By Tracy Fugere
Fargo, ND – On October 8th, 1998--Judy Shepard was awakened in the middle of the nightby a phone call that no parent should ever have to receive.
Her eldest son--Matthew--was brutally beaten because he was gay. A few daysfollowing the attack, Matthew died.
Judy Shepard now uses her grief over he sons death to speak out against hatecrimes. Shepard wants America to understand that this is an anomaly.
"Just as Timothy McVeigh was an anomaly in our society, Erin McKinney and Russell Henderson--the two men who murdered my son--are an anomaly in the state of Wyoming. This does not in any way reflect on Islam as a whole or the Arab-American culture or the sub-continent, Pakistanis, and so forth. This is a group of individuals filled with hate. Violence occurs from fear, ignorance, and hate and it goes unchecked and no one seems to know how to deal with the issue. I think it's time we try to figure out some solutions."
Shepard's advice to those who are a target of hate crime is to use commonsense.
"Be with your friends. Talk about it. Tell people if you've been targeted or assaulted verbally or physically. Don't be afraid to do it. That's one reason why we're not getting hate crime bills passed because people fear going to the authorities for either recrimination or being outed and their not ready. These instances have to be reported and taken care of and we have to trust in our system to get things changed."
Today is H-I-V Awareness Day. Shepard was the keynote speaker at anH-I-V/AIDS Symposium in Fargo.