For the month of May BMP Shirts is donating 25% of the price of each of their anti-bullying shirts to our work to Erase Hate. We wanted to share with you a note about why they are supporting us and what Matt’s story means to them.

Matthew Shepard and countless others have been victims of violence and bullying.  Fifteen years after his death, we are still dealing with the same issues of acceptance and equality.  Bullying for being gay or different is now more prevalent than ever – inside schools and even outside in the advent of cyber-bullying.

We’ve always thought about victims of bullying who have ended their own lives or at the hands of someone else.  We started to wonder, would things be different if someone who was on the verge of suicide had these words with them?

•             I won’t be bullied
•             I won’t be judged
•             I won’t be silent
•             I am not ashamed
•             I am strong
•             I am PROUD to be me

These sentences almost immediately came to mind and played over and over again, like a prayer.

Originally called, “Self-Affirmation”, we changed the title of this print to the more aptly named, “Anti-Bullying”.  This powerful design is a personal deterrent against bullying and violence of all kinds.  It is our hope that our contribution to this cause can help put an end to such tragedies.

For the month of May, BMP T-Shirts will contribute 25% of all sales of our Anti-Bullying t-shirt to The Matthew Shepard Foundation. 

Thank you so much and we are honored to help The Matthew Shepard Foundation in their efforts to erase hate.

Sincerely,
Diane and Kathy
BMP T-Shirts.com

by Sam Gardner for Fox Sports

In his historic coming-out essay Monday, NBA veteran Jason Collins revealed to Sports Illustrated that he wore the number 98 in 38 games this season while playing for the Boston Celtics andWashington Wizards as an unspoken “sign of solidarity” with the gay community.

He said he did so as a nod to the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention foundation founded in August 1998, and also in memory of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who was killed in October 1998 in one of the most infamous antigay hate crimes in history.

Shepard’s parents, Dennis and Judy, had never spoken to or met Collins before receiving an email from David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign with a link to the SI piece Monday morning, but it doesn’t make Collins’ expression of unity any less meaningful.

“It made me cry,” Judy Shepard told FOXSports.com during an interview Monday afternoon. “It was really quite a tribute, and I was very honored. And I know Matt would be thrilled.”

And the Shepards hope, someday, to be able to thank Collins personally for his bravery in opening himself up to the world and honoring their son’s name in the process.

“I would really love to speak to him, because I know Judy and I would just like to thank him,” Dennis Shepard said. “Because, No. 1, he had the courage to come out, period, and No. 2 that he wore 98 in honor of Matt, the year that he died.

“(Collins) couldn’t have been that old (when it happened), so it must have had a tremendous impact on him, the story behind Matt, for him to want to do that. And then to wear it all this time without telling people why until today, that’s incredible.”

For the Shepard family, who started the Matthew Shepard Foundation on Dec. 1, 1998 — what would have been Matthew’s 22nd birthday — as a way to promote awareness and positive change with respect to the gay community, progress is vital regardless of where it comes.

In 2009, it came in the form of the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which effectively classified anti-gay crimes as hate crimes.

“It’s a whole different world now from when we first started doing this,” Judy Shepard said. “It’s remarkable in the big picture how fast things have changed, especially since Obama became president. It’s just moved right along at light speed, and it’s really been quite remarkable.”

But to see that motion toward change come in the world of sports, an arena that’s somewhat lacking when it comes to gay rights, was particularly meaningful.

“Hopefully this will start the conversation saying there’s no difference, as long as my team wins, who cares if they’re straight or gay?” Dennis Shepard said. “There have been a lot of athletes that played and were gay, and I have a feeling their teammates knew it and they just didn’t care.”

Added Judy Shepard: “It’s always more challenging in team sports to have the courage to (come out), and I think that once the doors open, the floodgates will literally open. And not just in pro sports, but college and all down the line. It’s just a remarkable step forward.”

That’s a feeling shared by Abbe Land, the executive director and CEO of the Trevor Project, which has fielded more than 200,000 lifeline calls since its inception nearly 15 years ago, including more than 35,000 last year alone.

