Speaking Against Hate

by Elijah McCarthy

On a cold October night in 1998, just east of Laramie, Wyo., two men tied Matthew Shepard to a fence, beat him and left him to die. Shepard was a gay student at the University of Wyoming, and many Americans considered his murder to be motivated by hate.

Carrying on Shepard’s legacy more than eight years later, mother Judy Shepard talked to a packed audience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Jan. 30, saying that the country needed to be more accepting of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

“I have legs to stand on because hate for the gay community took the life of my son,” Shepard said to more than 400 students, professors and community members who filled the seats and aisles lining the Great Hall. “If we think as a nation that hate is something we don’t have to deal with on a daily basis then we are just kidding ourselves. It’s a problem we need to address.”

Event organizers such as UNC-CH’s LGBTQ Office and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender – Straight Alliance teamed with nearly 30 other University groups to publicize the event and to help pay for Shepard’s speaker fee, which was donated in part to the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

The planning process began more than a year ago when organizers were awarded a Carolina Parents Council grant which covered nearly two-thirds of the total cost, said Terri Phoenix, assistant director of the LGBTQ Office.

“There is always a lot of planning that needs to happen to bring a speaker of such national stature to campus,” Phoenix said. “But I love Judy Shepard because she is an ally, a mother who lost her son to hate and someone who talks about the issue broadly enough that people understand how education and understanding can minimize discrimination.”

Although she never intended to a professional speaker, Shepard said that she continues to speak to groups across the nation to raise enough awareness on the issue so that no one has to experience losing a child to hate as she did.

“Hate is a learned behavior,” Shepard said. “Someone has taught you over the years how to hate, who to hate and why. But we can take it back; we can change. What made us a great nation was taking care of each other, so why did we stop doing that?”

Addressing the LGBT community, Shepard said that while society needed to “take a giant leap of faith forward” to unlearn decades of anti-gay rhetoric, gays and lesbians also needed to increase their visibility.

“There is an extreme level of ignorance in our society today,” Shepard said. “So what are we going to do about that? We have to tell our stories.”

“The problems facing the gay and lesbian community today have been faced by other minorities throughout history; they are not new issues, but they only openly apply today to gays and lesbians,” Shepard said.

Matthew Shepard’s murder took place nearly a decade ago and more than 1,500 miles from Chapel Hill. But his mother’s presentation reminded audience members that it has only been two years since a group of men assaulted a gay UNC-CH student on East Franklin Street.

That assault mobilized student groups at UNC-CH to hold demonstrations aimed at raising awareness to hate crimes against the LGBT community. Organizers also petitioned the General Assembly to amend the state’s hate crime law – the “Ethnic Intimidation Act” – to include sexual orientation as a protected category, said Taylor Brown, a UNC-CH sophomore and co-chair of UNC-CH’s GLBT-SA.

The law remains unchanged, however, protecting only victims who are attacked on the basis of “race, color, religion, nationality or country of origin.” Tougher sentences can be given for a crime if prosecutors prove a victim was targeted for being identified with one of those categories.

Although legislators have introduced bills to add sexual orientation to the law in both houses of the legislature, the issue has lost momentum in recent years. The “Matthew Shepard Memorial Act” fell just 10 votes short of passing in the 1999-2000 session. But subsequent reintroductions of the bill have not made it out of committee.

“Introducing certain bills is about making judgment calls on whether those bills are appropriate for that year and if they can pass,” said Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, who co-sponsored the House version of the bill in 1999. “We often consult with Equality North Carolina and take their lead on issues to a certain extent.”

But Equality North Carolina, the state’s largest advocacy organization for securing the rights of the state’s LGBT citizens, is focused on lobbying other issues because previous hate crime bills have been unsuccessful, said Ian Palmquist, executive director of the organization.

“It’s an issue we continue to work on but think other issues will likely see movement before those changes are made to the bill,” Palmquist said. No bill to amend the state hate crime law has been introduced this session.

Hate crime legislation regarding sexual orientation often sparks heated debate because opponents of such laws say that they create “special laws for special people” when the law is supposed to be neutral, Shepard said.

But as the LGBT community becomes more of a mainstream presence in society, however, Insko said that amending the hate crime law to include sexual orientation will become less of a “hot button.” Bills regarding civil rights and protection for gays and lesbians have less opposition compared to years past, Insko said.

Judy Shepard shared that view in her presentation, saying that increased visibility will help future lawmakers to establish understanding for gays and lesbians, resulting in more legal protection for the LGBT community.

“What’s happening in our state legislatures is the same thing happening in Congress in Washington,” Shepard said. “Current leaders are from a generation brought up to think that everything gay was just the worst… . But when people of a younger age are elected and in office these things will be gone.”

Nationally, the legal protections are much the same as in North Carolina . Federal hate crime laws do not include sexual orientation as a category for consideration, although the “Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act” does collect data on crimes motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.

When Shepard finished speaking, the audience stood to applaud her. And many lingered in the lobby afterward to discuss her message.

“North Carolina lags so far behind with its hate crimes legislation and I believe that Shepard coming to speak makes the need for expanded hate crime legislation more tangible and undeniable,” said Jason Wang, a UNC-CH senior who attended the event.