Source: Los Angeles Times, KFSN TV

Father Geoffrey Farrow, a priest for 23 years, knew his status in the church would be changed forever when he stood before his Roman Catholic parishioners in Fresno last week and delivered a sermon that placed him squarely at odds with his church over marriage equality.

But he spoke his mind anyway and his brother said last week he's proud of him. "I'm impressed with his courage."

With Proposition 8 on the November ballot, and his own bishop urging Central Valley priests to support its definition of "traditional marriage", Farrow told congregants he felt obligated to break "a numbing silence" about church prejudice against homosexuals, Los Angeles Times reports.

"How is marriage protected by intimidating gay and lesbian people into loveless and lonely lives?" he asked parishioners of the St. Paul Newman Center. "I am morally compelled to vote no on Proposition 8."

Then Farrow -- who had revealed that he was gay during an interview with Fresno's KFSN TV immediately before Mass -- added a coda to his sermon.

"I know these words of truth will cost me dearly," he said. "But to withhold them . . . I would become an accomplice to a moral evil that strips gay and lesbian people not only of their civil rights but of their human dignity as well."

And they did cost him. On Thursday, Fresno Bishop John T. Steinbock removed Farrow, 50, as pastor of the St. Paul Newman Center, which primarily serves students and faculty at Cal State Fresno, Los Angeles Times reports in a major feature on Farrow.

"Your statement contradicted the teaching of the Catholic Church and has brought scandal to your parish community as well as the whole Church," Steinbock wrote in a disciplinary letter that also admonished Farrow against "using the Internet as a means of continuing your conflict with the Church's teaching."

Farrow also was stripped of his salary and benefits, and ordered to stay away from all church communities he had served, LA Times reports.

In a June 30 "pastoral letter", Steinbock condemned the California Supreme Court's ruling in May that legalized same-sex marriage, and supported the passage of Proposition 8. The bishop called marriage between a man and woman the "foundation blocks for society." He compared the court's action to efforts by Nazi Germany and the Communist regimes in Russia and China to alter family arrangements, according to the Times.

Steinbock's letter threw Farrow into a moral quandary, he said, and prompted his sermon, LA Times reports.

"At what point do you cease to be an agent for healing and growth and become an accomplice of injustice?" he asked.

Just before that fateful mass on Oct. 5, Farrow told KFSN he wanted to be honest and upfront with parishioners who have the power to decide next month whether to eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry. "It's just wrong and someone has to say something and I wish it was someone else. I wish it would've been one of our cardinals or bishops who would've said something."

From his home in San Diego, the priest's brother Charles told KFSN TV that Farrow thought long and hard before delivering his critical remarks.

Charles Farrow said, "It took him several months of figuring out exactly how he wanted to address this moral dilemma that he was in."

Saint Paul Newman Center is a more progressive parish ... Much of the congregation is young and college aged. Farrow told his family that was part of the reason he wanted to speak out, KFSN reports.

Charles Farrow said, "Certainly there are people in the parish that he believes if he were to go along with the stance that the bishop was saying they should take, would've damaged some people there psychologically and he didn't want to do that to them."

Farrow's comments at the mass have left his congregation bitterly divided, according to the LA Times.

On Sunday, some parishioners praised Farrow's courage for defending the rights of gays and lesbians, while others condemned him for challenging church doctrine without giving warning, the Los Angeles paper reports.

"It upsets me that we are allowing a ballot proposition to come into our church and divide us," said Teresa Huerta, who teaches at Cal State Fresno. "We are going through changes right now in society and the church needs to recognize that."

Frank Gallegos, a parishioner for 24 years, said he was dismayed that Farrow used the pulpit to deliver his message.

He ambushed us," Gallegos, 44, said while leaving the white concrete-block church with his wife and two children. "I don't wish him ill. I just wish he hadn't done it during Mass."

A commenter, martinsk, reacting to a KFSN web story wrote "Fr. Geoffrey Farrow is truly a priest, following Christ's example. Fr. Farrow’s witnessing to stand for truth and justice is a bold sign of hope and love, which is so needed in the Catholic Church."

