CLARKSBURG - While same-sex marriage is now legal throughout the United States and the federal government can prosecute crimes committed because of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity as hate crimes, the battle for true equality for the LGBT community is far from over, the parents of Matthew Shepard said on Monday.
Judy and Dennis Shepard were at the FBI's offices in Clarksburg for a media event Monday. Their son Matthew was a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming in 1998 when he was abducted, robbed, beaten and left to die by two men in a remote area east of Laramie, Wyoming. His family fought for stronger protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender victims, and in 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanding federal hate crimes to include those based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
At the FBI, the Shepards said that full equality also will require adding protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals into state law.
"The federal law doesn't cover everything so yeah, absolutely," Judy Shepard said.
"That states have to buy in," her husband added. "It needs to be done, that way, they own the law and they own the importance of enforcing it."
West Virginia's hate crimes law includes no protections based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Dennis Shepard also advocated for the passage of legislation that would make it illegal to fire someone based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.
"You can still discriminate on the job against the gay community," Dennis Shepard said. "So you can be married on Sunday, go to work on Monday and go to the human resources department and say I'd like to put my husband or wife on my insurance and be fired because you're gay. So where's the equal protections?"
Workplace protections legislation for the LGBT community has not succeeded on the federal level or in the state.
Dennis Shepard's voice shook with frustration as he talked about the opposition they faced getting the hate crimes prevention act passed.
"These are not gay rights," he said. "There is no such thing as gay rights. They're not special rights. They're equal rights for all citizens of this country and people use the word gay rights just as a buzz word to inflame the population ... There is nothing special about what they want. They just want equality."
Judy Shepard said her son would be thrilled at how far the movement for equal rights has come in this country.
"If we weren't doing it, he would definitely be doing it if he were still here," she said. "That was his life ... trying to make life better and easier for people he loved and cared about."
Another argument against hate crimes legislation based on sexual orientation has been that motivation is difficult to prove. David O'Malley, sheriff of Albany County, Wyoming, was in charge of the investigation into the Shepard case and was also at the media event on Monday.
He said the motive was clear to him in Shepard's case. He said Shepard's attackers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, used a gay slur to refer to Shepard, and kept going with the assault after the robbery was over.
O'Malley said it was McKinney's own statement that he only had to hit Shepard one time to get his wallet.
"So the robbery motivation stops there," O'Malley said. "What went wrong for them to drive another two or three miles down a dark country two-track road, tie him to a fence and hit him 19-21 times in the face with the butt end of a huge gun?"
That and the gay slur "really led me and at least several of the investigators to think that the motivation went way past robbery," O'Malley said.
Fairness West Virginia sent a statement on behalf of Andrew Schneider, executive director of the statewide LGBT rights organization.
"While the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act protects LGBT people from hate-based crimes at the federal level, it is important for West Virginia to implement state laws against hate crimes so that local law enforcement may prosecute more quickly and effectively," the statement said.
The Shepards are also co-founders of a foundation that works on equal rights issues. More information is available at matthewshepard.org. They were at the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services offices in Clarksburg Monday on the same day as the release of the FBI's Crime in the United States report, FBI officials noted. FBI officials urged law enforcement to participate in the voluntary data gathering and said reporting of hate crimes will have to increase for more people to get behind hate crimes legislation.
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5163, Facebook.com/erinbeckwv, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.