“˜Celebration’ attracts few listeners

  DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff After travelling 3,000
miles, Warren Blumenfeld spoke to five Monday in a
lecture expected to attract at least 12, though with room for more
than 100 people. Later, the LGBT Center celebrated its fifth
anniversary.

By Timothy Kudo
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The killing of Matthew Shepard should have changed things, but
it didn’t.

“Matt was my constant reminder of how good life could be,
and finally, how hurtful,” Judy Shepard told a crowd that
silently wept with the sound of sniffles revealing their
sadness.

As Shepard spoke of the death of her son who was murdered a year
ago because he was gay, the details were easily dictated. But,
everyone seemed to see through her eyes of two years ago.

From her many hours spent travelling to Laramie ““ the
Wyoming town where her son was murdered ““ with the
“most basic hope that he would stay alive till we could get
to him,” to her shock at not recognizing the face she cared
for until college, Shepard spoke without hesitation.

“One of his eyes was partially open and you could see his
blue eyes,” she said to the group attending the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Campus Resource Center
“celebration.”

“Then, at 12:53 a.m., Monday, Oct. 12, Matt was no longer
with us,” she said.

After she said it, the moment stood there, a reminder to those
listening of the dangers of intolerance and hatred that still
pervades an America with hate crime laws that don’t include
the words “on the basis of sexual orientation.”

“This moment is better than it has ever been for us, and I
hope, worse than it will ever be,” said Assemblywoman Sheila
Kuehl, the first openly gay member of the state legislature.

Earlier in the day, events were held to address the history of
homophobia and its effect on current times.

At a lecture expected to attract 12-30 people, in a room
prepared for at least 100, LGBT scholar Warren Blumenfeld, who flew
3,000 miles to UCLA, waited for people to come.

At 2:30 p.m. when he was supposed to start, five people wandered
in to Charles E. Young Grand Salon. Nobody else came.

“It’s disappointing,” Blumenfeld said.

The Resource Center is the proof that small victories have been
won at places like UCLA and the 23 other colleges they exist
at.

At the same time, its existence at all is in a sense, a sign of
how far there is still to go.

If there were no need for a LGBT resource center “it would
be a very wonderful day, though I don’t think it will be in
my lifetime,” said Ronni Sanlo, the center’s
director

Sanlo noted that every day, she receives report of a hate crime
perpetrated.

These things aren’t always public, and they’re not
as brutal as the Matthew Shepard murder, but it is a reminder to
those who may forget that homophobia is an everyday part of life
for certain people passing by on Bruin walk.

For Kuehl, who graduated from UCLA in 1962, her time as a
student here “was one of sadness.”

She was a member of a sorority until they found out she was a
lesbian.

She remembered not being able to tell her parents what happened
and driving from home to Westwood every Monday night to pretend to
go to her sorority meeting, but instead sitting in a restaurant
drinking coffee.

“They were my friends, and all of a sudden, they
weren’t my friends,” Kuehl said.

Later, she came out and ran for the state legislature.

“Every politician would die for the reputation of being
courageous and honest and all I needed to do was come out,”
she said.

In an election year, how each politician views these issues
becomes even more important.

Including sexual orientation along with race and religion in
federal hate crime legislation is something Shepard and many others
have fought for. But, it is possible their wishes may not come
true.

In the upcoming election, the president may have an important
say in these things.

“Everything is riding on the presidential election,”
Kuehl said.

Though for many who are gay, the clear choice is to pick the
democratic candidate. Others thinking about voting for Green Party
candidate Ralph Nader, might want to think twice, Kuehl said.

“There’s nothing to say in terms of Ralph Nader;
he’s never been to one conference that I’ve been to,
not one meeting or one march,” Kuehl said. “I feel
extremely wary of his sudden pronouncements of support.”

Though the sadness of Shepard’s talk may have fallen on
sympathetic ears, she reminded them of why it was so important that
even they hear her message.

“Every now and then, even the choir needs to get together
to practice,” she said.