“(Collins’ coming out) shows young people that they can be basketball players or hockey players or football players, and that he was willing to do that and say he’s going to be who he is when he plays ball is very important,” Land said. “I think it really helps a young person kind of know that they are perfect just the way they are and they can achieve all of their goals and dreams.”

In addition to the 24-hour phone hotline, the Trevor Project also has its own social network, TrevorSpace, which has more than 50,000 active members. So to have a backer like Collins making LGBT youth more aware of their service is immensely important.

“If (Collins) hasn’t reached out to us, we will reach out to him,” Land said. “It’s great when we have folks who have high visibility who support the Trevor Project, because for a lot of young people, these are role models. So for him to say, ‘Here’s a place you can call if you need help,’ is great. … We still have a lot of work to do, but letting young people know that it’s OK to ask for help, that it’s OK to reach out, is very important.”

The goal, of course, for the Matthew Shepard Foundation, the Trevor Project and other organizations like them, is to get to a point where being gay is no longer viewed as controversial and to have the LGBT community be universally accepted. And though it won’t solve the problem altogether, having someone as visible as Jason Collins join that crusade is vitally important.

“You’re starting to see the general flow, that everybody’s realizing that there’s no difference between the straight community and the gay community,” Dennis Shepard said. “It’s just who they love, and for the rest of it, they’re out there, they have a mortgage to pay, they have kids in school, they want to have an ordinary life, retire and then die of old age with a smile on their face, just like everybody else.

“I just hope (Collins’ essay) furthers the cause, not so much for our foundation, but for the population in general, so we can get off this ride of having to worry about being the first, and these stories about who’s going to come out first. Who cares? The only first I want to know is Abbott and Costello.”

Matthew’s Place, our resources website for youth and young adults, provides LGBT and allied youth with not only skills to make their community a better and safer place, but also inspiration by telling the stories of how others are doing the same.

With this redesign, we have launched a number of new features including a personal stories section that will allow everyone to share their story of bullying or harassment and how they were able to overcome it. With our new comments thread, those who have shared their stories will be able to join in a conversation about what others can do to resolve bullying or harassment.

The new Matthew’s Place is also a breeze to use on mobile devices and tablets.

Young people in big cities and small towns alike are able to join the Matthew’s Place community and be themselves. We see many users from rural parts of the country looking for support unavailable in their community.

Matthew’s Place will continue to provide a comprehensive list of local LGBT centers as we expand our youth and young adult blogger program to share what real people are doing to Erase Hate in their own communities. As Matthew’s Place enters this next phase, we welcome your feedback and input as we continue to refine and improve the sight.

Here are those responses.

Q: We were wondering what the general context was back in 1998 for the LGBT community. Was it more violent than it is today? Was Matthew’s murder an ‘isolated’ act of violence or was it the final step in a daily life of general discrimination? 

A: Susan: In 1998, I was mostly ignorant of the LGBT community as a whole. Although I had many gay friends for many years, it wasn’t until Matt’s murder that I was moved to understand the challenges and discrimination faced by those friends. I don’t believe Matt’s murder was an isolated act of violence, nor was it a final step as you describe. It was one of many, many similar crimes that persist to this day.

A: Jason: Gay life in Wyoming in 1998 was not violent – it was quiet, not very visible, and the community was not only quite small, it felt even smaller than it was because online communities, advocacy organizations, and so forth, which have become very prominent in recent years, were either primitive at that time or non-existent. The federal government has tracked anti-LGBT hate crimes since 1991 and with few exceptions, the total number of crimes of this type has remained about the same from year to year. They are quite rare overall, being several hundred crimes annually in a country with more than 300 million people, but the severity and cruelty of them from time to time does generate a public impression of a crisis to those who care about LGBT people.

Q: We guess it wasn’t the first homophobic crime nor the last. Why was Matthew’s murder so largely covered by the media when other crimes were more ‘easily’ ignored? Was it because of the sheer violence of the crime, Matthew’s personality, his young age or the fact the his friends and/or family alerted the media? Was there something fundamentally different about Matthew’s murder?

