20 Years Ago Today

On this day back in 1993 Brandon Teena was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska. His life and death was documented in the movie “Boys Don’t Cry.” The Journal Star article on Sunday said,

Twenty years have passed since two Falls City men murdered Brandon Teena, Lisa Lambert and Philip DeVine in a shabby farmhouse on the outskirts of Humboldt.

Brandon Teena — who dated women and whose Nebraska-issued ID was marked male — was born a daughter and a sister on Dec. 12, 1972, in Lincoln and named Teena Renae Brandon.

Teena's death at the hands of two men furious after they learned the guy they'd been hanging out with was born a woman gripped Nebraska and the nation, inspiring an Academy Award-winning film, a documentary, a true crime novel and countless news articles and broadcasts.

What has changed in those twenty years?

We are still being murder and the assailants still use the “gay panic” defense. The numbers of trans-people being murdered each year has continued at an unacceptable level.

We now have hate crime laws in thirteen states and a federal hate crime law that covers us.

Back in 1983 most people never head of transgender and now in a 2011 almost 80% of the people polled know what transgender means. In the same 2011 poll they found that 89% of “Americans agree that transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as other Americans.”

But consider that we also we still have people today who think that Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty isn't racist or homophobic.