Memorial planned for gay victims

MIAMI - Scott Hall has already assembled the names of nearly 600 gay victims of hate crimes, and more keep getting added to the list.

The latest: Lawrence King, a 15-year-old shot to death in Oxnard, Calif., by a schoolmate who targeted him for wearing girl's clothing.

If Hall has his way, King and the rest of the names will one day be etched on a traveling memorial to those targeted for being gay. He plans to preview the memorial at the Winter Party Festival, a massive annual gathering of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals that began Saturday on Miami's South Beach.

Hall knows the sting of violence. Someone hit him in the head with a baseball bat 25 years ago when he was leaving a gay bar in Melbourne, he said.

That didn't prompt his desire to honor other, less fortunate victims of gay violence. It was the 2007 death of Ryan Keith Skipper - who was stabbed 20 times and dumped on a roadside in Polk County - that spurred Hall to create the Gay American Heroes Foundation.

The Cocoa Beach auctioneer has raised about $25,000 for the traveling memorial.

[Last modified February 24, 2008, 00:16:55]