But parish leaders concluded two morning Masses on Sunday with an apology to parishioners, LA Times reports.

Farrow's statements, they said, were not in accord with church teachings. Also, the priest did not inform church elders about his plans before delivering his sermon, said Deacon John Supino, who read a letter from Steinbock reaffirming the Catholic Church's support for Proposition 8.

"The teachings of the church on these matters did not arise with Proposition 8 but have been in place for over 2,000 years," Supino said, quoting the statement.

Several parishioners inside the church applauded when Supino finished Steinbock's statement according to LA Times. A few rose and left as he was reading it.

Katherine Allison, 46, hurried out of the church at the end of the 11 a.m. Mass with her 14-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. She said she didn't want to stay to hear the bishop's letter. Allison said her entire family liked Father Geoff, as he was known.

"There is nothing to apologize for," she told LA Times. "God tells us to speak the truth, and that's what he did."

Farrow became a priest 23 years ago, working in parishes in Visalia, Merced, Bakersfield and the nearby town of Arvin. A graduate of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, he also served as a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve at Edwards Air Force Base near Palmdale in the early 1990s.

Farrow, who said he realized that he was gay in boyhood, revealed his sexual orientation only to close friends and family. He told his parents just four years ago.
"This was the secret I was going to take to my grave," he told LA Times.

That changed when he received Steinbrock's "pastoral letter" that compared the Supreme Courts marriage equality decision to Nazi and Communist "family planning".

He said he felt compelled to speak out after reading the bishop's letter.

Farrow said he knew his comments would generate an uproar. He started to pack up his office the night before his address. He cleared his belongings from the church rectory within hours of greeting parishioners after church services. He left town so quickly that he was unable to find one of his two cats.

He drove to Los Angeles, where he is staying with friends, the Times reports. Farrow sent Steinbock a letter last week saying that he would resume his pastoral duties unless he heard otherwise.

But in his disciplinary letter, Steinbock said Farrow had abandoned his assignment without offering to discuss the issues. Steinbock said he had no choice but to suspend Farrow, and he hinted that other penalties could follow, including defrocking him. Steinbock did not return calls from LA Times seeking comment on the story.

Source: Stand against Prop. 8 costs priest dearly | Los Angeles Times
Reaction to Father Farrow's Statements KFSN TV

Source: Orlando Sentinel, WESH TV, WOFL TV, WFTV
On the 10th anniversary of the murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard and a few weeks before Floridians vote on an amendment to restrict gay rights, Orlando's "Come Out With Pride" event Sunday was as much about self-preservation as pride.

Emotional pleas from the parents of slain gay men were followed by emotional pleas from political activists to defeat Amendment 2, which would put a ban against gay marriage into the Florida Constitution. Opponents say it would also jeopardize domestic-partner benefits for unmarried couples.

"I don't want to beat it by 40 percent. I want to show the majority of Floridians are against the discrimination that Amendment 2 represents," said state Rep. Scott Randolph.

Organizers of the three-day event said politics may have helped them attract their largest crowd ever. Over the weekend about 45,000 people attended the series of activities in downtown Orlando, which included a block party, art shows, and performances and culminated in Sunday's rally and a parade.

At the rally, opponents of Amendment 2, called the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment, said they worry about what it could do to measures like the one passed by Orlando to extend benefits to same sex couples.

"I want to show them that a majority of Floridians are against the discrimination that Amendment 2 represents," an opponent of the amendment said.

"When you don't do it right for one group, you'll do it wrong for the next," Orlando City Commissioner Daisy Lynum said.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer also voiced his opposition to Amendment 2, which requires 60 percent of the vote to win.

"It's two weeks and two days before the election. We need to work hard to defeat Amendment 2," said Dyer, who was a week off in his countdown to the Nov. 4 general election.

Dyer, the only Orlando mayor to accept an invitation to speak at the annual event, which began in 1991, was earlier applauded by the crowd at Lake Eola Park for the city's recent passage of domestic-partner benefits for gay city employees.

