top of page

I didn't know Matthew Shepard but I think about him often.

On many levels it makes no sense, but I've always felt connected.

I've often thought "why wasn't it me?"

If you just think about it on a surface level, I was Matthew.

Matthew was gay, drinking beer at a straight bar in his

college town. Mathew was naive and trusting. He was in search

of friendship and place of acceptance.

Simply because of who he was, Matthew was beaten,

tied to a fence and left for dead.

Replace Laramie, Wyoming, with Ames, Iowa.

Replace Matthew Shepard with Steve Petersen.

It's not as big of a leap as you might want to think.

More hate crimes than ever were carried out in the United States in 2017, with an uptick in incidents motivated by bias against Jews, Muslims and LGBT people

There were more than 6,100 reported incidents of hate crimes last year, up from more than 5,800 the year before. If there were one hate crime every day it would average to a little more than 16 hate crimes every day.

Who was Matthew?

It's been 20 years since Matthew's murder. Progress has been made, but not as much as you might think.

Why it's still important.

bottom of page