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Photo essay: Deadly Words
Kat Mabry, James Hermon / Roundup
The Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club at Pierce College hosted its first annual Matthew Shepard Remembrance Day demonstration.
According to Julian Brown, the event coordinator for the GSA, the purpose was to bring attention to the club, a group on campus that “cares about equal rights, not only as members of GSA but as students at Pierce.”
The two part demonstration began in the free speech zone, located south of the Country Cafe and concluded in the Great Hall with a viewing of “The Laramie Project.”
In lieu of the recent suicides of gay individuals, GSA made a visual demonstration complete with a recreation of the scene where Shepard was found beaten beyond recognition and left tied to a fence on Oct. 7, 1998. His face was covered in blood aside from where his tears had fallen.
Shepard succumbed to his injuries five days later and died at Proudre Valley Hospital Oct. 12, 1998.
“With his death, [Shepard’s] parents and friends really got motivated to add homosexuality to the list of what [was] classified as a hate crime,” said Sarah Gerson, a GSA member.
The Matthew Shepard Act was passed on Oct. 22 2009 and signed into Congress by President Barak Obama six days later to expand the United States federal hate crime law to include sexual orientation.