"We call this the City Beautiful. We can now also call it the City Equal," Dyer said.

He said the new ordinance is a matter of fairness and a way to attract white-collar employees to Orlando.

"One thing that's interesting is economists say the cities that are going to do well in the new economy are those that welcome and promote diversity," Dyer said.

Sunday's event also marked a somber anniversary, in a tribute honoring Matthew Shepard.  It was ten years ago this month that Shepard, a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, was brutally murdered.  The 21-year-old had been beaten, tied to a split-rail fence, pistol-whipped and left to die in near freezing temperatures.  His death brought national as well as international attention to the issue of gay hate crime legislation.

Orlando police Chief Val Demings pledged to fight hate crimes against gays -- and everyone else.

"We will not tolerate any individual who would threaten to do harm because of someone's race, religion, political affiliation or sexual orientation," she said.

Demings was followed at the podium by the parents of Ryan Keith Skipper, a 25-year-old gay man who was killed in Polk County in 2007, and Sean William Kennedy, a 20-year-old Greenville, S.C., man who died in 2007 after being punched in the face because he was gay. The man convicted in Kennedy's killing was sentenced to five years. He is eligible for parole in four months.

"There was no justice for my son Sean," said Elke Kennedy. "No mother should have to lose her child. No mother should have to fight for justice after losing her child."

Skipper's mother, Patricia Mulder, read a statement from Denise King, the mother of Simmie Williams, 17, who was killed in Fort Lauderdale in 2008: "I gave him $2 for the bus and he never came back. A few hours later he was shot to death."

Lynn Mulder, Skipper's stepfather, noted that little has changed since the death of Shepard.

"Ten years ago, Matthew Shepard was not the last. Ryan was not the last. Simmie was not the last," he said

Scott Hall, with the Web site gayamericanheroes .com, said more than 250 gays have been murdered since Shepard. Twenty-six have been killed nationwide in 2008, he said.

"Pride is not just a one-day event," Hall said. "We shall not and will not live in fear."

Later in an afternoon, a parade featured a number of colorfully-dressed participants and representatives from event sponsors.   Some of those sponsors included gay-friendly businesses like Walt Disney, Universal Orlando, Hard Rock Cafe, IKEA, Darden Restaurants, Suntrust Bank, Chase and Bank of America.

Source: Orlando gay-pride festivities underscore serious themes | Orlando Sentinel 
Mayor Discusses Amendment 2 At PrideFest | WESH TV
Gay pride parade and festival held at Lake Eola | WOFL TV
Gay Pride Parade Draws 45,000, Raises Awareness For Amendment 2 | WFTV

Source: St Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Former Minnesota state Sen. Allan Spear, 71, who died Saturday, left a legacy as one of Minnesota's most influential lawmakers and as the nation's first openly gay man to serve in a state legislature.

Spears took great personal and political risk in 1974 when he announced that he was gay. Gay and lesbian Minnesotans lived in a state much less accepting and just than the one they know today. 

Two years into his first Senate term, Spear decided to tell a Minneapolis Star reporter he was gay. At the time, only a Massachusetts lawmaker had made a similar declaration about her orientation.

It was a risk well worth taking. Spear went on to serve seven more terms, representing southwest Minneapolis. Through the years, his openness about his sexual orientation helped make Minnesota a better state for others, Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

Gay rights issues were not central to Spear's legislative career. He chaired the judiciary committee and became a policy expert on crime prevention. But in 1993, when the state's human rights statutes were amended to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, Spear carried the bill.

Friends and colleagues remembered him as a unique and persuasive speaker. His moving, eloquent address to his colleagues during floor debate on the anti-discrimination bill will stand in the memory of anyone who heard it. "I am not just going through a phase," he said. "I can also assure you that my sexual orientation is not something I chose, like choosing to wear a blue shirt and red tie today."

The Legislature voted to amend the Minnesota Human Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

While he earned broad respect among lawmakers over time, his fight for gay rights was never easy. Long before the 1993 passage of the bill, Spear lost a fight to block job and housing discrimination in 1977. In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic complicated all related legislation.

