Joshua Sur­tees

Wyoming is a state buried deep in the map of the Unit­ed States.

Land­locked be­tween Mon­tana, Ida­ho, South Dako­ta, Ne­bras­ka, Col­orado and Utah, it is al­so buried deep in the Amer­i­can psy­che, one of its for­got­ten places.

The state was al­so the scene of the mur­der of a 21-year-old young man, Matthew Shep­ard, who was tor­tured and beat­en be­cause he was gay, tied to a fence and left to die in a field on the out­skirts of a city called Laramie in 1998. Sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed, God-fear­ing states like Wyoming are a breed­ing ground for all kinds of prej­u­dices. Racism, sex­ism and ho­mo­pho­bia.

The 2005 Os­car win­ning film Broke­back Moun­tain–where two cow­boys fall in love in the sum­mer of 1963 be­fore one of the cow­boys is blud­geoned to death by a gang–is al­so set in Wyoming.

Wyoming is a beau­ti­ful place, where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Moun­tains, but it is home to some ug­ly prej­u­dices.

"What hap­pened to Matt may have hap­pened here," Den­nis Shep­ard, Matthew's fa­ther, told an au­di­ence, in­clud­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, last week at the Na­pa in Port-of-Spain.

"But you don't know about it. You keep no sta­tis­tics. You have no laws to pro­tect peo­ple. You tol­er­ate but you don't ac­cept. There's a big dif­fer­ence in those two words."

The au­di­ence had just watched a screen­ing of The Laramie Project, a film based on Matthew's killing which drama­tised the ac­counts of lo­cal peo­ple who knew him and the two lo­cal boys who killed him.

Den­nis Shep­ard spoke slow­ly and care­ful­ly. Paus­ing, as though let­ting the words sink in.

Af­ter­wards, Ram­lo­gan and Archie chat­ted with Matthew Shep­ard's be­reaved par­ents as well as the staff of the US Em­bassy–who were re­spon­si­ble for invit­ing the Shep­ards to T&T.

Al­so in at­ten­dance were House Speak­er Wade Mark, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams and Catholic priest Fr Stephen Ge­ofroy.

The mood was, in a sense, cel­e­bra­to­ry.

It is an achieve­ment that events like this are now tak­ing place in T&T. A sign of the times, of a move­ment gath­er­ing pace.

Role of so­cial me­dia

While of­fen­sive com­ments are still ut­tered pub­licly–like those of artist LeRoy Clarke who sug­gest­ed that ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a threat to the arts and a tool to re­cruit gang mem­bers–they no longer go un­chal­lenged, thanks in part to so­cial me­dia sites like Face­book, which peo­ple use as a plat­form from which to speak out.

An­ti-gay voic­es are al­so loud on Face­book and in re­al life and what is most shock­ing is that, in most cas­es, the big­otry, hate and in­tol­er­ance comes from peo­ple claim­ing to rep­re­sent God.

Which is why the sup­port of the cler­gy is huge­ly wel­comed.

Fr Ge­ofroy's brav­ery in speak­ing in sup­port of equal­i­ty for gays at the na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tion on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

The po­si­tion of Pope Fran­cis and the Ro­man Catholic Church is al­so now un­equiv­o­cal­ly clear–God loves all hu­man be­ings equal­ly, gay or straight.

That Catholi­cism should be the first of the world's monothe­is­tic re­li­gions to mod­ernise it­self on the is­sue is fas­ci­nat­ing, giv­ing the cen­turies it spent ob­sess­ing over all man­ner of "sins", of which ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty was seen as a ma­jor one.

There are gay priests, we now know. It is no longer a dirty se­cret.

A 2002 poll in the Los An­ge­les Times which sur­veyed 1,854 US priests across the coun­try found that 15 per cent of them iden­ti­fied them­selves as ei­ther gay or bi­sex­u­al.

When oth­er Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions and re­li­gions be­gin to ac­cept gay and les­bian peo­ple, we could be well on our way to a world free of ho­mo­pho­bia.

Ho­mo­pho­bia will dis­ap­pear

Matthew Shep­ard's moth­er, Judy, dried her eyes af­ter her mov­ing speech which pre­ced­ed her hus­band's at Na­pa. Then Archie gave her a hug and Ram­lo­gan shook her hand. It was a touch­ing mo­ment.

