Matthew Shepard murder: 10 years later

[MSD]

Landmark Anti-Gay Hate Crime, Decade Later, Brutal Slaying Of Matthew Shepard In Wyoming Accelerated Push For Laws Against Hate Crimes; His Mother Is Crusading For More - CBS News

(CBS) It was ten years ago Monday that openly gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten. He died five days later.

Police ruled it a hate crime, and there was an international outcry, along with calls for tougher laws.

As CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras notes, the beating was so savage that a description of his injuries, even a decade later, is hard to listen fathom.

"His head trauma consisted of a massive blow to the right side of his head," Rulon Stacey of Poudre Valley Hospital told reporters at the time. "It fractured his skull from behind his head in a horizontal fashion to in front of his right ear."

On the night of Oct. 6, 1998, Shepard left the Fireside Bar in Laramie with Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The next morning, Shepard was found tortured and battered, tied to a fence. The biker who found him thought he was a scarecrow.

Shepard was mourned across the nation with candle light vigils.

His murder made hate crimes against gays a hot political issue, Assuras reports.

Celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres pressed for understanding.

”Please raise your children with love and non-judgment," DeGedneres said. "Tell them that everyone has the right to love who they want to love. It shouldn't threaten you or who you are."

The Human Rights Campaign in Washington, the nation's largest gay rights advocacy group, cites statistics from the FBI showing hate crimes based on sexual orientation are the third most prevalent type, behind those based on race and religion, Assuras points out.

Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solomnese says, "We have to find increasing ways to try to address this violence. What I think needs to happen ... is not just the kind of legislative efforts that we're making, but really addressing this at its root, in schools and among young people" top change attitudes.

Wyoming still hasn't enacted any hate crime laws, Assuras says, making it one of 19 states that don't address hate crimes based on sexual orientation. It's something Shepard's family and friends still hope to change.

On The Early Show Monday, Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, told co-anchor Maggie Rodriguez, "This whole week is just (one of) remembrances. It's a great sadness and sense of confusion, of loss. We've actually tried to address issues that haven't changed. It's been ten years. Why haven't things progressed further than they have?"

Judy says when that awful call first cam a decade ago, "We (she and her husband, Dennis) didn't really know what had happened. The circumstances and the facts were not known, but ... my first thought was, it happened because he was gay. You were just conditioned to think that that's going to happen, because someone's sexual orientation is different, that other people will hate them, will hurt them."

"Is that a hate? Is that a struggle that he lived with in his life?" Rodriguez asked.

"You know," Judy replied, "if he did, he didn't share it with us. We didn't -- weren't aware if he was ever harassed verbally before. We don't think he was physically, but we're not -- we don't know about verbally."

The two men responsible for Matthew's death are serving two consecutive life sentences, and Judy says the punishment fits the crime. "We are very satisfied that justice was done," Judy says. "There was absolutely no doubt that it was those two men. Both confessed, so it was, you know, they're paying the price for the decision they made."

Have they ever shown any remorse?

"To my knowledge, they have not. I'm pretty sure that they actually wonder still why they're in such trouble for what they did, just, you know, killing a young gay man. The environment was set up for them that it was OK to do that to Matt."

But, Judy says, there's been progress since Matt's death: "There's definitely been positive changes, and for a lot of reasons. Theatrical productions, literature, television, novels, movies, all portray the gay community in a very positive, forward-thinking way, and that has really helped. People understand the gay community.

"The level of ignorance is just -- it's amazing that people just don't know more about the civil rights that are being denied the gay community, and we're moving forward and working at the grassroots level now trying to really educate people and make them aware of the gay community."

Judy observed that Wyoming "is, I think, one of four states left with no hate crime legislation at all. Wyoming had the perfect opportunity to actually set the tone, set the example, just to be what every state should have been had that happened in their state, and they didn't take advantage of it."

We've done the discussion on the concept of a hate crime already, so let's leave that for Politics.

Ten years later, how far have we come? The Shepard case made national news and forced discrimination and hate into the spotlight where we couldn't ignore it. FBI statistics for 2007 haven't been released yet, but in 2006 there were 1380 crimes reported motivated by sexual orientation, up from 2005, and I can't even find data from back in 1998. In everyday life, I see anti-gay biases regularly, if not frequently.

Sure, gay rights as far as marriage and civil union have come a long way, but it's still a very controversial topic among the population at large. Issues affecting the gay population get more attention, but it's telling that their issues still have to be considered separately from the general population. I just got out of college, and as progressive as people are, homophobia is still rampant whether overt or not. I feel that homophobia is still an acceptable prejudice in our society and that it is holding back change. I feel that religious groups have forgotten the Golden Rule that is essentially the same for all, regardless of how it is phrased in their scripture. I see ignorance and stereotypes promoted and exploited in the media for entertainment value, and out of fear and ignorance in the general population. Most of all, I am consistently disgusted with the attitude among so many people and toward so many people that it is acceptable to hate and hurt others for being different; homosexuality is based in biology and arguments to the contrary are founded in ignorance and intellectual dishonesty.

Consider these questions if you're not sure what to say: What has gotten better since then? What hasn't changed? What has gotten worse? What have you done to help? Could you have done more? How do you see others around you feeling about this?

[ngdawg]

While "rights" and openness have progressed, acceptance hasn't done so at the same rate.
People can be really stupid-they place their fears on some natural entity so they can see where the "blame" is. Of course, it's all in their heads....blacks aren't stealing their jobs, gays won't hit on them and all the Asian kids won't scoop up their kids' college money, but it's so much easier to mumble than to put out effort.
There are hate crimes a few times a year in New York City that are reported-a transgender gets pummelled by a crowd of punks, a Jewish student gets chased into a street and dies when hit by a car...
Ya can't cure stupid.

[jewels]

I see it as similar to sexism or racism. There's so much ignorance and fear of the unknown that it's going to take a few generations to see any big change.

I hear the word tolerance being thrown around a lot; I guess that's supposed to be some headway. It begs to the cartoonish "some of my good friends are (fill in the blank) mentality. Tolerance isn't enough, it still breeds hatred. We've got a long way to go.

[genuinegirly]

California currently accepts gay marriage, thanks to the 9th circuit. Still, there's a proposed ammendment to the state constitution on the ballot this year that would put an end to homosexual marriages by defining marriage as between a man and a woman. There seems to be very little interest in the proposition. Everyone I know will be shocked if it passes (even those who support it think it's a lost cause). In this sense, I think our state is progressing toward a more accepting future. I suppose there will always be a few who will continue kicking and screaming. I honestly don't think that governent has any right to define marriage or to limit sexuality between consenting adults.

When it comes to violence in schools - I look at stories like this case in Wyoming and I think, "What?!" I can't grasp why anyone would do it.