The legacy of a gay college student 20 years after his brutal murder.

The legacy of a gay college student 20 years after his brutal murder. https://i0.wp.com/www.eresviral.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/El-legado-de-un-estudiante-universitario-gay-20-años-después-de-su-brutal-asesinato.jpg?fit=195%2C146&ssl=1

The legacy of a gay college student 20 years after his brutal murder.







Twenty years ago, Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old "smart and funny", not unlike any other young man of that age.



He was an "ordinary child who wanted to make the world a better place," his parents recalled.



But in October of 1998, everything changed, when the openly gay university student was kidnapped, beaten and tied to a fence in Wyoming.



His life ended a few days later, and with it came a generalized awareness of the dangers that members of the LGBTQ community face every day. The brutal homophobic murder also served as a catalyst for progress in the laws and culture of the United States.



However, in the two decades that have passed, it remains debatable to what extent the country has arrived since the impact of that crime.



A frightful attack

Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, spent October 6, 1998, at a meeting of the LGBTQ student group at the school, planning upcoming events for the LGBTQ awareness week, said Jason Marsden, executive director from the Matthew Shepard Foundation, to ABC News.



He then had coffee with friends before heading to a bar in Laramie, in southeastern Wyoming.



Shepard was sitting alone at the bar, having a beer, when Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson boarded it. They later confessed that they had "developed a resentment in which they pretended to be gay to gain Matt's trust," Marsden said.



"They could offer him a trip home and rob him," he added.





Matthew Shepard Foundation
Matthew Shepard is seen in this undated photo.

McKinney and Henderson kidnapped Shepard and told him they were stealing him, Marsden said.



"They started attacking him physically, first with his fists and then with a Magnum .357 gun that Aaron McKinney was carrying," Marsden said.



McKinney and Henderson took Shepard to a meadow east of the city, where they tied him to a fence, Marsden said.



McKinney hit Shepard about 20 times on the head and face with the tip of the gun, Marsden said, before the two stole Shepard's shoes, got into his truck and returned to the city.



Shepard was found the next day, 18 hours later, by a passing cyclist. He was taken to a hospital in Laramie, but his head injuries were so severe that he needed a neurosurgeon, so he was taken to a Colorado hospital, Marsden said.



Shepard's parents at that time were in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked. They returned and were with their son in the hospital during his last days, said Marsden.



When his mother, Judy Shepard, saw the college student hit hard in the hospital, "he was all bandaged, his face swollen, stitches everywhere," he told ABC News "Nightline." "His fingers curled, his toes curled, one eye was a little open."



Shepard died on October 12.





Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images, ARCHIVE
Judy and Dennis Shepard speak at the Democratic National Convention at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on August 16, 2000.

The loss "never heals," said his father, Dennis Shepard, to "Nightline." "He was just an ordinary kid who wanted to make the world a better place, and they took it away from him and us."



A young and promising short life

Matthew Shepard was a mischievous, obstinate and argumentative child, said his father.





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We did not realize the amount of violence and discrimination ... against the gay community until after his death.

She grew up and became very interested in international human rights, particularly in the rights of women in the Middle East and Asia, and studied political science, said Marsden.



"His goal was to work for the State Department to try to bring the same privileges and rights that he believed he had in the United States to other countries," said Dennis Shepard.





See the full story on ABC News' "Nightline" tonight at 12:35 a.m. ET. 



A few years before his death, Matthew Shepard communicated with his mother by telephone.



"He said, 'Mom, I'm gay.' And I said, 'What did it take you so long to tell me?' He recalled. "Rejection was never a problem in our family."



His son was living an open life then.



"Everyone he met said: 'Just so you know in advance, I'm gay,'" said Dennis Shepard.



"It was like, 'This is what I am, and it will be like that,'" added Judy Shepard.



Dennis Shepard was not worried about his son's safety.



"We did not realize the amount of violence and discrimination ... against the gay community until after his death," he said. "We think he was born here ... he has all the rights, responsibilities, duties and privileges of all other US citizens."



The nation laments

The shocking homophobic crime in the sparsely populated state won national sympathy. The outpouring of love was immediate when the flowers and stuffed animals filled the hospital.



"This is before the viral term existed, but it really went viral," Marsden said.



"Generated candlelight vigils throughout the country, there was a massive protest on Fifth Avenue in New York in which nearly 100 people were arrested," Marsden said, as well as a vigil at the United States Capitol. with celebrities and members of Congress.





