Archive note: This post was published in 2013 to mark fifteen years since the murder of Matthew Shepard. It originally linked to a longer article on the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association website. If that article is no longer available, this post remains as a record of the reflection and of the continuing concern about homophobia in Northern Ireland at the time.

I remember reading my copy of Gay Times about the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard. At the time I ended up in tears, and this evening re-reading about the murder, looking at photographs of those responsible as well as of that infamous fence in the State of Wyoming and the well known family photo of Matthew.

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So much has been achieved for gay rights across the world in the years since Matthew’s cruel death, but we have still so much to do. Fifteen years on, the same homophobia seen in Wyoming in 1998 is very much alive and well here in Northern Ireland.