A: Susan: I think several factors came into play in launching this crime into the international spotlight. Certainly the brutality of the murder was a factor, but as a journalist I believe that mis-reporting in the early hours of the discovery played a large factor. The person who found Matt, Aaron Kreifels, told a law enforcement officer that he first thought Matt was a scarecrow. Scarecrows here are generally put up on a cross-like structure, so when that officer briefed the first reporters about it that crucifixion image came into play. The story began to come across the wires as “young gay man crucified in Wyoming,” which caught the attention of assignment editors and reporters across the country.  It was that image, among other factors, that vaulted this crime into the limelight. I think another big factor was the fact that the conversation about hate had been working in the country, and to that end this became a “last straw” when people decided they’d had enough. In other words, I think the country was ready to hear and take action.

A: Jason: I was a reporter at the time as well and I concur with Susan’s response. I would add my own theory about what makes a news story prominent, or fails to do so. It is like all stories and writing – the ones that get people’s attention tend to have strong and compelling characters, unusual settings and circumstances, a “cliffhanger ending” where the ultimate outcome (i.e. would Matt survive in the hospital or not) is in question, and an audience whose attention is not being distracted by something else (i.e., a busy time in the news with other prominent stories fighting for the public’s attention). I believe Matt’s murder contained all the classic elements of a story that captures the public’s attention. Additionally at that time, the US Senate majority leader had just compared gay people to kleptomaniacs a few weeks earlier and there had been prominent debates about same-sex marriage and military service by gay people in the years leading up to this crime, which introduced LGBT topics into the public discourse more prominently than they had been before.

Q: If you had to describe the impact Matthew’s murder on society in general, how would you put it? Was there a global change towards the LGBT community afterwards? Was that change immediate or is the result of a long, patient, educational work? 

A: Susan: From my perspective I’d have to say that the impact of Matt’s murder was to raise the awareness of this kind of hate, to start conversations and create avenues for change where none existed before, or were simply not heard. I can’t speak to a global change, although I certainly hear this conversation going on in other countries.  I would say the change was not immediate, although the conversation was. The Shepards understood that Matt’s death had captured the attention of the world, but such attention is not always long-lived. This is how the Foundation was created, and there was been a lot of, as you say, long, patient educational work. Certainly the Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Jr. Federal Hate Crimes Act was a result of that kind of perseverance.

A: Jason: There had been a drive for LGBT-related hate crimes to be included in federal law before Matt’s murder but the example of this crime made the debate more concrete and personal to millions of people, as did President Clinton’s vocal support for the idea in the days after Matt’s death. This work continues with patience as its watchword and likely will continue to move at a deliberate, perhaps now accelerating, pace for some years yet to come.

Q: If you had to compare how things are today with how they were back in 1998, would you say that in general, LGBT people are safer and that equality is now concrete or mostly concrete? Or is the way to full equality and safety is still long and that there is still a lot of work to do?

A: Susan: I don’t know if the community is safer, and that’s very depressing to me. I certainly would say that equality is NOT concrete or even mostly concrete, although gains are being made and I think at least in this country we are seeing some change. There is, no doubt, a lot of work to do and I believe it’s very important that the generations to follow take up this cause.

A: Jason: As a gay man, I certainly feel safer, more accepted, better understood and altogether less “controversial” than I did in 1998. I live openly with a partner, have a broad and accepting network of friends and colleagues for whom my sexual orientation is not an issue, our rights as a family are beginning to gain more legal protections, and I seldom encounter hate or discrimination personally (but it does happen occasionally). However, we remain unequal under the laws governing taxation, inheritance, joint tenancy and retirement security, which grow in personal importance with each passing year. I also have experienced rejection by my mother which will probably never change due to her severe religious beliefs, and I know millions of people experience these same shortfalls in personal acceptance and security which I believe will continue to change only gradually over many decades.