Spear combined the zeal of a 1960s hippie activist with a shrewd understanding of history and the legislative process, friends said. When conservative lawmakers sought more prisons and tougher sentences, he agreed, on the condition that an equal amount of money and effort would go toward crime prevention, St Paul Pioneer Press reports.

The former University of Minnesota history professor blended charm and detailed knowledge few could match. It served him well as he fought in the Legislature for civil rights, and argued for crime prevention over more punishment.

Highly respected by his colleagues, he was elected president of the Senate in 1993.

"You put all of that together, he will go down as one of a handful of truly great legislators in the history of the state," former Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe said. "In that arena, knowledge is power, and everybody knew Allan Spear was one of the most knowledgeable senators on any subject."

Not two hours before his death, Spear was at it again -- talking passionately with friends around his hospital bed about politics and the prospects for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, St Paul Pioneer Press reports.

How did the polls look? Are they going to hold up? What if people don't vote the way they are saying?

"A conversation like always," close friend Lee Greenfield said.

Spear's condition declined rapidly and unexpectedly, however, and he died Saturday of complications following heart surgery.

Source: Allan Spear 1937-2008 / 1st openly gay state senator championed civil rights | St Paul Pioneer Press
Spear's risk made a difference | Minneapolis Star Tribune

      ::   After the recent demise of the only gay publication in town, Melbourne has a new gay and lesbian community newspaper called The Southern Star. The weekly tabloid-style paper was launched by Sydney Star Observer (SSO) to fill a gap in the market after Melbourne-based gay and lesbian magazine Bnews ceased publication several weeks ago. Two journalists and two sales staff from Bnews have joined The Southern Star while SSO publishing editor Scott Abrahams has taken on the same role at the new title. "The SSO is Australia's oldest and longest continuing (gay and lesbian) publication," Mr Abrahams said. "It takes its news values very seriously." But he added that the new Melbourne paper will also include "some lifestyle-oriented stuff."

      ::   Leaders of Affirmation, the LGBT Mormon support group, said Saturday that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is using fear to sway voters to vote for Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that seeks to ban marriage equality in California. During the group's annual conference in Los Angeles, executive director Olin Thomas said church leaders were wrong in saying last week that failing to pass the proposition would force churches to sanction same-sex marriage and force schools to teach children to place gay and heterosexual marriages on equal footing. Three senior leaders of Salt Lake City-based church on Wednesday addressed members in a satellite broadcast to church buildings in California, Utah, Hawaii and Idaho.

      ::   A New South Wales woman who was convicted last year of having sex with two underage girls, both 14, will ask Australia's High Court to keep her name off the national sex-offender registry because she honestly believed the girls were 17. Rebecca Jane Clark and a co-defendant made made a DVD of six movies with the teenage girls in Adelaide in 2005. She will argue that her conviction should be erased based on a controversial ruling that sex offenders can be acquitted if they "honestly believe" their victims are more than the age of consent.

       ::   We couldn't resist this headline from UK's excellent PinkNews that just popped up on our home-page Qticker: Travel: America's strangest landmarks. We've got plenty of them, of course, but the "strange" title is usually applied to the more home-grown examples of roadside attractions rather than their expensive brethren like Seattle's Space Needle or St. Louis's Gateway Arch. This article focuses on those kinds of "gosh"-worthy creations like the Minnesota twine ball or Jolly Green Giant statue. The story misses one of our personal favorites: The "World's Largest Holstein Cow"  in New Salem, ND [right], or Our Lady of the Rockies [link includes, umm... sounds] in our news editor's home town of Butte, Mont. (And, damn... It does mentions the UFO museum in Roswell, NM which our news editor's then-partner thought wasn't worth going to when we were in Carlsbad years ago. The regret... The regret...)

Source: Echelon Magazine, WeHo News, OutHistory.org About page

A new website on LGBTQ history, OutHistory.org, will make its official debut on Tuesday, October 21.

Pioneering historian and project director Jonathan Ned Katz describes OutHistory.org as "a dynamic developing website that makes the history of sexuality accessible to a diverse audience," according to WeHo News.