Evan Agostini / Getty Images ARCHIVE
A candlelight vigil is held for Matthew Shepard, a gay Slain student in Wyoming, on October 19, 1998.

"All these spontaneous vigils were organized by volunteers independently, and all calls to action for hate crime legislation were the work of individual civic and political leaders," Marsden explained. "It was a spontaneous indignation about the seriousness of this crime and the general phenomenon of hate crimes against LGBT people, who began to receive more social attention at this time than they had received in previous years."



But not everything was sympathy.



Members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested the funeral, picketing with anti-gay signals.



Reverend Fred Phelps and his parishioners traveled from Kansas to Laramie for the funeral and the trial, protesting with brightly colored signs and spitting hatred.



The friends of the dead student dressed in angel costumes and organized a counter protest that surrounded the parishioners so that their signs were not visible.





Juana Arias / Washington Post / AP
Friends of Matthew Shepard, Walter Boulden and Alex Trout, from the left, get excited as they speak during a national vigil by Shepard on the steps of the US Capitol. UU., October 14, 1998.

Two assassins go to court

After McKinney and Henderson were arrested, Henderson resigned his pre-trial investigation and accepted a plea agreement, accepting two life sentences.



McKinney went to trial, and defense lawyers argued that his violent actions were "gay panic," a reaction to Shepard making a sexual breakthrough.



"When the defense comes out and starts talking about the victim's fault, you know, 'gay panic' '... you really want to scream," said Judy Shepard. "One of the parts of her statement was that Matt was approaching him ... if that's your defense, then all the women in a bar who are beaten, she has the right to kill the guy who's sitting on her. it's stupid. "



The defense of "gay panic" remains legal in most states, but has been outlawed in some. It has been used since the 1960s in more than half of the states of the country, according to the Williams Institute of Law School of UCLA.



McKinney was convicted on numerous counts of kidnapping and murder. Prior to sentencing, his lawyers, the Shepards and prosecutors agreed to two consecutive life sentences in exchange for removing the death penalty from the table.



McKinney has refused to talk to ABC News, while Henderson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Change in washington

Shepard's murder shed light on the scope of federal hate crime laws, which at that time did not include sexual orientation or gender identity.





Hector Mata / AFP through Getty Images ARCHIVE
Two homosexual activists demonstrate on the streets of North Hollywood to protest against the death of the University of Wyoming student, Mathew Shepard, on October 13, 1998.



Andrew Savulich / NY Daily News Archive through Getty Images
Protesters protest against the hate murder of gay student Matthew Shepard, October 19, 1998.

"Matt's murder immediately increased the visibility of that effort and, although it was delayed until 2009, it finally passed and was promulgated by President Obama," Marsden said.



The Hate Crimes Prevention Act of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. added the crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability of the victim to the federal hate crime law.



James Byrd Jr., who was black, was murdered by three white supremacists in Texas in June 1998. Byrd was dragged behind a van, beheaded and dismembered.



The moment Obama signed the hate crime law "was incredible," said Judy Shepard. "He understood the social injustice, and being there with the sisters of James Byrd when they, when he signed, signed the law, it was an incredible experience, it was a relief and it was also a total understanding that there really was a lot more to do" .





Win McNamee / Getty Images, ARCHIVE
President Barack Obama comments on the enactment of the "Hate Crimes Prevention Act of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr." in the East Room of the White House, on October 28, 2009, in Washington, DC.

"There have now been dozens of cases prosecuted against violent criminals who attack people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or other characteristics that are now easier to process than they were under the previous law," Marsden said. "Several states also passed legislation on hate crimes for the first time or tightened their hate crime laws."



Beyond the federal law of hate crimes, in the years after the death of Matthew Shepard, among the most important legislative victories for the LGBTQ community are the repeal of Do not Ask Do not Tell in 2010, so that gay military members can serve openly without fear of being fired, and the legalization of same-sex marriage across the country in 2015.



A change in American culture.

The tragic murder also led to the creation of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, whose mission "is to replace hatred with compassion, understanding and acceptance," said Judy Shepard.



"The core of what we do is try to get individual people excited about making a difference," Marsden said of the foundation. "If millions of people wanted to act together, we could make hate obsolete, we could define our social norms in such a way that this kind of behavior starts to disappear."





Michael Loccisano / Getty Images, ARCHIVE
Judy Shepard and Dennis Shepard speak at the 2015 Logo Trailblazer Honors at Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City on June 25, 2015.

