10 years after Shepard death, no federal hate crime law

"We passed up a golden opportunity to set things in motion and make a change and set an example and let it go," she said.

In a case that outraged gay activists and their advocates around the country, Matthew Shepard died Oct. 12, 1998, five days after he was kidnapped, robbed, and pistol-whipped by two men he met in a bar. Both men are serving life in prison for the killing, which police said was partly motivated by the fact that Shepard was gay.

Shepard's death after he was left in the cold for 18 hours - bloodied with severe head injuries - has produced an outpouring of films, books, and plays, but it hasn't seemed to budge the rate of antigay violence.

FBI statistics show hate crimes motivated by antigay bias have remained at a stable level since Shepard's death. Both in 1998 and in 2006, the latest year for which data are available, roughly 1,200 such crimes were reported - about 16 percent of all reported hate crimes.

Shepard's mother has other disappointments on her list: the lack of a federal hate crime law; state laws restricting marriage to heterosexual couples; discrimination against gays in the workplace; and, the government's refusal to grant gay couples the benefits afforded heterosexual couples.

"What's OK about that?" she asked. "Nothing."

Generally, hate crime laws enhance penalties for bias-motivated crimes, increase funding for the investigation of such crimes, or require better record-keeping. Wyoming is among five states - along with Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, and South Carolina - that don't have any type of hate crime law. Fourteen states have adopted hate crime laws that don't cover sexual orientation or gender identity, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based group that promotes equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

Proponents have pushed for federal action for the past 10 years, coming closest last year when measures to expand the definition of hate crimes to cover sexual orientation passed both houses of Congress. The proposals ultimately fell short, partly because of a veto threat by President Bush.