Twenty years after his brutal murder, Matthew Shepard will be buried in Washington National Cathedral | Smart News

The kidnapping and brutal killing of Matthew Shepard in October 1998, woke up many US appeals about hate crimes perpetrated against the gay community. Even at the funeral of Shepard, the homophobic climate did not let up, as the protesters came up with anti-gay placards. Fearing that their son's grave would become the target of vandalism, Shepard's parents did not bury her ashes until they were 20 years old.

Now, as Michelle Boorstein relates to the Washington PostDennis and Judy Shepard have finally found a safe place to rest for their son. On October 26th, Matthew Shepard's remains will be buried in a secluded niche of Washington's National Cathedral, known as the "spiritual home of the nation".

The imposing Gothic cathedral is the official seat of the Episcopal Church, making it an ideal place for the burial of Shepard. he was active in the Episcopal Church, serving as a sidekick in his childhood, and his parents told Boorstein that he "loved" the ecclesial community. Washington's National Cathedral also regularly hosts memorial services for VIPs. Some 200 people were buried, including Woodrow Wilson, George Dewey and Helen Keller.

"I think that with the sense of opportunity and Matt's drama, he would have found [being interred in the cathedral] extremely rewarding and very cool, "James Marsden, a friend of Shepard who is now executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, tells Jacey Fortin of the New York Times.

Shepard was a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming when he was kidnapped by two men, brutally beaten with a gun and stolen. Next, the authors, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney, tied Shepard to a fence and left him in a remote area outside Laramie, Wyoming. He was suspended there, cold and bleeding, for 18 hours, until he was discovered by a cyclist who first thought that he was a scarecrow. Shepard died at the hospital a few days later, on October 12, 1998.

The crime was partly motivated by Shepard's sexual orientation. McKinney's girlfriend told reporters at the time that McKinney and Henderson wanted to "teach [Shepard] a lesson."

Horrified by the death of Shepard, people from all over the country organized demonstrations and held vigils. Over the decades, Shepard has been a symbol of the terrible reality of hate-motivated violent crime against LGBTQ people. It has been the subject of books, a documentary and one of the most played plays of recent years. His name appears in a 2009 law that extends federal hate crime laws to include acts of violence against homosexuals.

And yet, despite recent gains in LGBTQ rights, the community continues to be threatened by violent crime, reports Julie Compton of NBC News. In 2017, the Anti Violence project recorded 52 hate-related homicides against LGBTQ people, an increase of 86% over 2016.

"A lot has changed in the last 20 years since Matthew was kidnapped, tied to a fence and left for dead," Bishop of Marian Diocese Mariann Edgar Budde tells Fortin. Time. "A lot has changed, but everything has not changed. It seemed very important to us to say that we believe that LGBTQ people are God's beloved children, not in spite of their identity, but because of their identity – of the person to whom God created them. "

Bishop Budde will preside over Shepard's burial on October 26, alongside Reverend V. Gene Robinson, who became the first openly homosexual Bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2003. The remains of Shepard will be buried in a private part of Cathedral. Public. But the cathedral plans to install a plaque in memory of Shepard and Dennis Shepard said he hoped people from around the world would come to visit his son.

"It's a place where there is a real chance for others to sit down and think about Matthew," he tells Fortin, "and to themselves and their friends."

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