In these early stages the site will focus on the United States, but OutHistory is working to expand its geographic scope.

"It has the potential to connect with a wide new audience who never before had access to reliable work on LGBTQ history," Katz told WeHo News.

The site uses web technologies similar to those used for Wikipedia, but -- unlike Wikipedia -- not all articles on the site will be open for editing. Instead, OutHistory contains two types of articles.

Entries by named authors are marked as "Protected" and may not be edited by the public.

"Protected entries provide the credibility associated with the naming of a particular author," Lauren Gutterman, the website's coordinator told WeHo News.

Several of the protected entries are copyrighted by the entry's author -- something that often frowned upon by other Wiki-based sites, including Wikipedia.

OutHistory also contains articles marked as "Open" to additions and edits by any logged-on users with data, documents, and citations.

"These collaboratively created entries," says Katz, "are an innovative experiment in history by the community."

Administrators of the site warn on its "About" page that entries "must strive for verifiable accuracy. Unreferenced or badly referenced entries may be removed, so please provide full references."

Another rule for contributors:

Factual claims and statements must be clearly distinguished from analysis and interpretation. Personal opinions, personal experiences, and arguments may be included if presented as such and if they are clearly relevant to a particular entry, and help to enlarge the understanding of users about ongoing debates.

The site incorporates elements of an encyclopedia, an archive, and a museum, according to its About page. When it's fully operational, OutHistory will feature a series of "layers": curated "exhibits" by experts in various historical fields, public contributions, discussion boards, and an ever-growing archive of primary and scholarly materials, according to a statement in Echelon Magazine from CLAGS.

OutHistory.org strives to incorporate the rich tradition of "community based knowledge sharing" with the information sharing potential of the internet, according to CLAGS.

The project is sponsored by City University of New York's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) and funded through a two-year grant (2007-2008: $50,000 a year) from the Michigan-based Arcus Foundation.

Katz approached CLAGS with the idea of creating a website that documents different aspects of LGBTQ histories and provides access to difficult to find information. Working with the Arcus Foundation grant, Katz and CLAGS have spent the last year developing the project, Echelon Magazine reports.

In 2005, Katz had received a grant of $5,000 from the Zebra Fund via the Funding Exchange to investigate how to go about funding and establishing a complex LGBTQ history site and supporting it over the long run, according to OutHistory's About page. That grant was funded by the late Joan R. Heller and her partner, Dr. L. Diane Bernard.

The prototype of OutHistory, which is now online, has 546 entries concentrating on a few aspects of queer history in the United States.

The site currently features several historical "exhibits," among them a colorful collection of postcards from the early-twentieth century depicting "masculine women and feminine men."

In addition to the postcard exhibit, protected entries include Ron Schlittler’s original photographic exhibit: "Out and Elected in the USA:1974-2004," which chronicles many of the pioneering openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individuals elected to public office in the US in those years.

The exhibit includes black and white portraits and texts about dozens of elected officials indexed by state.

An exhibit on some of the first homosexual rights organizations in the US is  curated by C. Todd White. In its initial form, the entries focus mostly on ONE Magazine which was created by Mattachine members and other Los Angeles activists and launched in January of 1953. But the site doesn't yet include a useful history about the magazine. A list of "movement pioneers" currently includes only 9 names and doesn't yet include entries such major figures as Harry Hay.

White invites users of the site to help him fill in the many gaps. "This exhibit will strive to be as comprehensive as possible, and to that aim we encourage comments and submissions from those knowledgeable in the field. If you would like to submit biographical profiles," he writes in the exhibit introduction.

The prototype site also includes a section identified as "Blog on History." The entries -- only one of which is available in the prototype -- are written by by Joan Nestle, cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, but aren't really blog entries -- at least not yet. The "wiki" web technology used for the site in its current form is quite different than "blog" technologies, and it's not clear yet if the site will combine the two distinct technologies in the future.