Q: We can only imagine that one cannot go through something as violent as Matthew’s murder and some of the reactions that followed and stay exactly the same person. Nearly fifteen years later, if you had to explain what you have learned from Matthew’s murder and how it changed you, what would you say? 

A:Susan: As a journalist, being so immersed in the case when Matthew was killed was just the start of the many ways his death has touched me personally. From being involved with the play “The Laramie Project”, to witnessing first-hand the hate of the Westboro Baptist Church, to seeing how the Shepards have worked unceasingly to bring understanding and compassion to this issue and continue what we believe Matt would have wanted, to finally being given the honor to work with this Foundation…all of these things have led me to believe that this is the work I am called to do. I am changed by learning that I have so much to learn, and work I believe I am charged to do.

A: Jason: I learned that homophobia is real, it can be deadly and it can directly affect someone in my life. I learned that ordinary people whose loved ones suffer a fate like Matt’s can make a difference in his or her memory through stubborn, long effort. I learned that the people of America and the world can be moved by the millions to take up a cause because of the example of a single person. And I learned that despite tragedy and obvious injustice, some people’s attitudes will not only not change, but become more fixed and immovable, despite all efforts to persuade them otherwise.

Q: Do you think that the work you are doing everyday with the Foundation and the fight for a change in legislation, brought and still brings hope out of a tragedy? Was that a way to survive and to grow up as human beings to do something good out of the worst?

A: Susan: I do. I do not believe that this is “something that happened a long time ago and we just need to move on”, as I often hear. That angers and frustrates me. These issues are still with us, and have evolved into similar issues such as excessive bullying and other forms of hate. Our Executive Director Jason Marsden expressed once in a Foundation meeting, that he believes that the Foundation functions rather like a bookmark for Matt in this life, from the work he would have done to the ups and downs of navigating our way through trying to realize all of our expectations and hopes for the work we do.  I think that was amazingly eloquent. And true.

A; Jason: Susan is very kind to echo that thought. The way I tend to think of this is, nothing good ever comes directly from this kind of tragedy, but immeasurable good comes from individuals choosing to respond positively and hopefully in the face of the tragedy. No one who loses a loved one to violence ever moves on, but in parallel channels of their lives they can move things forward if they are so moved to do so.

Susan Burk, Laramie Project Specialist, Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Jason Marsden, Executive Director, Matthew Shepard Foundation

Events for The Lincoln Legacy Project will be presented in cooperation with several partner organizations including the Matthew Shepard Foundation, The Trevor Project, Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, Facing History and Ourselves, Not in Our Town, Split This Rock, Teaching for Change, the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Inspired by Lincoln’s work for justice, peace and equality, The Lincoln Legacy Project investigates moments in our nation’s history where we have failed to live up to our ideals, and provides a platform for dialogue to address steps toward improvement and reconciliation,” said Paul Tetreault, Ford’s Theatre Society Director. “We hope that, in even a small way, this year’s production of The Laramie Project might broaden our perspectives and open our eyes to how hate—in all its forms—weakens our society. We are honored to be joined by so many partner organizations who work in this sphere everyday to eradicate bigotry and intolerance.”

“Every great civil rights advance in our country’s history seems to stem from a place whose name echoes in Americans’ mind long after the crime, or vigil, or march or protest that occurred there,” said Jason Marsden, Executive Director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation. “Because of the visibility of Matthew Shepard’s murder, and the groundswell of LGBT civil rights activism that followed, Laramie, Wyoming is one of those places. The Laramie Project captures the momentousness of the days following Matt’s death, and the introspection and ongoing debate that lingers so many years later. The Matthew Shepard Foundation is proud and honored to work with Ford’s Theatre on this year’s Lincoln Legacy Project.”

“The Laramie Project helped a town, and then the nation, confront the horror and pain of a viscous hate crime killing by giving voice to an entire community,’ said Patrice O’Neill, Executive Director of Not In Our Town. “Not in Our Town is proud to be a part of the endeavor to promote deep conversations about how all of us are affected by acts of bigotry, and how each of us can find a way to stand up to hate in our communities, our country and our world.”

