arienettelyn's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- M. Shepard The other day in my Interpersonal Communication class, my professor told us to write about an event that made us have a very strong emotional reaction. I was stumped. I honestly couldn't think of one. I didn't remember one until I was driving home later, listening to Thursday. M. Shepard came on, and then I couldn't believe I'd forgotten how much the Matt Shepard thing affected me when it happened. I was a freshman in high school. My sister was coming home from college for the weekend on the train, and I was at the Poughkeepsie train station with my dad and brother. I brought a Rolling Stone magazine with me, since my dad always made us go ridiculously early. There was an article about Matt Shepard's funeral. Usually, I skip over the non-music articles, but I read this one, because I remembered hearing that Matt Shepard had been murdered because he was gay. It had bothered me, of course, but I hadn't given it too much thought. I couldn't tell you much about what the article said, but I vividly remember one of the accomanying photographs. It was at Matt Shepard's funeral. There were protestors outside of the church, holding signs that said things like "God hates fags." At the kid's fucking funeral. It disgusted me more than anything I have ever seen. I literally got sick to my stomach. I feel sick now, just remembering it. Now, it's like Matt Shepard has been martyred, and he probably never wanted that. But, maybe he would be happy if he knew that by dying he made a lot of people more aware of the horrible discrimination in this country? A year or so after he died, they started airing this commercial on MTV, where you see all these teenage boys yelling "FAGGOT!!!" and stuff at the camera. The first time I saw it, I laughed, because it was pretty funny. But then Matt Shepard's mom comes out and says something about how you should think about what those words mean before you say them. And it made me cry. This woman's son was beaten up, tied to a fence and fucking left all by himself to die. All for nothing. Hate is a really disgusting thing, and I didn't fully understand that until I saw that picture. 11:20 p.m. - 2003-10-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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