OutHistory is collaborating with several other LGBT history projects in the US, including ChicagoGayHistory.org , a website founded by Tracy Baim, editor of the Windy City Times, Both sites are presenting original essays on Chicago LGBT history by Professor John D'Emilio.

"We are also discussing a partnership between OutHistory and The National Archive of Lesbian and Gay History, founded by Richard Wandel," Lauren Gutterman said.

"And we've met with Jason Bauman, who is coordinating the LGBT Digital Collections at the New York Public Library to discuss future collaborations."

"[T]he future possibilities of this site are as wide as the world, and as open as all of us can collectively imagine," according to its About page. "For example, Jonathan Ned Katz dreams that this site will eventually contain the largest, freely accessible, annotated bibliography on the subject of LGBTQ and heterosexual history."

Source: LGBT History Website To Launch October 21st | WeHo News
OutHistory.org | Echelon Magazine
link: About OutHistory.org

      ::   The Courage Campaign, an LA-based "online organizing network" aiming for a "new era for progressive politics in California" has prepared a funny ad against Proposition 8 that implores, "Keep the Government Out of Your Pants." Rick Jacobs of the campaign's Issues Committee says, "[H]umor is the best way to cut through the clutter and reach voters." He adds, "But the idea behind Prop. 8 -- rolling back a fundamental civil right for the first time in American history -- is no laughing matter. ... In California, we let people decide what is best for themselves -- without government interference."

      ::   Two small parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, in Purdy and Emporia, have quit the denomination because of objections to ordination of gay priests and have joined a like-minded group of dissident churches based in Northern Virginia. The break away Anglican District of Virginia announced Friday that it has accepted the two congregations into its association which gives allegiance to the fiercely anti-gay Anglican Church of Uganda.

      ::   18 first-graders from Creative Arts Charter School in San Francisco took an unusual field trip Friday to City Hall where they tossed rose petals and blew bubbles on their just-married teacher Erin Carder and her wife Kerri McCoy, giggling and squealing as they mobbed their teacher with hugs. "She's a really nice teacher. She's the best," said 6-year-old Chava Novogrodsky-Godt, wearing a "No on 8" button on her shirt. "I want her to have a good wedding." Mayor Gavin Newsom, a friend of a friend, officiated. A parent came up with the idea for the field trip -- a surprise for the popular teacher on her wedding day. "It really is what we call a teachable moment," said the schools interim director, Liz Jaroflow, noting the historic significance of same-sex marriage and related civil rights issues. "I think I'm well within the parameters."

       ::   Australia's DNA Magazine celebrates October with the exact opposite of frightening images. They've asked super photographer Adam Raphael to give them a month's worth of gorgeous hunks, starting with "free spirit" Nolan, a yoga instructor whose  parents were well known artists. He lives in New York City along with Kristean, another Adam Raphael model who will be featured on DNA's website later this month. Want more of Raphael's work? We have examples in our hunks wallpapers gallery here, here, and here.

Source: CBS News, Newsweek

It was ten years ago last Monday that openly gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten. He died five days later.

Police ruled it a hate crime, and there was an international outcry, along with calls for tougher laws.

As CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras notes, the beating was so savage that it's hard to hear a description of his injuries, even a decade later.

"His head trauma consisted of a massive blow to the right side of his head," Rulon Stacey of Poudre Valley Hospital told reporters at the time. "It fractured his skull from behind his head in a horizontal fashion to in front of his right ear."

On the night of Oct. 6, 1998, Shepard left the Fireside Bar in Laramie, Wyo. with Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The next morning, Shepard was found tortured and battered, tied to a fence. The biker who found him thought he was a scarecrow.

Shepard was mourned across the nation with candle light vigils.

One month after Shepard's murder, 10 members of the Tectonic Theater Project, led by playwright and director Moisés Kaufman, went to Laramie to interview residents about the killing. Those interviews served as the basis for The Laramie Project, a play that chronicles how the community grappled with the slaying.

On the 10th anniversary of Shepard's death, which has become a rallying cry for gay rights and hate-crime laws, members of the theater company returned to Laramie and shared their reflections for a Newsweek feature.