She then said she is sure there will come a time when ho­mo­pho­bia and hate no longer ex­ist.

"I don't know if we'll see it in my life­time. But I know the younger kids don't un­der­stand the hate that's go­ing on," she said.

In T&T, with a young, in­tel­li­gent, well-trav­elled pop­u­la­tion, that is cer­tain­ly the case.

Young peo­ple, by and large, are not ho­mo­phobes. Like so many prej­u­dices the world has bat­tled with, ho­mo­pho­bia is spread by the old­er gen­er­a­tion.

"My moth­er was a ter­ri­ble big­ot," Judy Shep­ard told me.

"But I'm a prod­uct of the 60s so every­thing about us was ac­cep­tance and love for every­one. I'm sure my moth­er had no idea what to do with me, try­ing to raise a child in the 60s, but it was a whole dif­fer­ent mind­set then."

Shep­ard knows where hate comes from.

"It's a learned be­hav­iour. You learn it from your en­vi­ron­ment, mass me­dia, your par­ents, grand­par­ents, your church, all over the place. You're not born know­ing how to do that, you're not born know­ing how to love ei­ther. You learn them both."

She al­so knows re­li­gion plays a part in in­tol­er­ance, but again, that's no ex­cuse.

"I've sort of come to the con­clu­sion af­ter all these years that peo­ple re­al­ly hide be­hind their re­li­gion to pro­tect their own bi­as­es," she said. "When peo­ple say "it's be­cause of what I be­lieve in," they re­al­ly mean "I think it's wrong so I'm go­ing to use my re­li­gion to jus­ti­fy it."

T&T can take lead in Caribbean

Not a lot has changed in Wyoming in the 16 years since Matthew was left dy­ing on that fence, cov­ered in blood and look­ing, ac­cord­ing to the cy­clist who found him, like a scare­crow.

"Wyoming still has no state gay crime laws," Judy Shep­ard told the au­di­ence.

"No state job pro­tec­tion at fed­er­al lev­el for gay peo­ple. No gay bars. Peo­ple still have to go to Den­ver to go to gay bars.

"We still live in Wyoming and we love it there and we hope to change the pol­i­tics. Den­nis calls us a con­stant poke in the eye for peo­ple who live there. They wish we would just shut the heck up. But we don't. Be­cause cre­at­ing the en­vi­ron­ment that gay peo­ple are the dev­il in­car­nate, gives so­ci­ety per­mis­sion to harm them, emo­tion­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly."

As for T&T, the Shep­ards came here for a rea­son. They think the coun­try, as a thought leader in the re­gion, has an im­por­tant role to play.

Den­nis Shep­ard said, "When we came here a lot of peo­ple did re­search (on us). Well, I did re­search al­so. T&T is the leader in the Caribbean, what hap­pens here even­tu­al­ly hap­pens in the rest of the Caribbean. Be­ing here is a start.

"You can con­tin­ue be­ing a leader by work­ing for equal­i­ty, not gay rights. There is no such thing as gay rights. I'm talk­ing about equal rights. It starts here, with your help and your sup­port, start the dis­cus­sion about equal rights."

Judy and Den­nis, who es­tab­lished the Matthew Shep­ard Foun­da­tion, have been all over the world telling their sto­ry, fight­ing for equal­i­ty.

Here in the Caribbean, laws and pub­lic at­ti­tudes lag be­hind those of coun­tries like Cana­da, Aus­tralia and the Nether­lands, where ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty is seen as an es­sen­tial part of a so­ci­ety's rich ta­pes­try of di­ver­si­ty.

Af­ter T&T, the Shep­ards trav­elled to Ja­maica, where vi­o­lence to­wards the gay com­mu­ni­ty is com­mon­place and where those who sup­port gay peo­ple are al­so like­ly to be vic­timised.

They weren't scared or in­tim­i­dat­ed.

It's rare in life you meet two peo­ple as strong and un­afraid as they are. Or as com­pas­sion­ate.

They even asked the court which tried their son's mur­der­ers to spare their lives when they could have been giv­en the death penal­ty.

Per­haps, when you lose your son to a crime you sim­ply do not un­der­stand, your fear evap­o­rates, re­placed by a word re­peat­ed by Doc O'Con­nor, a friend of the bud­ding aca­d­e­m­ic Matthew Shep­ard short­ly be­fore his death: Hope.

?