I would like to respond to David Constans sarcastic letter which was headlined "Hate-filled, bigoted killers vs. plain old dispassionate killers."

No one is suggesting that young, gay Matthew Shepard's life was more valuable or his death more tragic than anyone else's. If we must look for comparisons, consider the black man dragged to his death behind a pickup truck last summer. These incidents receive national attention because the victims were singled out for being members of a group that the perpetrators wished to intimidate or eliminate.

In plainer words, these are lynchings, acts of terrorism. They strike at core American values in a way that murder motivated by greed, revenge, passion or random aggression do not. The outrage is not from the fact that the victim was "X," but that he was targeted for his "X"-ness. Yes, this moves the crime into a different category. The law has always distinguished between motives in determining just punishment for capital offenses.

These acts are not really directed at the victims themselves, who are, after all, anonymous symbols to their torturers, but rather at a whole class of citizen. These are crimes against society, like a bomb in the marketplace. We should indeed take extra measures to send a clear message to those who would perpetrate them.