In addition to The Laramie Project, Ford’s will present four free Monday night panel discussions including a conversation with Judy Shepard, and two staged readings of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, an epilogue exploring what life in Laramie tells us about life in America 10 years later. A complete programming schedule for this year’s Lincoln Legacy Project, including events of our Legacy Project partners, will be announced in September 2013.

The Lincoln Legacy Project is made possible with support from: Ronald O. Perelman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Founding Sponsor; The Pew Charitable Trusts; the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, Harold Holzer, Chairman, and The Honorable and Mrs. Gregory B. Craig.

Tickets for The Laramie Project will be available for sale to Ford’s Theatre members and groups on May 20, 2013; the public can purchase tickets beginning May 28.

About Ford’s Theatre
One of the most visited sites in the nation’s capital, Ford’s Theatre reopened its doors in 1968, more than a hundred years after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Operated through a partnership between Ford’s Theatre Society and the National Park Service, Ford’s Theatre is the premier destination in the nation’s capital to explore and celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s ideals and leadership principles: courage, integrity, tolerance, equality and creative expression.

Click here for more information of this production and the Lincoln Legacy Project.

It was a long week for supporters of LGBT rights in Cheyenne, Wyoming at the State Capitol. Three bills were before the Legislature to advance equality in the Equality State. Representative Cathy Conolly (D-Laramie) introduced a domestic partnership bill as well as a marriage equality bill. An anti-discrimination bill that included protections for LGBT citizens in employment, wages and other areas of state law was introduced by Senator Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie).

Representative Cathy Conolly (D-Laramie)

On Monday, the House Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee heard testimony on the marriage equality and domestic partnership bills.

Jason Marsden, Executive Director of the Foundation, spoke before the committee to talk about his partner of nearly 15 years and how the law views them as “legal strangers.” Dr. Jason Bloomberg, who runs a medical clinic in Cheyenne, echoed that statement because same-sex couples face obstacles in the health care world.

The committee voted 4-5 against advancing the marriage equality bill but approved the domestic partnership bill by a vote of 7-2. On Wednesday afternoon the full House took up the bill, debated the measure but voted against the bill in the end, 25-34.

Senator Chris Rothfuss (D-Laramie)

Testimony on the anti-discrimination bill occupied the entire morning meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, where many spoke passionately for and against the bill. Linda Burt, of the Wyoming ACLU, spoke of how her office receives endless complaints of workplace discrimination but is unable to do anything without the proposed law.

The committee voted the bill out of committee by a tally of 4-1 and sent it to the full Senate. Thursday, after vigorous debate by senators, the bill was defeated 13-17.

While these defeats were hard to watch, what our allies did in Cheyenne was truly amazing. With only eight Democrats in the House and four in the Senate, having 25 and 13 votes for these measures is a clear signal that LGBT issues are not being treated as partisan politics in Wyoming. This is particularly impressive when you consider that when Washington state’s legislature passed its marriage equality law last year, only a single Republican voted for the bill.

Thank you to everyone who reached out to legislators and wished us well. The progress made this session only puts us in a better position to advocate for these bills in the future.

Judy Shepard was on CNN on March 16th to talk about Senator Rob Portman’s support of marriage equality after his son came out as gay. Watch the interview by Don Lemon here. 

Judy was also interviewed by National Public Radio’s Ari Shapiro in advance of the Supreme Court’s hearings on the Prop 8 and Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) March 26 & 27. Shapiro looked at the bumpy road that has been LGBT rights. From Bowers v. Hardwick to Barney Frank, and ‘My So-Called Life’ to Matthew’s murder, the LGBT community has come a long way.

Finally, Jason Marsden, Executive Director at the Matthew Shepard Foundation, was interviewed by the Associated Press following a report from the Department of Justice that said 2 out of every 3 hate crimes are not reported to the police. ”It’s shocking to see that much of an increase in the feeling of futility that hate crime victims are apparently experiencing,” Marsden said. You can read the full article here.

