They could be snapshots of you, your brother, your son, your sister.

Let’s hope they never are.

Because all the eager, young, wholesome faces smiling from the Gay American Heroes Foundation’s Web site are the faces of GLBT victims of “hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias” – although “murder” is the term Scott Hall, founder of the Gay American Heroes Foundation (GAHF), prefers.

“How many more gay murders until you get involved?” GAHF’s home page challenges. Hall will put the question to us all at the Winter Party Festival in South Beach this February, when he and GAHF’s 12 advisory board members officially launch the foundation.

Inspired to create it last March 14, after two men beat Ryan Skipper, 25, of Polk County, Fla., “beyond recognition,” stabbed him 20 times and slit his throat before dumping him on the side of a road, Hall said the foundation has since raised $25,000 to boost awareness of hate crimes against GLBT people.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force contributed $5,000, and Safe Schools South Florida last week promised a matching grant of $100,000.

GAHF hopes to raise additional funds via its “adopt a hero” promotion. For a minimum donation of $25, supporters will receive a photograph of a victim, along with that person’s “story” – favorite color, occupation etc. “You’ll never have the opportunity to meet Ryan Skipper, unfortunately. But you may have the opportunity to get to know him,” Hall said.

The package also includes a card that can be sent to the victim’s family with a personal message. “You’ll be able to send them a message letting them know that their son or daughter has been adopted and will be remembered for [the] courageous, heroic act of living as an openly gay person in a society, where it’s not safe and you’re putting yourself at risk every day that you do,” Hall said.

GAHF will use monies raised toward several unique ends, including a traveling memorial that will visit cities throughout the country when a hate crime occurs. The multi-colored, interactive memorial will be more than 7-feet tall and up to 100-feet long. “When you approach the memorial it’s a bit overwhelming, yet inspiring, and from different angles you see different things,” Hall said. When it’s finished, visitors will be able to trace over the faces of the heroes to take a memento of the exhibit with them. One side of the exhibit has “hundreds and hundreds of stars representing each person who’s been murdered,” Hall said. Each star has the hero’s name, their age, occupation and the state in which they were murdered. “We wanted you to connect with it, so you could say ‘Wow, that person was somebody my age, or they were a waiter, they were a doctor, they were a fireman, they did the same kind of work I did.’ So it just really puts a connection together.”

The memorial, once constructed, will also include photographs of the victims – victims such as Ronnie Paris, whose father beat him to death when he was three years old, trying to teach him to be tough so he would not grow up to be gay. Or Sean Kennedy, 20, who died last May in Greenville, S.C., after coming out of a straight bar. “A guy runs up to him, calls him a faggot, punches him so hard in the face that it breaks his face. He hits the ground so hard that it snaps his brain from its stem,” Hall said. “The saddest part about this is… that when Sean died, …they donated his organs. There are five straight people who are alive because of Sean.”

Victims’ sexual orientation “or perceived sexual orientation” will also be noted on the memorial, said Hall, a GLBT ally, who himself has survived two hate crimes motivated by perceived sexual orientation – in one of which thugs attacked him with a baseball bat while he stood outside a Florida gay bar.

Hall urges other hate crime survivors to contact GAHF to help it compile a database of numbers, types and locations of such crimes. Currently, Hall said, there isn’t a comprehensive listing of such information, but the foundation, along with the Stonewall Library & Archives in Fort Lauderdale, will create one.

The information will enable GAHF to graph where hate crimes are most prevalent.

“Then we can start looking at why and see who’s teaching hate – because hate is a behavior that is taught,” Hall said.

The list is also vital, he said, because it offers a way for people to participate in raising hate crimes awareness by contributing to a living memorial. “People always ask ‘What can I do?’ after a hate crime, but other than reporting it to law enforcement they don’t know,” Hall said. “They can help build a list, help build a memorial.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported Nov. 19 that hate crimes rose 25 percent in San Diego city and 32 percent in San Diego County in 2006. Sexual orientation bias was the leading motivation for hate crime in the city.

The Gay American Heroes Foundation is recognized by 11 organizations, including Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce and the Trevor Project. Its 20-member honorary committee includes singer Cyndi Lauper and Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

To make a donation, arrange a visit of the traveling memorial or contribute information to GAHF’s list of hate crime victims, visit GAHF at www.GayAmericanHeroes.com or contact local representative Mark Gubuzda at mgabuzda@cox.net