The question is stark and brutal. If the murder of  Matthew Shepard, a gay man, by two drunken thugs in Laramie, Wyo., was a national story and a heinous hate crime, why wasn't the killing of 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising publicized the same way?

Jesse was tortured, sodomized and finally killed by a gay man as another homosexual watched in the small town of Rogers, Ark. Yet the national media ignored the crime, causing outrage among those who see hate crimes as a tool being used to hammer the agendas of special interests.

The two men who murdered Shepard have been convicted and, most likely, will spend the rest of their lives in prison. But the two men allegedly involved in the killing of Jesse Dirkhising are yet to be tried, and when they are, you may not even hear about it.

That's because the 13-year-old Dirkhising was not a member of a minority group and therefore his murder is not classified as a hate crime. But he was killed because of his youth and attractiveness to psychopathic sex offenders. In other words, Jesse was murdered because of who he was. His age and physical appearance led to his death.

Strictly following the definition of bias crimes, Jesse Dirkhising fits the profile.

Politics over sex predators.

But there is something else in play here that is much more serious than a politically correct classification. For some reason, the death of Matthew Shepard was deemed more newsworthy and important than the murder of  Jesse Dirkhising. I am using the phrase "for some reason" factiously. We in the press know the real reason very well.

Because Shepard was a minority and killed  because of blatant discrimination, his death falls into the political category. Gay activists are rightfully concerned that homosexuals be protected from straight haters who outnumber them. The media understands and sympathizes with this point of view, as  well it should.

But sexual predators, whether straight or gay, are not considered national threats to children, and this is very wrong. The media should be just as tough on child killers as they are on gay killers. And the gay  organizations should have been first on line with condemnation.  But not one gay group issued a press release commenting on the Dirkhising murder. This smacks of  insensitivity and unfairness.  It is also mighty dumb.

Too much for establishment press.

Millions of Americans believe militant  homosexuals want to advance their agenda  and mainstream their behavior. They feel that  gay activists play the victim card and are not  overly concerned about the feelings of Christians and other groups who see homosexuality as a sinful, destructive lifestyle. In order to counter those beliefs, gay groups should go out of their way to be fair. A heterosexual 13-year-old boy killed after forced homosexual sex could certainly be classified as an act of hate and the gay activists should know it. Let's not play semantics here.

But that's exactly what's happening. The elite media is nothing if not politically correct these days. Only The Washington Times, APBnews.com and The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel have covered the Shepard-Dirkhising situation in any depth. A comparison of the crimes raises too many disturbing questions for the establishment press, which sees itself as the champion of the oppressed and disadvantaged.

And that is not a bad thing to be -- as long as you are fair in your crime coverage.

No place for discriminatory media.

Violent sexual predators are haters, and it doesn't matter what kind of sexual crimes they are committing. The media needs to treat all sexual crimes as hate crimes, and so do the authorities. There is no place in America for sex criminals -- period.

And there is no place in America for a discriminatory media that picks and chooses what crimes to condemn and what crimes to ignore. All Americans who are fed up with mindless, hate-filled criminals should place the murder of young Jesse Dirkhising right alongside the murder of  Matthew Shepard.

To do otherwise is to dishonor the memory of both.
 

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