For Judy Shepard, one of the best signs of cultural progress is to see the Gay Straight Alliance groups join the schools. In Wyoming, where there is a population of only 500,000, she said there are 19 Direct Gay Alliances.



The story of Matthew Shepard has also lived through several creative works, including the plays "The Laramie Project" and "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later", which tell the story of how the residents of Laramie reacted to the murder.



They are among the most interpreted works in US high schools, said Marsden, and have even been performed around the world in different languages, said Judy Shepard.



"It's a universal story," he said. "If it eliminates the sexuality of history and inserts race or religion, it is exactly the same history of intolerance in a community or intolerance of people and how it affects a community."



"Matt's story, I think, was inspiring to many people, especially to people his age who had not previously participated in LGBT rights and started doing it, some have become really outstanding activists in the community," said Marsden.



Back to 'ground zero'

"I thought we were making a lot of progress in the Obama administration," Judy Shepard said, but after the 2016 presidential election, she felt that the foundation's progress was at "zero point."



The Trump administration has brought changes that include an order to ban transgender troops in the military and a new "religious freedom task force" that advocates fear will provide an excuse for discrimination.



Just this week, a new policy came into effect in which the Trump government will no longer provide visas for same-sex domestic partners of foreign diplomats and US officials who serve in the US. UU



"I'm so angry that we're going backwards," Judy Shepard said. "We're back on the road talking about hate and acceptance and loving your neighbor and, you know, all those things again."



During the Obama administration, the Department of Justice "was working with us."



"They would organize conferences to educate law enforcement, NGOs and non-profit organizations on how to deal with hate crimes, how to deal with them, how to identify them, how to work with victims, and invite us to come," said Judy Shepard. . "We visited several countries, 25 countries with [the] Department of State. Now we are not. "



"Now him [Department of Justice] He definitely does not want to work with us, "he continued. Civil rights are no longer a problem, a major problem for the Department of Justice. ... So we no longer receive calls from them. "



For Marsden, the degrees of progress of LGBTQ rights in the last 20 years vary.



Especially in urban areas, Marsden said that "LGBT people have much more personal freedom, career opportunities, are much less subject to discrimination, I think many of our schools are safer, including bullying problems, which of course affect to people beyond the LGBT community: they affect anyone who is different in some way or another than the perceived norm.



"However, if you look back at the story every time there is great progress, there is also a great backlash," he said, citing how the end of slavery sparked the evolution of KKK and Jim Crow, while the movement of Civil Rights of the 1960s initiated racial violence. .



"All the advances we have made have been excellent, but they have not reached everyone." It is still a very difficult time to be a [transgender] children in the United States, even in the most enlightened parts of the country, certainly in the most rural areas of the country. "



A Gallup poll in May 2018 found that 31 percent of people do not believe that marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.



"The general lesson about looking back on progress is that you have to fight to keep it in. It can be very easy from the political point of view at this moment in the United States to reverse the achievements made in the last 10 or 15 years," he said. Marsden.



"I want people to be very aware of their security," said Judy Shepard, warning that hatred still exists and that women, people and members of the LGBT community are especially vulnerable. "Especially now, when we hear our leaders shout a lot of vitriol."



"The amount of hate crimes against LGBT people has increased in the last two years, as have hate crimes," said Marsden.



Hate crimes reported in the 10 largest cities in the nation increased 12.5 percent last year: the fourth consecutive annual increase and the highest total in more than 10 years, according to an analysis by the Center for the Study of I hate California State University in San Bernardino Extremism.



"Most hate crimes and discrimination are racial or religious, LGBT is a smaller percentage," said Marsden. "We see, sadly, that the kind of person who hates a certain race is very likely to be the kind of person who hates a certain religion or a certain sexual orientation or gender identity, too."



A legacy - and life - commemorated.

For the mother of the murdered student, Matthew Shepard must not only be remembered for his legacy, but must be remembered for his life.



"I want people to remember that he was a person, that he was more than just an icon in photography and in stories," said Judy Shepard. "It was fair, I was a 21-year-old college student who drank too much, smoked too much and did not attend class enough, like all the other 21-year-old undergraduates I had shortcomings, it was smart, fun, people just felt attracted by him, and there was a great loss not only for us, but also for all his friends, and the people who had not yet met him. "





ABC news, Meghan Keneally and Conor Finnegan, contributed to this report.

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