10th Annual Matthew Shepard March For LGBT Freedom!

TEN YEARS AGO anti-gay bigots lynched 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, strung him up on a barbed wire fence in Wyoming and left him to die. Shepard's murder put the issue of anti-LGBT violence – and the hate that causes it – on the national agenda for the first time in a generation.

Yet in the intervening decade we have not passed one single pro-gay piece of legislation at the national level. Ironically, it has fallen to Republican-packed state supreme courts in Massachusetts and California to inaugurate some of the most sweeping pro-gay gains.

Open, anti-gay hatred is still "mainstream" enough that Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications has chosen to honor Focus on the Family's James Dobson this fall. And for all the focus on Matthew Shepard on this 10th anniversary of his death, it is important to remember that he was one of many victims of anti-Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender hate violence before and since 1998.

For the 10th annual Matthew Shepard march we are proud to have as our keynote speaker Wayne Besen, who is one of the nation's leading activists against Dobson's homophobia and is Executive Director of Truth Wins Out (www.TruthWinsOut.org).

The event begins with a short rally, 8 PM, Saturday, Sept. 27th, at the corner of Halsted and Roscoe (3400 N. Halsted) in Chicago IL followed by a march through the community.

For more information, contact the Gay Liberation Network at LGBTliberation@aol.com

http://gayliberation.net/home.html