Last week marked 25 years since the vicious murder of Matthew Shepard, killed for being gay. A 22-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, Matthew was abducted by two men who took him to a remote field near Laramie. The men tied Matthew to a split-rail fence, beat him repeatedly with the butt of a pistol, and left him to die in the cold of the night. He was found by a bicyclist passing by, who initially mistook him for a scarecrow, and died a few days later. 

The wanton killing of Matthew Shepard sent a shockwave across the country and awakened millions to the deep injustices and persecution that gay people face. In the short run, the storm around Matthew’s murder (and the lynching of James Byrd Jr., a Black man, in Texas several months earlier) was part of a push for “anti-hate crime” laws and other reforms. At the same time, Christian fascist forces were gathering strength—like the reactionary fools who showed up at Matthew’s funeral with signs saying he was “going to hell.” These fascist forces—with an agenda of undisguised white supremacy, male supremacy, anti-LGBTQ hatred, America-first chauvinism, and rule through violence and terror—would grow even stronger through the following years. They are now all throughout top levels of power in this country and its ruling institutions, including all three branches of the government and the military. Demonization of and violence against LGBTQ people has not only continued but is growing. On the other side of the divide at the top, the Democrats are trying desperately to hold this capitalist-imperialist system together the way it’s been in the past—which has actually meant horror and violence for the masses of people here and around the world. 

But while these intense and quickly sharpening divisions among the rulers of this country today hold extreme danger, they also open up greater possibility for an actual revolution to defeat and abolish the system that rules over us—and replace it with a socialist system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. This will take a tremendous, and urgent, fight now to bring forward the forces for this revolution and wrench out these revolutionary openings.¹

Making an actual revolution to overthrow this system, replacing it with a fundamentally different system—a socialist system—would empower and enable the people to work to uproot oppression of women and LGBTQ people, whole nations and peoples… all relations of exploitation and oppression around the world, building a whole different economic and political system to serve all this. Imagine an emancipatory society in which the following would be among the highest priorities:

Eliminating Discrimination, Inequality, and Oppression in Every Form

In the new socialist society, eliminating all the oppressive divisions that characterized the old society—including oppression based on nationality and race, sex and gender—will be a fundamental goal and of the highest priority. Special attention and resources will be devoted to overcoming the terrible legacy of slavery and genocide, and the continual discrimination and brutal degradation, to which Black people, Native Americans, Latinos and other people of color have been subjected throughout the history of the USA. Immigrants, from all parts of the world, who have a sincere desire to contribute to goals of the new socialist republic will be welcome in this republic. The rights of LGBT people and of women, including the fundamental rights to abortion and birth control, are guaranteed in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America and will be protected and enforced by the government of that new socialist republic. As emphasized in this Constitution, the oppression of women arose together with, and for thousands of years has been woven together with, relations among human beings based on exploitation, and this is a defining feature of the capitalist-imperialist USA. Abolishing and uprooting all this will be one of the most important objectives of the new revolutionary society based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

—from We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System