LGBT Stories: Journalist Wants People To Remember Matthew Shepard's Life More Than His Death

NATHAN MANSKE

Nathan Manske and Marquise Lee just finished a 4 month, 50 state tour of the United States collecting stories for their I'm From Driftwood site. We'll be sharing some of the stories they collected along with some of the insight into what they saw. They're still encouraging people to submit their written stories via IFD.

We met Jason Marsden, the Executive Director of The Matthew Shepard Foundation, at our stop in Denver where the Foundation is headquartered. We were going to Laramie right after Denver so speaking with him was a bit of preparation. I didn't know exactly how to approach Laramie — should we actively seek out Matthew Shepard stories or not? — but after hearing Jason talk more about Matthew's life than of his death, I decided to follow suit and not focus on the tragedy but let people speak about him as they chose.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

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Watch: Counter-protesters to Block WBC Tucson Funeral Picketers with Angel Wings

Counter-protestors are planning an angel action at the funerals of Tucson shooting victims, to shield mourners from Fred Phelps, a tactic first used by Romaine Patterson at the Matthew Shepard funeral. The WBC should be well-blocked given the emergency legislation passed in Arizona last night.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Towleroad Interview: Judy Shepard on Hate Crimes, Forgiveness, and The Meaning of Matthew

Judy Shepard, tireless crusader against anti-gay hate crimes since her son Matthew was murdered in 1998, has a new memoir out — The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed. Over Pride weekend in New York City, Towleroad correspondent Josh Helmin interviewed Shepard about the book, her experience as a Grand Marshall at NYC's Pride Parade, and whether she could ever offer forgiveness to her son's killers.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Photo: Bigot Outnumbered 500 to 1 at 'Laramie Project' Protest

Counter-protesters responded last Thursday to a threat from the Westboro Baptist Church to picket a Dutchtown, Louisiana performance of The Laramie Project, the play about the Matthew Shepard murder, with a demonstration 500 people strong. The WBC never showed up, but someone else did:

"One protester, Anthony Battaglia from First Baptist Church in Gonzales, wound up facing a crowd of about 500 counter-protesters alone. Battaglia said while he doesn’t agree with Westboro’s methods, he does agree with the church’s view of faith, a faith that sees homosexuality as wrong. 'I don’t see myself as fitting on either side, but I can’t stay in the middle,' Battaglia said. Counter-protester the Rev. Clinton Crawshaw with The Big Easy Metropolitan Community Church out of New Orleans, replied that Battaglia had picked the wrong side. 'You know you have to choose a side — hatred, or love,' Crawshaw said."

Students created a video of the counter-protest. Watch it, AFTER THE JUMP...

Westboro Baptist Church To Picket 'The Laramie Project." Again.

Fred Phelps and the rest of his band of wacky members from the Westboro Baptist Church plan to show up at the Lake Tahoe Community College in California later this month to protest a production of “The Laramie Project." The Church notes the planned protest on it's Website and refers to the play, which they have picketed countless times before, as a "god-awful pail of pig slop." The school is preparing for the group's arrival and even the local police are offering this advice to those who get offended by their protests: "Don't get physical with them, period. If they create a disturbance and we're not there, call us.”

An Associated Student Council member of the school adds: “Every time I hear about someone protesting their protest, I don't encourage that because it stoops down to their level. The best way to get back at them is have many people show up and not say anything but walk in with their heads held high.”

One interesting (and sad) thing of note: the Westboro Baptist Church has participated in 42,821 hateful demonstrations times since 1991.

Anti-Gay Christian Group Files Suit Against Federal Hate Crimes Law

The Michigan Messenger reports that The Thomas More Law Center has filed a lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of "Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association – Michigan; Levon Yuille, pastor of The Bible Church in Ypsilanti, Michigan; René B. Ouellette, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Michigan; and James Combs, pastor of four different churches in the state" against the recently-passed federal hate crimes act, also known as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

The plaintiffs charge that, among other things, "the Hate Crimes Act has the purpose and effect of deterring, inhibiting, and chilling the exercise of fundamental rights by persons, including Plaintiffs, who publicly oppose homosexual activism, the homosexual lifestyle, and the homosexual agenda, which seeks to normalize intrinsically disordered sexual behavior that is contrary to the moral law and harmful to the common good of society. Supporters of the homosexual agenda seek to demonize, vilify, and criminalize deeply held religious beliefs that are in opposition to their agenda."

According to Ed Brayton of the Messenger, "it would be unlikely to survive a motion to dismiss and very, very unlikely to survive a motion for summary judgment" because "The complaint seems to base its standing argument solely on the fact that some people have argued that there should be legal limits on anti-gay rhetoric, not on whether the text of the law itself actually imposes such limits."

The Thomas More Law Center was founded by Domino's Pizza founder Thomas Monaghan and Kevorkian prosecutor Richard Thompson. Rick Santorum and Alan Keyes are among those who have sat on its board.

Here's the complaint in full (PDF).