Remembering Matthew Shepard.

Wednesday October 7th, 1998 was a fairly ordinary day in Chicago. I was working for a small consulting firm in the near West suburb of Oak Park, and had spent the day in a series of fairly productive meetings. So I felt pretty good when I got home from work. I was puttering around my apartment making dinner when I picked up the remote control for the TV and turned on CNN. The lead story was a brutal attack of a young man in Laramie Wyoming named Matthew Shepard. Shepard, age 21, had been beaten into a coma and left tied to fence along a rural highway outside the city. The news report noted that the victim was a young gay man and was not expected to survive.

I remember walking down into “boystown” (the north Halstead area of Chicago, and the center of the city’s Gay community). There were lots of people standing around outside the bars, and restaurants along Halsted Street, talking about what had happened in Wyoming. A makeshift memorial had been set up on the corner of Halsted and Roscoe.

I walked into the 7-11 there on the corner and bought a small votive candle, lit it and placed it with the growing number of candles, handwritten notes and flowers that were being placed around a picture of Matthew that someone had printed off the internet. I stayed for a little while talking to people who were gathered there. Some people were angry, others sad, but we all knew that something in our own community had changed as a result of what had happened,  hundreds of miles away in field outside Laramie.

In 1998 I had just moved to Chicago after being overseas in South Korea. I was in the middle of my own “coming out” process,  and was gathering up my courage to have “the talk” with my parents when I went home for Thanksgiving in a few weeks time. I will admit the news of Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder shook me up. Suddenly the decisions I was making to live openly and honestly as who I was, had potentially fatal consequences.

On an intellectual level you always knew that there were “gay bashers” out there. People who were so conflicted about their own sexuality that they felt the way to “cure” themselves was to attack others for what they feared most about themselves. Yet now those hypothetical risks, were not so hypothetical.  What's more, those cosequences now  had a face, and a name.

As I walked home, my thoughts turned to Matthew Shepard’s parents. What must they be thinking and feeling? Had they known Matt was gay? Did it really matter? Years later I would have the great honor of meeting Judy Shepard,  and hear her tell her own powerful story .

Thirteen years later, I marvel at how my own life has changed. I am married to an amazing man, we have incredible friends and loving families who remind us every day,  that the world is not as bleak and dark a place as it seemed,  on that October night in 1998.

Yet I am still saddened and angry that there are many people in America who honestly feel that Matthew Shepard got what “he had coming to him”. That demonizing , discriminating against, and even murdering Gays and Lesbians is somehow “doing God’s work”.

People with a vested interest in keeping LGBT people as the one group it is still safe to hate. People who seek to profit, personally, politically and even economically from fomenting deadly hatred and fear of others. Bigots whose actions and beliefs are the farthest thing from being Christian, yet claim to have a monopoly on what they claim God thinks and who they claim "God hates".

I really don’t have a point to make here, other than to say it’s important to remember Matthew and so many others like him who have died as a result of hatred and bigotry. If you want to get involved, here are a few great places to start...

The Matthew Shepard Foundation: http://www.matthewshepard.org/

The Trevor Project: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

The Ben Cohen Stand Up Foundation: http://www.standupfoundation.com/

The We Give a Damn Campaign: http://www.wegiveadamn.org/


Thanks,

Dave

Last Night on American Network Television..

On FOX no less...

Fear, bigotry, hatred  and homophobia lost.

All those who ranted that such a thing,  as what happened last night on prime-time TV would "destroy America", are now exposed for what they really are.   People like Newt (thrice-married adulterer) Gingrich,  Sarah (unmarried pregnant daughter) Palin,  Tony (gay kids should just kill themselves) Perkins, and   Maggie (hating people is what I do best) Gallagher  all got their asses kicked last night.  Their fear mongering, lies and outright hatred of other Americans failed.  

So what was it that defeated them?  What  showed the world that everything these hate mongers  have said  is just ignorant bile with no basis in reality or truth?

Just a tiny little television show....  called  Glee



Over the course of today there have been a slew of reactions  across the blogosphere, the vast majority of which have are overwhelmingly positive.   There were a few comments posted on the Los Angeles Times media blog from people claiming to be "concerned parents"  who didn't feel it was appropriate for teens to see  two boys kissing.   One commenter claimed  the kiss was  too  "confusing" for her teenage daughter.

