Judy Shepard Speaks Out

Last week Judy Shepard, the mother of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, came to the U of M to speak out about hate, intolerance, and hope for the future. I covered the story for a local magazine. The following are excerpts from her touching, funny, eloquent, heartbreaking speech.

Phone Calls in the Night

It was 5 a.m. on Thursday, October 8, [1998], when the call came. Every time we get a call at such an hour it’s a silent prayer that, “Please God, let Matt be alright.” This time, he was not.

What kept going through my head was the image of Matt alone on the prairie for eighteen hours.

At the Hospital

[At the hospital] we heard the machine helping him breathe, we saw the screen monitoring his signs, his face swollen. His right ear had been reattached. I was not sure this was even Matt. But when I approached the bed I saw it was my precious son. I could see the color of his blue eyes, but the twinkle of life was not there anymore.

We kissed his face, stroked his arms, and we so desperately wanted him to know we were there. He began to shake and became rigid and we hoped it was a sign, but it was just an involuntary response to the touching.

I was thinking, “How could anyone feel so threatened by this tiny sweet child that they would want to do this to him? Such an act is incomprehensible.

Logan, Matt’s younger brother, refused to go into the room. He didn’t want that to be the last image he had of Matt. He wanted the smiling, bright-eyed, handsome face to come to mind. But he soon realized it was the last opportunity to say goodbye and I love you.

I’ll never forget that look of terror when he first saw Matt. [Logan] was trembling, tears streaming down his face. He put his hand to Matt’s cheek. He asked if they could be alone.

We kept an eye on him using the monitors at the nurse’s station. We could see him talking, holding Matt’s hand.

We were painfully aware that Matt would never wake up.

We spent the next few days with him. Sunday night, after leaving the hospital, they told us we needed to return immediately. We were joined by friends and family and we surrounded the bed, touching him and trying to keep him with us, thinking, “We need more time.”

At 12:53 a.m., Monday, October 12, [1998], Matt was no longer with us.

Matthew’s Coming Out

Matt came out to me at 18. He was in college then in North Carolina, and he called at all times of the night in Saudi [Arabia, where Judy and Dennis had been living for Dennis’s job]. To Matt there’s no such thing as time zones.

[Audience laughs.]

It was the middle of the night and he said, “Mom, there’s something about me that I need to share.” And I said, “Matt, what would that be?” He said, “I’m gay,” and then I said, “What took you so long to tell me?”

He said, “I don’t understand, how did you know before I knew?”

They tell me it’s a “mom thing.” It’s a mom thing. He was nine when I began to question. If you would have asked me why, I couldn’t answer that. I don’t know. Instinct, intuition, I’m a mom. I don’t know. I just felt there was something unique about him. Unique in a good way.

I tried to educate myself what his life might be like, but it was not an easy thing to do in Wyoming and in Saudi Arabia. In San Francisco maybe I could have gone to the neighborhood GLBT bookstore, but we don’t have those in Saudi Arabia or Wyoming. Yeah, we don’t have those.

[Audience laughs again.]

What I did discover was fear and hate and violence and nothing positive. I had no idea you could fall in love and stay in love with somebody forever in the gay community. It shows my ignorance then. It was the deepest, darkest fog. There was nobody around to tell me different.

Matt told me not to tell his dad he was gay because that was part of his coming out process and he would tell him himself. But I told him anyway. [Audience laughs.] I don’t know that that’s the parentally correct thing to do, but my husband babbles his heart out and has a tendency to blurt and speak before he thinks, and I was afraid he would say something he could not take back. I was afraid he might say something without knowledge. So I told him and he said, “Matt just hasn’t met the right girl.”

This was the expected blurt. [Audience laughs.]

So I said, no, you’re not getting it here. This is not about the right girl. This is about Matt finding the right man. And he looked at me and he looked and me and looked some more and said, “You know, I get that. It’s going to take a little while to get used to that idea, but I get that.”

Please don’t think for a minute that anybody in my family rejected Matt when he came out to them. What we did know was that Matt was gay and it was part of who he was. We loved him. We loved him as our son, brother, friend, family, who happened to be gay. It certainly did not define him. In fact, it explained a lot of things.

Logan said, “I finally understand why there is this anger that comes from nowhere or anxiety, this aloneness that Matt expresses, this sadness. I totally get that now because society tells him he’s wrong, but he’s not.” You are who you are, you love who you love. God willing you get the opportunity to love somebody and be with them.

You are who you are and you love who you love, and that’s the way it is. Isn’t that the most important thing? That you love and are loved in return? Isn’t success in our lives based on being loved and loved in return, not in material possessions and the trappings of life, but that we loved people and they loved us in return, regardless?

I always thought that’s what life was about.

Judy on Same-Sex Marriage

So, let’s just cut to the chase. Same-sex marriage. Why not.

[Audience applauds enthusiastically.]

Hate is rampant. We’ve done very little to contain it. In particular in the GLBT community it’s on the rise because we’re making positive progress. We really are. I know it may not feel like that, but same-sex marriage is going to happen. It’s just a matter of time. We have won the war, but it makes every battle that much more important.

You can go get married in Las Vegas and get married by Elvis and it’s okay. [Audience laughs.] And it’s not even really Elvis. That’s a civil union. It’s a marriage. It’s a document. It’s a binding contract that says you will take responsibility and care for this person that you love.

Well, okay, why can’t we do that with a member of the same sex that we love? If you can go with a perfect stranger to the courthouse and you don’t take their name and you’ll never see them again and get married, does that make sense to you? It makes no sense to me. You’ve been together thirty years and you can’t get a marriage license? That’s just not right.

