[Skooz]

Straight murders gay = news. Victim is helpless martyr to the cause of diversity.
Gay murders straight = not news. Victim may have been gay and had it coming.

Gotcha.

I can't think of any useful comparison to the Sheppard case, i.e., an instance when a couple of gay men beat a straight man to death because he was straight.

The motivation of the killers is more important than their actions? Huh?

Who has the agenda?

[Fethiye]

I did not say that the Sheppard murder was "worse" than the Dirkhising murder. I don't think one was "worse" than the other.

What I said was the Sheppard murder was what is known as a "hate" crime, i.e., a crime motivated by the victim's social status. The Dirkhising murder was what is known as a "sex" crime, i.e., a crime committed in connection with a rape. Therefore the appropriate comparison of the Dirkhising case is to other sex crimes against children.

But maybe you're right: Let's use the sexual orientation of the perpetrator as the classification for comparison. But then we end up with a whole heap of murders committed by straights, and a much smaller number of murders committed by gays, don't we?