Really?

If  these kids are any indication,  it's safe to say that the teens of America were not at all confused  by last night's episode.

Why Prop 8 Was Completely Anti-American

The celebrations  here in San Francisco  are  still going on at this hour.   The rally which began in  the Castro District soon turned in to a  celebratory march that  shut down half  of  Market Street  as it made its way to Civic Center Plaza in front of   SF City Hall.

There  were  speeches,  (lots of speeches), music, flags, banners and lots of  joy. Even though  the decision  in  Perry v. Schwarzenegger,  won't go into effect  today.  (There is a two day  time frame for the court to consider  a motion by opponents of  Marriage Equality to stay the the resumption  of  same sex marriages  in California  while  they appeal this case  to the  U.S. Supreme Court.)  Yet the sense of vindication and  victory in  the California  LGBT community  is  clear  for everyone to see.

So what does this all mean?    Does this mean  Same Sex  Marriage  will soon be  sweeping the nation?  Well,  not so much.    The ruling  simply says the State of California  can't  ban  gay marriage  here in  CA.   Which is  largely symbolic.   There still is no Federal  recognition of  same sex marriages.  Same sex  spouses  still can't  file joint  Federal  Income Tax forms,   pass on  Social Security Survivor  benefits  or  sponsor their  husband or wife  for  immigration to the  U.S.

All of those  key benefits  associated with marriage  are  regulated on  Federal level  by the  ridiculously   mis-named  "Defense of Marriage Act".  (DOMA) and  at least for now,  that law  is unchanged.    Should  the Perry case  make it to the  U.S. Supreme Court,(which it is pretty safe to say it  most likely will),   that  law could  very well change.   Should the  nine SCOTUS  Justices  uphold  the  ruling made today,  it would  in effect  nullify  all  laws  banning Marriage  Equality  in the  United States.

So why did the  pro- Prop 8 forces  lose?   I will  talk about  the  legal  issues  in  a minute.  but  what  was  amazing about this  court  case  was  how  the  supporters of  Prop 8  were  completely  unable to  provide any real  evidence  backing up  their  positions.    I could  go on  and on about  how hollow and   empty  the  Yes On 8 arguments  were, but  Rachel Maddow does it so much better than  I could:



We''ll set the spectacle  of  the  Prop 8 trial,  and  the inherent silliness of  the attempt to use "Gay is Bad  because God Says So" as a legal  argument,  aside for the moment.   the biggest reason why the plaintiffs in this case won,  and  why Prop 8 is completely unconstitutional  is very simple.    So  allow me to  lay it out for you .

1)  Same Sex Marriage doesn't threaten or impact ANYONE ELSE'S  marriage  or family  in any way.
2) You cannot  put  the civil rights of  a minority  up  to  popular vote. Rights  are not subject to the whims of  the electorate  that is why they are  RIGHTS.
3)  Just because you don't like a particular minority,  doesn't mean you get to make them 2nd Class Citizens

Judge Walker,  puts it  even more clearly on page  116 of  his ruling where he writes that;

 "fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote, they depend on the outcome of no elections"

This  is why Proposition 8 is fundamentally un-American, and  un-constitutional.

Prop 8 took  the whole idea  of   fundamental rights laid out  in  the Declaration of  Independence and  the U.S. Constitution and said  that  they were not inalienable.  But rather subject to the mood  of  at least 51% of  whoever shows up to vote in a given election.  That is not democracy, that is electorally sanctioned discrimination,   and it was an affront to everything  our country stands for, and  everything our nation's  founding fathers stood for.

Proposition 8,  denied  basic, fundamental  civil rights  to  an entire group of  Californians,  based  solely on a desire by  groups like the Mormon Church and  Conservative Evangelicals, to put into civil law their belief that  God hates Gay people.  So therefore  the law should treat them as less than everybody else.

If the  U.S.  Supreme Court fails to uphold  today's ruling,  they will have said that  the United States of America is no better than the Taliban.