You are who you are, you love who you love, and I just don’t really want you messing with my Constitution. It’s my understanding that the Constitution is based on the idea that it protects the minority from the majority. So now we’re going to write a clause into the constitution that will protect the majority from the minority? And protect them from what?

My husband is not going to suddenly say, “You mean I could have married a man?” [Audience laughs.] It’s just the most basic civil right and it’s being denied to a huge portion of our population. The right to be with a person you love.

People say gay people are not monogamous, so then why not give them the opportunity to get married?

Massachusetts didn’t fall into the ocean, so I guess it’s okay. The world continues to rotate. It’s okay.

And adoption? Absolutely. [Applause.] I don’t want foster children going from foster home to foster home.

‘The Laramie Project’

Even though I have never seen the play myself [which is about the reaction in Laramie, Wyoming, to Matthew’s death] I support it one hundred percent. Moisés [Kaufman, the author of "The Laramie Project"] has become a very good friend of mine and when I tried to explain to him why I didn’t see the play I said, “I lived the show. I’m really not sure that I could survive that again.”

It’s now one of the most performed plays today in high schools, which I think is brilliant. Can you imagine subject matter like that ten years ago being in high schools? It’s got to be one of the best tools that teaches about gay and lesbian issues. Not about Matt or his family, but the community of Laramie and how it all happened.

Laramie exists everywhere. It exists in Minneapolis. It’s a microcosm of the whole world. Those people [portrayed in the play] are everywhere.

On Speaking Out

I’m not a professional speaker. I’m a mom—a mom with a story, with lessons to share. I would not have chosen [this career] in a million years. But as long as we remember what happened to our loved ones, they stay with us and they live on. This is part of my grieving process.

I do this because I don’t want this to happen ever again. Hate is a learned behavior. We are not born knowing how to hate. We learn how to love and hate in the media, newspaper, movies, and we learn it in our communities, in the backyard, on daddy’s knee, in church.

Hate has no purpose, no good. I think the purpose of our lives is to bring each other up, not to tear each other down.

Matthew

Matthew Shepard, the year before his death.

There aren’t enough words to describe how much I love and miss him. We shared so much; late night talks, a love of politics, movies, of books and good food and conversation. He was my son, my first-born. He was my friend, my confidante, my constant reminder of how good life can be and ultimately how hurtful. I will never understand why anyone would want to hurt Matt and to act with such complete disregard for another human being.

I could never have spoken again [publicly], but that would be unfair to Matt. This message is too important to stay quiet. I am his mom and I need to take care of him. Still.

What We Can Do

You all have to register to vote. You still do. You need to know what your candidates are doing for you or want to do to you. You need to be an educated voter and there are ways to find out and work through the double speak.

This is one of the most important things. Are your officials doing what you thought they would? Or did they move to D.C. and become influenced by the party? I know this is shocking, but it happens. [Audience laughs.] If you don’t like what they’re doing, let them know. I’m on the Hill [and legislators] say, “My constituents don’t contact me and so I don’t think it’s wrong.”

You have a very powerful voice and you need to let them know where you stand. They work for you, you don’t work for them, even if they like to think that. And if you don’t tell them, they’ll do what they want to do. You must talk to them.

Lastly, you have to come out and be out all the time.

You might say, “Oh, I’m not gay, I don’t have anything to come out about.” If you’re Jewish, you need to talk about discrimination; if you’re a person of color, you need to talk about it. If you’re Muslim, you need to talk about it. And not just you, but your families and friends. They need to know your story and they need to tell your story. Because nobody will know or care if that doesn’t happen.

No white politician who is straight and white and over 65 will ever know what it’s like to be GLBT unless you talk to them and tell them what your story is, the discrimination you face and fear everyday because we don’t protect you.

And when our leader comes on the TV and says gay people can’t get married, people think you’re second class citizens and they hurt you because they think you don’t matter. Only you have the power to change that by telling your stories. And voting. Talk and vote. You can’t make the changes except from the inside.

We’re facing a very hostile legislature and a not-very-friendly national leader, so we have to do this from the ground up. I don’t want to be here ten years from now when you know what the right thing is, and that’s equality for everybody.

You have to be one hundred percent you—not you living two lives—but you being you all the time.

It’s a catch-22. You’re fearful to be out because you don’t have rights but you don’t have rights because you don’t come out. People tell me that they don’t know any gay people, but please, you know gay people. You need to come out so all people see isn’t the first four rows of the gay pride parade or the Village People. And God love them and they are a part of the community and without them we wouldn’t be talking about gay rights at all because they are out.

It’s the boring people at the end of the [pride] parade that we need to talk about. It’s the boring people like me, like PFLAG parents and couples raising children and committed couples who blend, which is not always a good thing. That’s who America needs to see because America needs to see that they look like everybody else.

You have a voice and you’ve been silent too long. You have power you can’t even imagine.

Let’s say 10% of people begin to self-identify. Questioning and intersex, too. Let’s give each of them four allies. Think how many people that is. We would be the most powerful [lobby] group. We would be more powerful than AARP, which is the largest and most popular lobby group in the country, and we would be bigger and better and do more. But we don’t stand together enough. We’re all afraid of something, of physical retribution or something.

But you know what? Get over it. [Silence, then loud applause.] Get over it. It is what it is, you are who you are. Own it.

You all need to be out as individuals, allies, parents, siblings. You all need to be out and talk about it. You have to. We won’t survive unless we do.

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Josh H., 22, is a Minneapolis-based writer. He can be reached at joshcentral@hotmail.com with questions or comments or through the comments feature on the Josh & Josh homepage.