You may not know that we continue to keep a keen eye on Wyoming’s public policy, school systems and especially its Legislature, where high-profile and emotional debates on same-sex marriage have taken place in several of the recent annual sessions.

Wyoming has an 1876 law carrying over from territorial days, which states that marriages that were legal where they were performed are legal in Wyoming. The idea was that back in those early days, as settlers flooded into the newly organized territory, they didn’t need to be burdened with the uncertainty of whether or not their lawful spouses remained such once they crossed the border.

The law’s language didn’t get a lot of attention over the following century and a quarter, with two exceptions. One was a dispute over the validity of common-law marriages; the other was legislation that barred the state of Wyoming from performing polygamous marriages.

But then in the 1990s, as other states started to look at allowing same-sex couples to marry, it became obvious that the plain language of the law would make those marriages performed in other states legal in the Equality State as well. That didn’t sit so well with some of the Wyoming Legislature’s conservative members.

But in the last 16 years as states rushed to outlaw same-sex marriage recognition, wherever those ceremonies might occur, a funny thing happened: Wyoming’s overwhelmingly conservative Legislature bucked the trend and stood up for gay and lesbian couples.

Year after year, bills to change the old statute and/or the Constitution to expressly outlaw recognition of same-sex nuptials were presented, and failed — often by harrowingly narrow margins and after protracted and emotional debates. In 2009, the most far-reaching floor debate ever on the issue occurred on the House floor late in the session.

All eyes were on Rep. Pat Childers, a rock-ribbed conservative from Cody in the north of Wyoming with more than a decade of service under his belt and a thick Texas drawl. Childers stilled the chamber and the gallery by recounting his pride in his daughter, and her same-sex partner, and his belief it was no business of Wyoming’s government to legislate her into second-class citizenship.

Rep. Childers and others impassioned by the manifest unfairness of the proposed marriage ban carried the debate by a surprisingly wide margin and despite subsequent efforts, Wyoming’s nearly unique status as a state that won’t marry same-sex couples itself, but does recognize their marriages, has clung.

On Tuesday Wyoming held its primary elections, which in the deeply Republican state more or less determine who will sit in the next Legislature convening in January. Sadly, Childers was targeted by a hard-right social issues political committee for defeat, and he lost his primary.

We are the poorer for having lost this ally in the next Legislature. His simple plea for equal treatment of his daughter and her partner, should they ever choose to move back to the state, moved many of us and blocked what would have been an unjust and uncharacteristic swipe at “Equal Rights” from a state whose Great Seal is dominated by those two precious words.

There were some bright spots in Tuesdays’ primary on the issue as well. Wyoming’s first openly gay state legislator, Cathy Connolly of Laramie, won again unopposed, and Rep. Sue Wallis, a staunch defender of liberty who hails from a townsite called Recluse, fended off yet another primary challenge fueled in part by her support of equality. Rep. Bob Brechtel of Casper, one of the most anti-marriage-equality members of the Legislature, lost his expensive and controversial bid to rise to the state Senate. Other incumbents who opposed marriage equality lost as well, but sometimes to challengers who are untested on the issue.

But the overall picture is of a Legislature in the politically “reddest” state in the country, which isn’t united in barring marriage equality for its citizens, at least not completely, and not yet.

The Foundation remains committed to supporting pro-equality measures such as civil unions, bullying prevention and employment protections in the 2013 session as it has in the past. We hope those of you who care about Matt and his family’s legacy to their home state will support our continued efforts as well as similar ones in your own states.

Jason Marsden, Executive Director

Banning these materials, which had been approved by a district-appointed group of parents, educators and community members, makes it clear that the school board is not interested in helping students. Instead they are interested only blocking students from the realities of the world they live in.

Thankfully a number of organizations have stepped up to put pressure on the school board and Lambda Legal has offered to lead the legal strategy as all involved look at legal and ethical violations that took place in banning these materials.

If you are looking to help get The Family Book back in school libraries you can sign this Change.org petition and talk to people you know in the district about what these materials do.