

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I wonder if this kind of stupity/ignorance is some sort of 'primative innate fear' a society 
musr grow through, as it were,. . . ..maybe better put, something the society must out-grow. . . .. something of a purging of primal repressed fears which are only partially 
felt or recognized  until the society is able to face them,  see them for what they are, and  then make a rational decision  to deal honestly with them. . . . 

Maybe, too, society cannot overlook them, sort of walk around them by ignoring them because we know  by so doing these 'things' become more deeply repressed.  Passions, fears, traumas cannot be ignored because they will eventually explode into greater violence and destruction  and cause more tragic events in a never-ending cycle. . . .condemned to repeat over and over the same never-ending pain, repression and violence.

In therapy we see this in individuals. . . . .imagine these greatly magnified in a collective
societal explosion !

JustinO