To be openly part of the LGBTQ+ community is to exist politically. Attempts at invalidating, shaming, and ending the lives of LGBTQ+ people for existing openly in the world are no less prevalent than they were in 1998 when Matthew Shepard was beaten into a coma, tied to a fence, and set on fire in a homophobically-motivated attack. His death made the persecution of LGBTQ+ people visible to those outside the community and triggered the battle for LGBTQ+ individuals to be included in the definition of hate crime in federal law.
In spite of the national movement to allow more protection, their fight for the right to life has become no less dangerous. Stonewall, a UK-based LGBT charity, reports that one in six lesbian, gay, and bisexual people experienced a homophobic hate crime or incident between 2010 and 2013, with this figure rising 78% by 2017. How secure is the road, really, towards a safer, egalitarian future for LGBTQ+ people?
The death of 21-year-old American student Matt Shepard changed the way the USA understood LGBTQ+ people. His murder brought to the forefront the violence and threat experienced by LGBTQ+ individuals, imbuing the nation with indignation. Dennis Shepard, Matt’s father, captured the shock felt that someone should be murdered because of their sexual orientation: “We didn’t realize the amount of violence and discrimination … against the gay community until after he died […] We thought, he was born here … he has all the rights, responsibilities, duties and privileges of every other American citizen.”
Nationwide vigils followed, most notably a mass protest in Wyoming which led to 100 arrests. Thus began the fight to correct the absence of a victim’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability in the definition of hate crime law. It was finally successful in 2009 when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act was passed (James Byrd was a black man dragged behind a pick-up truck, decapitated, and dismembered by three white supremacists the same year as the murder of Matt Shepard).
With the tide of support that followed Matt’s death, it wouldn’t be wrong to expect that the lives of LGBTQ+ people might have gotten a little easier. The suicide of nine-year-old Jamel Myles this year paints a stark image to the contrary. Myles, openly gay, killed himself four days into fourth grade after being told to “kill himself” by his classmates because of his sexual orientation. Homophobia and discriminatory behaviour are alive and kicking in the United States, even in the shadow of huge movements to remedy the very attitude that caused Myles’ death.
Still, LGBTQ+ people are not universally or unconditionally considered as being equal to cis-gender, heterosexual people. Those who surrounded Jamel Myles at school believed, consciously or otherwise, that being gay warrants this discriminatory, dehumanising behaviour. Myles’ sense of identity was treated as invalid, costing him his life, just as it had done for Matt Shepard. No doubt Matt Shepard’s murder and subsequent legacy transformed the lives of many LGBTQ+ people across the United States. If the vigils and protests are anything to go by, the people of the United States called, twenty years ago, for a new level of tolerance and acceptance to be shown to those in the LGBTQ+ community. Even this was only a small step towards the elimination of intolerant attitudes to LGBTQ+ people. Matt Shepard was supposed to represent the final death at the hands of homophobes; how many more must die before LGBTQ+ people can live safely?
Georgie Wardall
(Image Courtesy of the Matthew Shepard Foundation)