Pittsfield — Matthew Shepard would have been 47 years old this year. More than 25 years ago, on October 6, 1998, the University of Wyoming student was beaten and tortured in a hate crime, dying six days later from his injuries. The two men convicted of Shepard’s murder were both sentenced to life in prison.
The torture and murder of Shepard, a gay man, brought national attention to hate crimes committed to members of the LGBTQ+ community. After his death, Shepard’s parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, started the Matthew Shepard Foundation. The mission of the foundation, according to its website, is to “share [Matthew’s] story and embody his vigor for civil rights to change the hearts and minds of others to accept everyone as they are.”
Since the foundation’s inception, other organizations serving LGBTQ+ communities have sprung up around the world, including Berkshire County-based nonprofit organization Berkshire Pride. The organization held a remembrance and celebration for Matthew Shepard on Saturday, January 27, at Hot Plate Brewing Co. “When Matthew Shepard was murdered, his mother Judy was fighting to get his murder charged as a hate crime,” Berkshire Pride LGBTQIA+ Competency Educator Emma Lenski told The Berkshire Edge. “At the time of Matthew’s death, there was no real precedent for that relating to LGBTQIA+ people.”
After its formation, the Matthew Shepard Foundation helped with the passage of the first federal hate crimes legislation, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.
More than the 25 years after Shepard’s murder, however, hate crimes and violence towards members of the LGBTQIA+ community are still prevalent. According to the Trans Murder Monitoring project, which has been undertaken by the Transgender Europe organization, from October 2022 to September 2023, 323 trans and gender-diverse people from around the world were murdered. The statistics show that 80 percent of the people murdered were Black, 48 percent were sex workers, and 94 percent were trans women or femmes.
“I don’t know if we will ever get to the point where we won’t see hate crimes, but I would love to see that day,” Lenski said. “But I do think there is a lot of hope and positivity amongst the LGBTQIA+ community that things have changed since 1998. We have a really strong community, especially in the Berkshires.”
Lenski said that Berkshire Pride and other Berkshire-based community organizations are all working for change and equality for the LGBTQIA+ community. “I don’t know if anyone has a magic wand to make sure that hate crimes will never happen again,” Lenski said. “When it comes to battling homophobia and hate, there are a lot of things we can do. We should try to educate and try to call in, rather than calling out. If there are people who are seemingly homophobic or transphobic or any kind of phobia related to the LGBTQIA+ community, we need to call in and try to reach these people. We need to speak to them and bring these issues to light. A lot of times people are not aware that they know somebody who is LGBTQIA+. In reality, your next-door neighbor might be gay or trans.”
Lenski said that it is important for people to bring light to these issues, and added that Berkshire Pride offers Certified Safe-Space classes to help build safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ individuals.
The main feature of the January 27 event was a showing of the 2013 documentary “Matthew Shepard is a Friend of Mine.” The documentary, made by Shepard’s friend Michele Josue, is an in-depth film about his life through the eyes of his family and friends, remembering him as a person and not just a victim of a hate crime. The details of the hate crime itself were part of the last half of the documentary.
After the documentary screening, Becket native and now Pittsfield resident Sarah Clement, who was a friend of Shepard’s when they were both teenagers, spoke about him. “Matthew is not just a victim, not just a statistic, not just a headline, or a poster boy or martyr, he was a person and he was my friend,” Clement said. “We were both freshmen when we met at the small conservative Catawba College in North Carolina.”
Clement met Shepard after a college orientation event. “After I walked to a nearby party, I ran into the same kid who I just had class with,” Clement said. “You know that feeling you get with people like you might have just met them, but you feel like you’ve known them your entire life? That’s the best way I can describe this. I knew within minutes that this was destined to be a real friendship.”
Clement told the audience about the time when Shepard came out to her. “It’s difficult to describe what that was like,” Clement said. “Some prejudices take years to change, some take only a moment. Back then, I didn’t think I really knew anyone who was gay. I didn’t know if anyone in high school openly was and I thought they weren’t really targeted or bullied specifically because of that. Of course, this was my privileged naivete talking, as I found out years later. I only thought that wasn’t a problem, because it was not a problem for me directly. And that kind of privilege gives you tunnel vision. So this was my first encounter with an admitted gay person. To my own surprise, I might add that I did not care. This was my friend, and he could have been blue or had eight arms. He was my friend and he was gay. Having a problem with that would have meant having a problem with him. And he was fast becoming one of the best friends I ever had. And I made a choice right then and there that I could have no problem or prejudice with gay people.”
Clement said that 25 years after Shepard’s death, it seems like people around the world are much more accepting of LGBTQIA+ people. “But it’s easy to take that for granted, and maybe that is partly because we’re here in Massachusetts,” Clement said. “So much of the country, and so much of the world, still frowns upon homosexuality. They are threatened by anything that seems to be different from themselves. With all of the strides of progress that we have taken, there is an undercurrent now trying to drag us back in time. We can’t get complacent or have a false sense of security. I know that gay marriage was finally legalized, but how safe is it? How safe are any of the hard-won rights that so many of us have fought so hard for? There has been progress, but take a look at the current Supreme Court, at some of their recent decisions, and listen to the rhetoric that current politicians spew. Hate crime legislation is still not in place everywhere. The mere right to exist for our trans friends has always been threatened. The fact that anyone feels like they have a right to dictate how someone else should live their life or love, who they love, express themselves, or be their authentic self is pure insanity, and so utterly offensive. It’s mind-boggling that this kind of hate and discrimination still exists here and now in 2024. But it does, whether it is out in the open or hiding in the shadows.”
For more information about the Matthew Shepard Foundation, visit its website. For more information about Berkshire Pride, visit its website.