Some minor things have changed, the company found: the fence where Shepard was tortured has been dismantled; the Fireside Bar where Shepard met his killers has been renamed; and the shock of the murder has spurred the University of Wyoming to make several changes.

They've added gay and lesbian study classes to the curriculum, created a resource center for LGBT students, and permanently renamed the Social Justice Symposium after Matthew Shepard. They've also recently joined Matthew's mom, Judy Shepard, in memorializing Matthew on campus. But the UW still has yet to grant domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian faculty and staff.

When you ask of the people of Laramie how has the town has changed, many say, "We've moved on."

"Moved on to what?" asks Reggie Fluty, the policewoman who was the first to arrive at the fence where Matthew was tied. "If you don't want to look back, fine. But what are we moving towards?"

Wyoming still hasn't enacted hate crime laws, making it one of 19 states that don't address hate crimes based on sexual orientation.

The Human Rights Campaign in Washington, the nation's largest gay rights advocacy group, cites statistics from the FBI showing hate crimes based on sexual orientation are the third most prevalent type, behind those based on race and religion, CBS News points out.

It's something Shepard's family and friends still hope to change, but the Laramie Project members found that a disturbing narrative about the crime has emerged in Laramie -- a narrative has gained many proponents in recent years: one that states that Shepard's murder by two local residents, McKinney and Henderson, was only "a robbery gone bad" or "a drug-fueled murder" and not a hate crime.

"That's nonsense," says Fluty. "All you have to do is look at the evidence."

Officer Dave O'Malley, lead investigator of the Laramie Police Department agrees, "I'm convinced that these guys killed Matt because he was gay."

Catherine Connolly, the first openly gay professor at the University of Wyoming, also takes issue with this willful ignoring of the facts: "This distortion of history, this is what kids 18, 19 years old think now. It's devastating to us. This is our history."

So why has this distortion of the truth become so prevalent? One hypothesis is that because Laramie was portrayed in the media as a backward town where hatred and bigotry were rampant, forcing the citizens to question their identity as an idyllic community, a "good place to raise your children."

"And when we have a theory about who we are," says Laramie resident Jeffrey Lockwood, "and the data goes against that theory, we throw out the data rather than adjust the theory. We are hardwired as human beings not to contemplate our own complicity in things."

Shepard's mother, Judy Shepard, said last week on the CBS News Early Show, "This whole week is just (one of) remembrances. It's a great sadness and sense of confusion, of loss. We've actually tried to address issues that haven't changed. It's been ten years. Why haven't things progressed further than they have?"

Judy says when that awful call first came a decade ago, "We (she and her husband, Dennis) didn't really know what had happened. The circumstances and the facts were not known, but ... my first thought was, it happened because he was gay. You were just conditioned to think that that's going to happen, because someone's sexual orientation is different, that other people will hate them, will hurt them."

Still, shifts are occurring: Wyoming's Governor Dave Freudenthal, says, "If you really believe in that Western 'live and let live' [philosophy] then you wouldn't have homophobic violence. So there's a contradiction. We tolerate an awful lot of violence in this state and we have to look at that."

Two Laramie police officers who worked on the Shepard case have become outspoken proponents of hate crimes legislation, the Laramie Project members found.

Detective Sergeant Rob Debree, the lead investigator in Shepard's murder,  became a forceful national advocate for Federal Hate Crime legislation alongside Officer O'Malley as a result of this murder.

Debree said that Laramie has become a more accepting town overall. "I think overall, there's just more acceptance," he told Laramie Project members.

Shepard's former academic adviser Jon Peacock says, "I think when you're so close to an event like this you become more sensitized. You start to pay more attention to those issues."

"The fact that cops like DeBree and O'Malley, law officers in positions of real power, are committed to gay and lesbian people and their protection, that should be construed as concrete change," says Beth Loffreda, author of the book, Losing Matthew Shepard. "You won't find that in a statute or in a public monument to Matt, but that's real and meaningful change."

