OutQ's Award for Laramie Project Special

Romaine Patterson and Derek Hartley of "Derek And Romaine," which follows my show on OutQ on Sirius XM (6-10 ET), accepted a Special Recognition GLAAD Award for '"THE LARAMIE PROJECT: 10 YEARS LATER – THE LASTING LEGACY OF MATTHEW SHEPARD', a radio special on OutQ which was conceived and produced my Romaine, who was a friend of Matthew Shepard's. It aired on OutQ on the 10th anniversary of his brutal murder. You can watch them accepting the award, introduced by Stockard Channing here, and you can download "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later," on the Sirius OutQ homepage.

Also, take a read of Derek's rightful criticism of the media, particularly LGBT media, for ignoring this important production and recognition. Seeing as a lot of GLAAD Awards go to mainstream media that really don't deserve it -- you all know my take on that -- it would have been nice to focus on a project that deserved credit. Go DNR!

Wyoming 10 Years Later: Not Much Has Changed

Actually, what has changed as we near the ten year anniversary of Mathew Shepard's death on Oct 10 is not encouraging: The site where Shepard was left to die after being beaten senselessly by two men is now very hard to find, as the fence is gone and the place smoothed over. There is no monument in town to Shepard, the mayor wasn't even going to commemorate the death, and townspeople now don't even speak much about it as an antigay hate crime but rather as a "robbery" gone wrong:

“A lot of people in the community went through a sense of grief, in a very poignant, heartfelt, painful way, and I think eventually the pain became so great that they don’t want to think about it or hear about it,” Rebecca Hilliker, a professor of theater at the University of Wyoming here...

...Laramie has changed in some ways. The city council passed a bias crimes ordinance that tracks such crimes, though it does not include penalties for them. There is an AIDS Walk now...

...And yet, to the bewilderment of some people here, there is no memorial to Mr. Shepard in Laramie. The log fence has been torn down where he lay dying for 18 hours on Oct. 7, 1998. There is no marker. Wild grass blows in the wind.

The Fireside bar — where Mr. Shepard was lured away by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, who are serving life terms for murder — is also gone, sold and renamed years ago. Without the Fireside, there is no longer a bar in town where gays, jocks, foreign students and cowboys mix together.