"Your silence will not protect you."
~Audre Lorde

This page is dedicated to Matthew Shepard, a young man who died today, and to everyone else who has ever been a victim of hateful prejudice. Please, if you have a name to add to this tribute and dedication page, let me know.

Today is October 12, 1998. Indigenous People's Day, formerly Discoverer's Day, originally Columbus Day. Today I read that Matthew Shepard died. Today I received an e-mail telling me that a rally will be held for Matthew on Wednesday, in Sproul Plaza at UC-Berkeley. Today I wondered - again - if I should come out to everyone I know.

My son and I walked hand-in-hand along Telegraph Avenue today, and for a long time I looked at a bumper sticker quoting Audre Lorde. Silence will not protect you. Silence is not harmless. Millions have died because of too much silence. Whether it is children who were abused while neighbors and teachers were silent, or racism perpetrated while people looked the other way, whether it was the Jews in the Holocaust or the Native Americans slaughtered on their own lands, whether it was the derogatory "faggot" flung like a spear or Matthew Shepard's head bashed in with a pistol...all this was protected by silence.

Today I wonder if on Wednesday I should offer my head, offer my guilt, put my feelings and my soul and my very life before the crowd. To end the silence. To offer up my voice, just one more voice. (And if I sing, will you join with me? Or will you let me die, just as I let Matthew die?) Yes it is true that I have told most of my family and friends. Yes it is true that I came out to my speech class in community college. Yes, this is true. But I am not out completely. I worry about my children, I worry about my safety, I worry about my career, I worry about my husband.

I wonder, I wonder, will silence protect me? Has it not protected me thus far? I have never been beaten. I have never had derogatory terms yelled at me for loving women. I have hidden behind my feminine looks and behind my silence. But while my body has been saved, my mind and my heart have been censored. How many others are like me?

Perhaps more accurate is that silence will not protect anyone else, and each one of us is someone's everyone else. Let us think this through together...if men do not protect women, the women will be in danger. If the rich do not protect the poor, the poor will be in danger. If the black do not teach tolerance for the white, the white will be in danger. If the white oppress the black, the black will be in danger. When all are injured, when all are beaten or dead or broken-spirited, who will be left to protect me? Who will be left to protect my world? And what world will be left worth protecting, anyway?

I broke down and cried at dinner tonight. I cried because I understand loving someone of the same sex. I cried because a person suffered needless pain and death. I cried because of the ugliness of blind hate. I cried because I am partially responsible for Matthew Shepard's death.

The decisions we face in deciding if to come out, and how to come out, are difficult ones.

The conclusion I came to was this: I do not have to come out to denounce hate crimes and to support my community. But I do need to speak out. I need to speak loud. I need to break the silence.

These crimes affect all of us. These are crimes against humanity. We do not necessarily need to speak out as queer, as gay, as lesbian, as straight - but as people. As human beings.

Yes, it can be scary even to speak out against crimes, but it is necessary. Even great leaders have had to grapple with similar issues: Martin Luther King, Jr. grappled with the Vietnam War. King had the support of the President behind his Civil Rights Movement, but the President supported the Vietnam War. For King to denounce the Vietnam War was for him to endanger the President's support of Civil Rights. Guess what? Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke out in protest of the war, saying,
"A time comes when silence is betrayal..."

In my heart I know that time is now.

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