Equality Mississippi Welcomes Mother of Murdered Gay Student Matthew Shepard to Mississippi



March 21, 2005 -- Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, will be in Mississippi to speak on tolerance and the effects of hate motivated crime.

She will speak at the University of Mississippi March 22 in Fulton Chapel at 7:00 PM and at Mississippi State University in Lee Hall Auditorium at 7:00 PM on March 23.

Matthew Shepard was a 21 year-old student who was savagely beaten to death because he was gay.

Matthew had been lured from a University of Wyoming campus bar shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998 by two men who told him they were gay. He was driven to a remote area near the Sherman Hills neighborhood east of Laramie, Wyoming where he was tied to a split-rail fence, tortured, beaten and pistol-whipped by his attackers, while he begged for his life; he was then left for dead in near freezing temperatures. A cyclist who found him on Snowy Mountain View Road at 6:22 pm, some 18 hours after the attack, at first mistook him for a scarecrow. He was unconscious and suffering from hypothermia. His face was caked with blood, except where it had been partially washed clean by tears.

Matthew died at 12:53 am on October 12, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his family at his bedside. Hospital officials said Matthew had a fracture from behind his head to just in front of his right ear and a massive brain stem injury which affected his vital signs, including his heart beat, body temperature and other involuntary functions. There were also approximately a dozen small lacerations around his head, face and neck. He was so badly injured in the attack that doctors were unable to operate. He never regained consciousness after being found, and remained on full life support.

Jody Renaldo, executive director of Mississippi's gay and lesbian civil rights organization Equality Mississippi, says spreading the word of tolerance is welcomed in Mississippi, especially by Mrs. Shepard.

"One of the ways of combating bigotry and prejudice is to start in our schools. Just as people can be taught hatred and intolerance, so, too, can they be taught respect for those who may be different from themselves; and to value people equally, regardless of gender, color, disability, sexual orientation, religious preference, national origin, ancestry, or age.

Critics will try to claim that this amounts to promoting homosexuality. You cannot teach someone to be homosexual - it is not a conscious choice made by an individual - but you can teach tolerance and understanding."

As most people know, we formed Equality Mississippi as an ode to a good friend, Jamie Ray Tolbert, who was murdered because he is gay. Jamie, from Laurel, was kidnapped from a Biloxi nightclub New Year's Eve 1999/2000. His killers beat him and strangled him to death. They then dumped his body in the woods in Alabama. What happened to Matthew Shepard hits home with me as he died on my birthday. It's an annual reminder of Matthew, Jamie and the struggles gay people go through everyday just to live as human beings accepted by society."

Also attending the March 22 event at Ole Miss will be members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a small congregation of mostly kinfolk of pastor Fred Phelps.

Fred Phelps is widely known for his web site godhatesfags.com and for picketing the funeral of Matther Shepard.

The Westboro group will be protesting the speaking engagement of Judy Shepard.

Westboro Baptist Church's news release states, "WBC to picket the sodomite whorehouse (Ezek. 16:24) masquerading as the University of Mississippi, the Ole Miss GSA feces-eaters, and the Mother-from-Hell Judy Shepard - Fulton Chapel on the Ole Miss campus at 7 p.m. Mar. 22 - in religious protest and warning: "God is not mocked!" God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Ole Miss, the GSA, and money-grubbing scavenger Judy Shepard."

GSA is the Gay/Straight Alliance, a student group on campus at Ole Miss and the group responsible for organizing the engagement.

The Westboro Baptist Church news release continues, "Matt Shepard has been in Hell now for 6 + years - with eternity left to go on his sentence. Beside that solemn fact, all else about Matt is trivial and irrelevant, All the fag candlelight vigils, memorials, and maudlin speeches by his vulture mother (at $10,000 a pop) combined, can't buy Matt a drop of water to cool his tongue in Hell's flames (Lk. 16:24), or a day off his original sentence of "everlasting fireeverlasting punishment."

The release ends saying, "WBC Pastor Fred Phelps is a native Mississippian -- born and raised in Meridian. He's' ashamed of Ole Miss."

Said Renaldo about Phelps, "Mississippi is ashamed of Fred Phelps. Mississippians may not always agree on everything, including gay rights issues, but the majority do agree on the fact that the type of religion the Phelps clan is promoting is not the type lived by in Mississippi. Phelps is a disgrace to humanity and to God. They want all of this publicity but definitely aren't making many Christian friends by running around the country protesting, signs in hand plastered with mottos such as "God Hates Fags!", "God Hates America!" and "September 11th is God's Punishment!". As the Phelps clan found out when they protested at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi does not welcome their brand of religion."

Media Note: View the WBC press release at
http://www.godhatesfags.com/fliers/mar2005/20050311_ole-miss.pdf





Equality Mississippi Welcomes Mother of Murdered Gay Student Matthew Shepard to Mississippi