Wyoming gay beating
Matthew Shepard: The legacy of a gay college pupil 20 years after his brutal murder
Twenty years ago, Matthew Shepard was a "smart, funny" 21-year-old, no different than any other young man that age.
He was an "ordinary kid who wanted to build the world a surpass place," his parents remembered.
But in October 1998, that all changed, when the openly gay college learner was abducted, beaten and tied to a fence in Wyoming.
His life ended a few days later, and with it came a widespread awareness of the dangers that members of the LGBTQ people face every day. The homophobic brutal killing also served as a catalyst for progress in America's laws and culture.
In the two decades that hold passed, however, it remains debatable how far the country has come since the shock of that crime.
A gruesome attack
Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, spent Oct. 6, 1998, at a meeting of the school's LGBTQ learner group planning upcoming events for LGBTQ awareness week, Jason Marsden, executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, told ABC News.
He then grabbed coffee with friends before heading to a bar in Laramie in southeaste
On June 7, 1998, in Jasper, Texas, a 49-year-old black man, James Byrd, Jr., was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young ivory men. The murder was a modern-day lynching.
Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged James Byrd, Jr. for 3 miles behind a pickup truck. Byrd was conscious for much of the ordeal and was killed about halfway through the dragging when his body strike the edge of a culvert, which severed his right arm and head. The trio drove on for another 11⁄2 miles before dumping his torso in front of a dark church.
Brewer and King were the first white men to be sentenced to death for killing a black person in the history of modern Texas. Byrd's lynching spearheaded a Texas state hate crimes law, which later led to passage by Congress of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Behave, commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act, in 2009.
More data about James Byrd
- A Death in Texas: A Story of Race, Murder, and a Small Town's Battle for Redemption by Dina Temple-Raston
25 years after Matthew Shepard's death, LGBTQ activists state equal-rights progress is at risk
It’s been 25 years since Matthew Shepard, a lgbtq+ 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, died six days after he was savagely beaten by two youthful men and tied to a remote fence to meet his fate. His death has been memorialized as an egregious detest crime that helped fuel the LGBTQ rights movement over the ensuing years.
From the perspective of the movement’s activists — some of them on the front lines since the 1960s — progress was often agonizingly slow, but it was steady.
Vermont allowed same-sex civil unions in 2000. A Texas law criminalizing consensual gay sex was struck down in 2003. In 2011, the military scrapped the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that kept gay, female homosexual and bisexual service members in the closet. And in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages were legal nationwide.
But any perception back then that the long struggle for equality had been won has been belied by events over the past two years.
Five people were killed last year in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado. More than 20 Republican-controlled states have enacted an a
The truth behind America’s most famous gay-hate murder
The horrific killing of Matthew Shepard in 1998 is widely seen as one of the worst anti-gay dislike crimes in American history. Matthew was beaten by two assailants, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. They pistol whipped him with a gun then tied him to a fence in freezing conditions and place fire to him before leaving him to die.
The strike became a produce célèbre: it precipitated a national backlash against hyper-macho customs and tacit tolerance of homophobia. As a result of Matthew’s death, many good things own happened for the gay community. The play The Laramie Project has toured the US and many other countries, telling Matthew’s story and encouraging campaigns against bigotry. Politicians and celebrities pledged support and funding to combat anti-gay hate crime. The Shepard family possess become campaigners for gay rights. Judy and Dennis Shepard run the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which funds educational programmes and an online community for teens to discuss sexual orientation and gender issues. There contain been numerous documentaries, dramas, books and events based on the story.
The men responsible for his death wer
Our Mission
The Matthew Shepard Foundation’s mission is to amplify the story of Matthew Shepard to stimulate individuals, organizations, and communities to include the dignity and equality of all people. Through local, regional, and national outreach, we strengthen individuals to detect their voice to create change and challenge communities to identify and speak to hate that lives within our schools, neighborhoods, and homes.
Our work is an extension of Matt’s passion to foster a more loving and just planet. We share his story and embody his vigor for civil rights to change the hearts and minds of others to embrace everyone as they are.
The Foundation Story
On October 7, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally attacked and tied to a fence in a field outside of Laramie, Wyoming and left to die. On October 12, Matt succumbed to his wounds in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado.
In the aftermath of Matt’s death, his parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, started the Matthew Shepard Foundation to honor his life and aspirations. Inspired by the tragedy they endured, the initial purpose of the Foundation was to coach parents with chil