How You Can Help A Suicidal Person

What is homophobia?

Matthew Shepard's younger brother Logan

This is Matthew's Little brother Logan for those who never had the chance to ever see what he looked liked!Here is his blog he is talking about his brother Matthew the link is below! Please repost!

http://www. blogger. com/profile/00455318770431569620

Judy Shepard has a message for Sally Kern

March 24, 2008 · 1 Comment
Read the full text of the statement by the mother of Matthew Shepard to Sally Kern at the Victory Fund, the site which obtained and released the audio tape of the now-infamous Kern spewing her hate message to constituents. Kern continues to stand by her message. The alarming part of this story is not how a woman of Kern’s character got elected in Oklahoma, nor even that she refuses to apologize. The alarming part is that she has not been sidelined or marginalized but in fact is being applauded by fellow Republicans.


“My son died nearly ten years ago at the hands of people whose hatred changed many lives that day. It hardened hearts and brought others to their knees. It shook a nation and enraged millions. At that time, I knew there was a window of opportunity that I could use Matthew’s story and my voice in replacing hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance. Through the Matthew Shepard Foundation, we are reaching young people who are at risk of being poisoned by the dark ideas of people like Sally Kern. I don’t know why Sally Kern is proud of comparing gay people to cancer or terrorism, but count me as someone who’s listening now to people like her. She may be free to say people like my son are a threat to America, but when she does she puts other mothers’ sons in danger. I pray she doesn’t say it anymore.”

Judy Shepard to Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern: I am listening

March 24, 2008
Chris Johnson
There continues to be outrage over Oklahoma Representative Sally Kern's (R) outrageous comments where she christens the gays the #1 threat to America. Since her anti-gay diatribe has been heard around the world through a YouTube video - clocking in over 1,000,000 views so far - Kern has dug in her heels to stand by her offensive words. Now, Judy Shepard responds to Kern's bigotry in a statement of her own at GayPolitics.com:

My son died nearly ten years ago at the hands of people whose hatred changed many lives that day. It hardened hearts and brought others to their knees. It shook a nation and enraged millions. At that time, I knew there was a window of opportunity that I could use Matthew’s story and my voice in replacing hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance. Through the Matthew Shepard Foundation, we are reaching young people who are at risk of being poisoned by the dark ideas of people like Sally Kern.

If anyone should know the real life consequences of the anti-gay hatred that Rep. Kern's words promote, it's Judy Shepard.

Posted at 10:46 AM in Hate Crimes | Permalink

Matthew Shepard Story Producer Charged With Stock Fraud

by The Associated Press

Posted: March 20, 2008 - 10:30 am ET

(Los Angeles, California) An Emmy Award-winning television producer was charged with inflating the revenue and stock price of his publicly traded production company as part of a multimillion dollar stock fraud scheme.





Drew Levin, 54, the founder of Team Communications Group, Inc., was indicted by a federal grand jury on 13 counts, including conspiracy, falsifying his company's books and records, making false statements in annual and quarterly reports and lying to the company's auditors, the U.S. attorney's office said.





Levin, who produces mostly made-for-TV programs and documentaries, faces up to 200 years in prison if convicted of all counts. He has not been arrested, and is expected to make his first court appearance Friday, prosecutors said.





There was no telephone listing for Levin's residence in the Pacific Palisades section. An after-hours call to the company, now called TMC Entertainment, was not immediately returned Wednesday.





The company produces and distributes television programs and licensed its programs to other companies for distribution fees. Its shares were publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange.





Prosecutors said Levin orchestrated a scheme to overstate Team Communications' annual and quarterly revenue to make the company appear profitable, when it was actually losing money. As a result, they said, customers ended up paying inflated distribution fees and Levin profited from the scheme.





Levin received a $335,000 bonus based on the company's reportedly profitable 1999 performance, and he pledged more than 500,000 shares as collateral for a loan to buy a $1.5 million ranch in Big Sky, Mont., prosecutors said.





In 2001, Team Communications restated its 1999 fiscal results, going from a $1.7 million profit to a $4.25 million loss, prosecutors said. The following year, the company reported a loss of more than $42 million and later filed for bankruptcy.





Levin's credits include "The Matthew Shepard Story" and "Total Recall 2070.



"

©365Gay. com 2008

Why do straights hate gays?

Why do straights hate gays?



An 72-year-old gay activist isn't hopeful about the future.
By Larry Kramer, LARRY KRAMER is the founder of the protest group ACT UP and the author of "The Tragedy of Today's Gays."

March 20, 2007


DEAR STRAIGHT PEOPLE,

Why do you hate gay people so much?

Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing political commentator, Ann Coulter, gets away with calling a straight presidential candidate a faggot. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people, is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions that Pace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

Gays should not vote for any of them. There is not a candidate or major public figure who would not sell gays down the river. We have seen this time after time, even from supposedly progressive politicians such as President Clinton with his "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and his support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act. Of course, it's possible that being shunned by gays will make politicians more popular, but at least we will have our self-respect. To vote for them is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us.

Don't any of you wonder why heterosexuals treat gays so brutally year after year after year, as your people take away our manhood, our womanhood, our personhood? Why, even as we die you don't leave us alone. What we can leave our surviving lovers is taxed far more punitively than what you leave your (legal) surviving spouses. Why do you do this? My lover will be unable to afford to live in the house we have made for each other over our lifetime together. This does not happen to you. Taxation without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War. Gay people have paid all the taxes you have. But you have equality, and we don't.

And there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come. If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is.

Our feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.

You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.

Homosexuality is a punishable crime in a zillion countries, as is any activism on behalf of it. Punishable means prison. Punishable means death. The U.S. government refused our requests that it protest after gay teenagers were hanged in Iran, but it protests many other foreign cruelties. Who cares if a faggot dies? Parts of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop, who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?

Well, whoever thought we'd have to worry about Florida? A young gay man was just killed in Florida because of his sexual orientation. I get reports of gays slain in our country every week. Few of them make news. Fewer are prosecuted. Do you consider it acceptable that 20,000 Christian youths make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls? This is not free speech. This is another version of hate. It is all one world of gay-hate. It always was.

Gays do not realize that the more we become visible, the more we come out of the closet, the more we are hated. Don't those of you straights who claim not to hate us have a responsibility to denounce the hate? Why is it socially acceptable to joke about "girlie men" or to discriminate against us legally with "constitutional" amendments banning gay marriage? Because we cannot marry, we can pass on only a fraction of our estates, we do not have equal parenting rights and we cannot live with a foreigner we love who does not have government permission to stay in this country. These are the equal protections that the Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

Why do you hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much change coming.

I think your hate is evil.

What do we do to you that is so awful? Why do you feel compelled to come after us with such frightful energy? Does this somehow make you feel safer and legitimate? What possible harm comes to you if we marry, or are taxed just like you, or are protected from assault by laws that say it is morally wrong to assault people out of hatred? The reasons always offered are religious ones, but certainly they are not based on the love all religions proclaim.

And even if your objections to gays are religious, why do you have to legislate them so hatefully? Make no mistake: Forbidding gay people to love or marry is based on hate, pure and simple.

You may say you don't hate us, but the people you vote for do, so what's the difference? Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal. Which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you. You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you.