Some Rare Video Footage of Matthew Shepard

by Michael Jones · 2009-12-16 06:11:00 +1030
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Matthew ShepardEvery so often you stumble upen something in the interwebs and think, "How the hell didn't I see this before?" Such is the case with this interview with Matthew Shepard, which comes from the 1998 documentary Dear Jesse. At the time Shepard was a student at Catawba College, in North Carolina, before moving to Wyoming.

Shepard is interviewed, along with his then boyfriend Lewis Krider, as part of Dear Jesse's focus on being openly gay deep in the heart of Senator Jesse Helms country. Sen. Helms was one of the most vociferously homophobic senators at the time (and probably in history), having worked hard to deny funding for HIV/AIDS research in the 1980s and 90s, and fighting the appointment of openly gay public officials like Ambassador James Hormel, to name just a few impolite items from the Senator's resume.

The Shepard interview is quick, but you hear that as an 18- or 19-year-old student, Matthew was already involved in campus-wide gay rights groups.

But beyond that, it's somewhat emotional to see Shepard in person. In death he's become one of the icons of the LGBT rights movement, and a symbol for why hate crimes laws are so important. Perhaps it's hard to remember that behind Shepard's history as a victim of one of the most violent and brutal anti-gay attacks in modern times, there was a student and college guy, who probably woke up early for his English class or was complaining about the dining hall food.

Check out the footage below. (H/T Joshalot.com)

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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