By Christianne Walker
© Seattle Gay Standard, October 2001

On Tuesday evening, a near-capacity crowd at the Seattle Center Opera House heeded a call to eradicate hate and celebrate diversity. The event, "An Evening Against Hate," focused around the viewing of the documentary film "Journey to a Hate Free Millenium" and was highlighted by an eloquent and inspiring address by Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, a twenty-one year old college student who was brutally murdered in October 1998 in an act of anti-gay hatred.

Although organizers had been planning the event for the last year and the film is two years old, the evening's program seemed all the more timely as it fell three weeks to the day after suspected foreign terrorists killed thousands in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania in one of the worst attacks in U.S. history. Speaker Eric Ward, Executive Director of the Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity, also pointed out how the attacks of September 11th have spawned a new round of hate and discrimination in our own backyard. He read off a long list of incidents of verbal harassment, vandalism, and physical violence in the Northwest against individuals perceived or known to be Muslim, Arab, or Middle Eastern. He reminded the audience that if each person doesn't commit themselves to stopping racist and bigoted remarks or actions, we can never hope to prevent another Timothy McVeigh or Buford Furrow, the white supremacist who shot and killed a Filipino-American mail carrier and wounded five at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles in 1999.

The event was the brainchild of Chris Megargee, an engineer at KOMO-4 Television who saw the film in Los Angeles and wanted to showcase it in Seattle as part of a program dedicated to addressing and stopping hate. For the past year, he and a planning team developed the program and secured corporate sponsors to make the evening a reality. His goal was to use the event as an opportunity to start a community dialogue on how to prevent discrimination and hate and provide people tools to help accomplish that. The tools consisted of the participation of dozens of nonprofit community groups and local agencies-such as the African American/Jewish Coalition for Justice, the Idris Mosque, Lambert House, and the Seattle Office for Civil Rights-that staffed bustling information tables in the lobby.

The Seattle Men's Chorus sang an inspiring song that became the anthem of the evening-the power of one individual to make a difference in the world. Singer/Songwriter Randi Driscol performed "What Matters," a moving song about unconditional love she wrote in response to her anger and grief over Matthew Shepard's murder. She performs the song around the country and donates proceeds to anti-hate causes.

Filmmaker Brent Scarpo spoke about what led him to make "Journey to a Hate Free Millenium" and his hopes for what the film will accomplish. Inspired at a memorial service for Matthew Shepard to use his talents for a higher purpose, he realized his calling by making the documentary, which he hopes will inspire others to realize that each individual has the power and duty to work against hate. "Journey" explores why hate crimes exist and how hate can be eliminated by focusing on Matthew Shepard's murder, the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas in 1998, and the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. The film exists in a long theatrical version and a shortened, 40-minute version that was screened Tuesday night. The short version is used as part of an educational program specially developed for middle and high schools instructors to teach students about hate crimes. After trying unsuccessfully for the last two years to sell the theatrical version to major media companies, Brent recently sold it to the Sundance Channel.

Perhaps the most inspiring portion of the evening was Judy Shepard's speech. Although she claimed she was not a professional speaker but just "a mom with an opinion," she spoke articulately, with humor, passion, and grace, of her views of humanity and the need to treat all people with understanding, dignity, and love. She gave a personal history of how Matthew had come out to her while away at college at age 18. She recalled with humor how she asked Matthew what had taken him so long to come out, and then how he asked his mom how she could have possibly known before he did. She spoke of how she feared for his safety and happiness, noting that most portrayals of homosexuals in the media and in society were negative and told of lives beset with hate and discrimination.

Judy told the audience that she blamed society as much as she blamed Matthew's two murders for what happened to him, for they were products of a society that does not understand and hence fears people like Matthew and the entire LGBT community. She maintained that it isn't good enough for people to live their lives ignorant of what goes on around them, that we all need to be aware of the root causes of what drives people to acts of hate and violence. She believes the only solution is for every LGBT person to come out-that coming out is the only way to cure the ignorance that leads to fear, then to hate, then to violence. She also spoke of her wish for the media to stay around for the entire gay pride parade to see the folks that are always at the end - the families, the professionals, the PFLAG members. They may not be the most provocative, but they represent the complexity and also the ordinariness of the LGBT community and their supporters which society needs so desperately to see.

Full of wisdom and insight, Judy reminded the audience that it is the perception of who people are, and hating people because of who they are, that drives violence. She and her husband Dennis have lived in Saudi Arabia and been part of the Arab-Muslim community for the last eight years, and she knows that what happened September 11th does not represent them in the least. She astutely remarked that those terrorists were an anomaly within the Arab-Muslim community, just as Timothy McVeigh was an anomaly as an American and does not represent all Americans. She reiterated that hate is a learned behavior that we must unlearn, and that civil rights are for every person and should never be considered special rights for certain groups only.

When people ask her what they can learn from Matthew's death, Judy always responds, "patience, persistence, and education." Remind people that we're all human beings. Since Matthew's death, she has dedicated her life to this mission by speaking tirelessly to audiences around the country and to legislators, and by establishing with her husband The Matthew Shepard foundation to work for gay and lesbian equality and helping to prevent hate crimes.

Everyone who spoke during the evening and staffed an information table proved the night's message, that every individual can make a difference toward a more accepting and safer world. Filmmaker Brent Scarpo told the audience that the only difference between them and Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Judy Shepard was-nothing. With determination, each person in attendance at An Evening Against Hate will bring us more quickly to that goal.