Thursday, October 12, 2006
make something beautiful
Today is the eigth anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death.
As you may recall, Matthew Shepard was the 21-year-old college student who was brutally beaten and tied to a fence on the Wyoming prairie by a pair of tweaking homophobes. Matthew's death was tragic, but it was also transformative.
Nothing before had captured the national consciousness and focused it on the profound violence forced upon the LGBT community every day. Matthew's murder merited a Rose Garden press conference by the President of the United States (just two years after he signed the Defense of Marriage Act and six years after he created the Don't Ask Don't Tell rule).
Now it's true that this story was so riveting in part because Matthew was an attractive, well to do young man who had a bright future ahead of him and Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, his murderers, were from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. There are issues of racism and classism and sexism at play that made this case more visible than any of the anti-LGBT hate crimes that happen every day against people of color, poor people, lesbians and so on.
Matthew Shepard's murder wasn't just a transformative moment for the nation, it was personally transformative for me. I was a junior in college, had been identifying as bi for a couple of years, and was engaged to a limited degree in the LGBT community on campus and in the city of Ithaca.
When news of the horror of Matthew's beating came down, and later his death, I took a good hard look at my own life. I realized how vulnerable I was. Matthew was only a couple years older than me. We had a lot in common. He was much better looking and had a lot more resources. There were surely differences, but I did feel an incredibly deep affinity with this person I'd never met.
I realized how much hate is actually out there. I was angry. I was hurt. I was scared. But I was also empowered for the first time to be true to myself. Matthew Shepard's murder not only gave me the strength and courage to fully come out as gay (or queer, as I now identify), but it transformed me from a bystander to an activist.
Within weeks, I spoke in front of a campus-wide rally about Matthew and what his murder meant to us. Thousands of students, staff and faculty members (on a campus of roughly 5,000 undergrads) were galvanized to attend that vigil and rally.
Within a year, I was organizing the campus effort to establish a LGBT Resource Center on campus. I'm very proud to say that last week the Ithaca College Center for LGBT Education, Outreach and Services celebrated its fifth year of service.
During my sophomore year at Ithaca College, the Department of Theatre Arts put on a production of the musical Quilt, about the stories of the people behind the panels on the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. One of the vignettes features a mother singing (of course) about the hate crime murder of her gay son (he wasn't HIV positive, but the murderers assumed he was because he was with his boyfriend). The refrain of the song goes, "out of something terrible can come something beautiful." That's always stuck with me. And so it was with Matthew's murder.
Speaking of theatre, you should get your hands on a copy of Moises Kaufman's "The Laramie Project", an HBO film adapted from Kaufman's Tectonic Theatre Company creation of the same name about the way Matthew's murder affected the town in which it was committed.
Matthew's parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, created the Matthew Shepard Foundation with a mission "to support diversity programs in education and to help youth organizations establish environments where young people can feel safe and be themselves." According to the Foundation website, "the Foundation focuses on three primary areas: Erasing Hate in our society, putting GLBT Youth First and ensuring Equality for all GLBT Americans."
If you ever get an opportunity to hear Judy Shepard speak, take advantage of it. She is powerful, moving and enlightening. Today she sent out a request to the Foundations supporters, on the eighth anniversary of her son's murder. Below is the start of that e-mail:
Out of something terrible, we can all help make the world a little more beautiful on November 7. Go to the Foundation website and pledge to vote in Matthew's place, since he can't.
And then, of course, go out and vote on November 7.
As you may recall, Matthew Shepard was the 21-year-old college student who was brutally beaten and tied to a fence on the Wyoming prairie by a pair of tweaking homophobes. Matthew's death was tragic, but it was also transformative.
Nothing before had captured the national consciousness and focused it on the profound violence forced upon the LGBT community every day. Matthew's murder merited a Rose Garden press conference by the President of the United States (just two years after he signed the Defense of Marriage Act and six years after he created the Don't Ask Don't Tell rule).
Now it's true that this story was so riveting in part because Matthew was an attractive, well to do young man who had a bright future ahead of him and Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, his murderers, were from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. There are issues of racism and classism and sexism at play that made this case more visible than any of the anti-LGBT hate crimes that happen every day against people of color, poor people, lesbians and so on.
Matthew Shepard's murder wasn't just a transformative moment for the nation, it was personally transformative for me. I was a junior in college, had been identifying as bi for a couple of years, and was engaged to a limited degree in the LGBT community on campus and in the city of Ithaca.
When news of the horror of Matthew's beating came down, and later his death, I took a good hard look at my own life. I realized how vulnerable I was. Matthew was only a couple years older than me. We had a lot in common. He was much better looking and had a lot more resources. There were surely differences, but I did feel an incredibly deep affinity with this person I'd never met.
I realized how much hate is actually out there. I was angry. I was hurt. I was scared. But I was also empowered for the first time to be true to myself. Matthew Shepard's murder not only gave me the strength and courage to fully come out as gay (or queer, as I now identify), but it transformed me from a bystander to an activist.
Within weeks, I spoke in front of a campus-wide rally about Matthew and what his murder meant to us. Thousands of students, staff and faculty members (on a campus of roughly 5,000 undergrads) were galvanized to attend that vigil and rally.
Within a year, I was organizing the campus effort to establish a LGBT Resource Center on campus. I'm very proud to say that last week the Ithaca College Center for LGBT Education, Outreach and Services celebrated its fifth year of service.
During my sophomore year at Ithaca College, the Department of Theatre Arts put on a production of the musical Quilt, about the stories of the people behind the panels on the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. One of the vignettes features a mother singing (of course) about the hate crime murder of her gay son (he wasn't HIV positive, but the murderers assumed he was because he was with his boyfriend). The refrain of the song goes, "out of something terrible can come something beautiful." That's always stuck with me. And so it was with Matthew's murder.
Speaking of theatre, you should get your hands on a copy of Moises Kaufman's "The Laramie Project", an HBO film adapted from Kaufman's Tectonic Theatre Company creation of the same name about the way Matthew's murder affected the town in which it was committed.
Matthew's parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, created the Matthew Shepard Foundation with a mission "to support diversity programs in education and to help youth organizations establish environments where young people can feel safe and be themselves." According to the Foundation website, "the Foundation focuses on three primary areas: Erasing Hate in our society, putting GLBT Youth First and ensuring Equality for all GLBT Americans."
If you ever get an opportunity to hear Judy Shepard speak, take advantage of it. She is powerful, moving and enlightening. Today she sent out a request to the Foundations supporters, on the eighth anniversary of her son's murder. Below is the start of that e-mail:
October 12, 2006
Dear Friend,
8 years ago today, hate in its most vicious form stole the life of my son Matthew. Sometimes it seems like only yesterday, but then I reflect on all of the progress that has been made since 1998 to erase hate in our society - progress made in part because of what happened to Matthew. That is why on this day each year, the Matthew Shepard Foundation seeks to do something proactive to keep the tide of positive change moving forward.
Today we are launching our National Get Out The Vote Campaign to encourage everyone in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender (GLBT) and allied community to let their voice be heard and vote on November 7th. If Matthew were alive today, I know he would tell you:
REGISTER! LEARN! PASS IT ON! VOTE!!! STAY INVOLVED!
(snip)
Out of something terrible, we can all help make the world a little more beautiful on November 7. Go to the Foundation website and pledge to vote in Matthew's place, since he can't.
And then, of course, go out and vote on November 7.
