Judy Shepard Video as Congress Takes up Hate Crimes Legislation

WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign – the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization – released a video today as part of the effort to pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) featuring Judy Shepard whose son Matthew was murdered in 1998 because he was gay.

“It’s been ten years since Judy Shepard lost her son Matthew and this video is a painful reminder that the federal government does not have the resources it needs to assist in prosecuting these horrific acts,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Since Matthew’s murder, tens of thousands of Americans have been victims of hate violence and it’s time to give local law enforcement the tools to combat this scourge.”

Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee will mark up the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA), also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. The bill would give the Justice Department the power to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated violence by providing the department with jurisdiction over crimes of violence where the victim is chosen because of the person's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The video profiles the stories of hate crimes victims who were targeted because of who they are. They include:

· Angie Zapata who on a summer night in Greeley, Colorado, was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher because she was transgender.

· Billy Ray Johnson a mentally disabled man from Texas who was taken to a party, ridiculed, knocked unconscious, and then dumped by the side of the road.

· Luis Ramirez who while walking home to his family in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, was beaten him to death by a group of young men yelling racial and ethnic epithets.

· Ryan Skipper of Eloise, Florida, who was robbed, driven to a dirt road and stabbed more than twenty times because he was gay.

· Sean Kennedy, a South Carolina man who died after he was assaulted by a man yelling anti-gay slurs. The state has no hate crime law and his attacker was sentenced to three years in prison.

Watch: MTV presents Pedro

The HBCU Program got this alert from the HRC Communications Department:


In 1994, Pedro Zamora captured the hearts of millions on MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco as the first-ever openly gay, HIV-positive main character on a national television show. Pedro is an intimate bio pic tracing his humble Cuban immigrant roots to his courageous rise to national prominence as the most recognizable HIV-AIDS activist in the United States. The world premiere of Pedro provides us with a unique opportunity to begin an honest discussion about the realities of sexually transmitted infections.

To carry on Pedro’s fight, we want to encourage all sexually active people to get tested. To make this as easy and fun as possible, we set up an SMS code so all anyone has to do is text their zip code to 49809 and they will get a text back with the location of the nearest testing center. In addition, everyone who texts that SMS code will automatically be registered to win a trip for 2 people to the 2009 MTV Movie Awards in Los Angeles! Not a bad deal for doing something we should all be doing anyway right?

Watch the trailor here!

HRC Launches Endthelies.org

The Human Rights Campaign launched a new website this past week. When the right-wing attacks the LGBT community, their messages usually consist of one main ingredient - lies. HRC's EndtheLies.org will help you counter to those lies with the truth. EndtheLies.org has videos, audio, pictures and quotations calling out those who knowingly use lies and misinformation to disrupt the LGBT community's path to equality. Users can add comments on multimedia discussion boards, learn how to fight the far-right's misdeeds and nominate their own candidates for inclusion on the interactive wall of shame.

Click here to find more!

Gay is the New Black

Check out this interesting article in the Advocate! Provocative title but great writing:

By Michael Joseph Gross
Excerpted from The Advocate November 12, 2008

The night before Election Day, a black woman walked into the San Francisco headquarters of the No on Proposition 8 campaign. Someone had ripped down the No on 8 sign she’d posted in her yard and she wanted a replacement. She was old, limping, and carrying a cane. Walking up and down the stairs to this office was hard for her.

I asked why coming to get the sign was worth the trouble, and she answered, “All of us are equal, and all of us have to fight to make sure the law says that.” She said that she was straight, and she told me about one of the first times she ever hung out with gay people, in New Orleans in the 1970s. “I thought I was so cool for being there, and I said, ‘You faggots are a lot of fun!’ Well, that day I learned my lesson. A gay man turned on me and said, ‘A faggot is not a person. A faggot is a bunch of sticks you use to light a fire.’ ”

The combination of Obama’s win and gay people’s losses inflicted mass whiplash. We were elated, then furious. I’d spent the week in the No on Prop. 8 office in the Castro, a neighborhood where our defeat was existential. For the next few days, wherever I went -- barbershop, grocery store, gym, bars -- I heard people talk of almost nothing else.

The next day, Barack Obama was elected president, and gay marriage rights in California were taken away. At the same time, Arizona voters amended their state constitution to preemptively outlaw gay marriage. Florida went further, outlawing any legal union that’s treated as marriage, such as domestic partnerships or civil unions. Arkansas passed a vicious law denying us adoption rights.

You can find the rest after the jump...

Take Action: Send McCain A Message About Marriage!!!

This week, when John McCain wants to sell himself as a moderate, can you take a moment to ask him why he's marching in lockstep with the radical right?

* He has publicly embraced the hateful California marriage initiative that would deny marriage rights to committed same-sex couples.

* In 2006, he appeared in the TV ad below for a similar measure in Arizona.

* He doesn't believe GLBT couples should
be able to adopt children.

Sign this petition and tell Sen. McCain to stop supporting discriminatory anti-GLBT measures.