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Hate-crime victim’s
mom hopes to
prevent violence
Her son was beaten and
By Mary Adamski
died because he was gay
Star-BulletinJudy Shepard sat with a couple dozen new friends and watched family video footage of her son in his childhood good times.
The Honolulu gathering last night at Tenney Theatre wasn't the typical home movie audience: No one was bored and there probably wasn't a dry eye in the house.
But the story of Matthew Shepard isn't a typical family tale. The 21-year-old University of Wyoming student died after being beaten and left tied to a prairie fence by two men who attacked him because he was gay.
"My goal is not to let this happen again. I don't want there to be any more Matthews," said the soft-voiced mother, who has shown the film and spoken to dozens of college, high school and middle school classes since last October.
The Shepard family film is woven into a professional and very personal exploration of hate in modern America, "Journey to a Hate Free Millennium," which was produced and directed by California filmmaker Brent Scarpo. The documentary also focuses on the stories of James Byrd Jr., dragged to his death in Texas because he was black, and of the students shot at Columbine High School by two classmates.
"If there's one group in the world who needs love, it's the people who perpetrate the crimes," Scarpo told the crowd, which included invited representatives from several local churches and members of Integrity, an organization of homosexuals in the Episcopal Church.
The filmmaker said the movie is the only one about Matthew that has his parents' approval because "I promised to educate, not to entertain." It will be shown at 8 p.m. Sunday at Honolulu Academy of Arts during the Adam Baran Honolulu Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
The film was premiered Oct. 12 in Fort Collins, Colo., the one-year anniversary of Matthew's death in the place where he died. That was also the premiere of Judy Shepard as an activist against hate crimes.
"It's part of my grieving, my healing ... by helping others," Shepard said. "I hope we are preventing another Matthew from happening.
"It's important for me to share Matthew."
Shepard said taking the stories to schools is an effort to reach youngsters like the alienated Columbine youths who killed others more popular or successful at the school. "They experienced hate throughout their school lives. There may have been something we could have done for them. We need to help them from feeling like they do.
"If I wasn't getting positive reinforcement, I couldn't keep doing it," she told the listeners. She and her husband, Dennis, have received thousands of letters and email messages from supportive and sympathetic strangers.
But by putting herself on the front of an issue that is hot in churches and legislatures and draws anti-homosexual demonstrations wherever it is debated, there is also predictable negative feedback.
"I have a regular dialogue with Mr. Phelps," she said, referring to Kansas minister Fred Phelps who led anti-gay demonstrators outside Matthew's funeral and the trial of his killers. Scarpo interviewed Phelps in the film, as well as former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nation.
"I have to make a confession," Shepard told the gathering, "I don't love them despite what Brent said. I don't want to waste my energy, I don't spend any time thinking about it.
"Anyone so immersed in hate, their lives must be so miserable."
Scarpo probed the audience's feelings about the interviews with antagonists. "How did that make you feel? Was it rage?
"We all have the ability to hate. What we do with those feelings is how we determine our journey in this life."