There are a few other concrete signs of a change in attitudes elsewhere in the state. In 2005, the city of Casper elected a gay man as mayor. Professor Connolly is running for a State House seat in the coming election. In addition, the faculty at the university continues to fight for same-sex partner benefits.

In her Early Show interview, Judy Shepard agreed that there's been progress since Matt's death: "There's definitely been positive changes, and for a lot of reasons. Theatrical productions, literature, television, novels, movies, all portray the gay community in a very positive, forward-thinking way, and that has really helped. People understand the gay community.

"The level of ignorance is just -- it's amazing that people just don't know more about the civil rights that are being denied the gay community, and we're moving forward and working at the grassroots level now trying to really educate people and make them aware of the gay community."

Nationally, the situation regarding gay rights legislation mirrors Wyoming's. In 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act passed in both the House and the Senate but the legislation never made it out of Congress—because of a Bush veto threat and the bill's attachment to a defense authorization measure.

Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solomnese says, "We have to find increasing ways to try to address this violence. What I think needs to happen ... is not just the kind of legislative efforts that we're making, but really addressing this at its root, in schools and among young people" top change attitudes.

Source: Landmark Anti-Gay Hate Crime, Decade Later, Brutal Slaying Of Matthew Shepard In Wyoming Accelerated Push For Laws Against Hate Crimes; His Mother Is Crusading For More | CBS News 
Has Anything Changed? | Newsweek

by Scott Larsen
Oct. 08,2008

The man who was attacked on a downtown Vancouver street just after midnight on Sept. 27 said "it doesn't surprise me this still happens."

27-year-old Jordan Smith, who was walking hand-in-hand with another man in the 900 block of Davie Street, was attacked by a man identified by Vancouver Police Dept. as Michael Kandola. Kandola, 20, was with three others and began yelling obscenities says Smith.

"Everything you could think of… a slew of obscenities that were obviously anti-gay," says Smith about the verbal abuse levied at him before he was punched in the side of his face, knocking him down on the sidewalk. Later, Smith woke up in St. Paul's Hospital blocks away from where the attack took place with his jaw broken in three places.

Kandola was found and arrested for assault causing bodily harm soon after on Sept. 28.

Initially, the Crown prosecutor’s office filed charges against Kandola in the city's community court on Sept. 29 rather than in the BC Provincial Court.  On that same day Smith was in the hospital having his jaw, broken in three places, wired shut for six weeks to allow it to heal. But one day later on Sept. 30, the prosecutor's office moved the case to provincial court after receiving criticism for filling the case in community court.

Vancouver’s Community Court deals with cases around health and social issues of a suspect  involved in crime stemming from alcohol, drug use, or mental illness.

The Criminal Code of Canada gives the courts the authority to impose heavier sentences if there's evidence the crime was motivated by hate based on race, religion or sexual orientation.

Inspector John McKay, a Vancouver Police Department spokesperson said at a Sept. 29 press conference that the attack would have been more serious if witnesses hadn't intervened. The police have recommended Kandola be charged with a hate crime.

After the Vancouver police tasered a 16-year-old mother on Sept. 22. this action caused a greater public outcry from letter writers and newspaper editorialist. An editorial six days after it happened in The Province -- Vancouver's other daily paper -- criticized the police, saying they were "wrong to Taser teen". No editorial about the attack on Smith has been published by this same paper. But one letter to the Vancouver Sun, written by a self-described heterosexual called the attacker of Smith's attacker a "coward."

Gays and lesbians in Vancouver, particularly in the gay neighborhood of the West End, for years have endured numerous reported and unreported verbal and physical attacks.

The most infamous attack was in November 2001 when 41-year-old Aaron Webster was beaten with a pool stick and baseball bats in Stanley Park. Two men, 20-year-old Ryan Cran and 22-year-old Danny Rao, were charged with Webster’s death. Only Cran was convicted and is now serving time in jail. Rao was cleared due to lack of evidence.

A Hands for Justice March to protest this latest attack on gays and Lesbians in Vancouver is being organized for Sunday, Oct. 12, one day after the National Coming Out Day in Canada and the U.S.