Matthew Shepard’s mother speaks today in IMU, protest scheduled

Activist speaker Judy Shepard will visit IU tonight to speak about preventing hate crimes.

Judy Shepard is the mother of Matthew Shepard, who was the victim of an apparent hate-crime murder in 1998 near Laramie, Wy., when he was 21 years old.

She will give the lecture, “The Meaning of Matthew,” at 7 p.m. in the Whittenberger Auditorium in the Indiana Memorial Union.

Since Matthew’s murder, the Matthew Shepard Act was enacted in 2009. The legislation, also known as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanded hate crime law to include criminal acts motivated by actual or perceived gender or sexual identity.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church congregation are expected to protest on campus this evening in response to the speech.

The Westboro Baptist Church has drawn heated criticism in the last decade provided its extreme views — particularly its adamant intolerance of homosexuality.

Members of the congregation, lead by Pastor Fred Phelps, have attracted national attention in the past picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers.

The group is last known to have visited the IU-Bloomington campus in 2004 to protest a production of “The Laramie Project,” which took the stage at the Wells-Metz Theatre.

— Michael Majchrowicz