The Winners: Matthew Shepard Gala 2021

Celebrating Compassion, Understanding, Acceptance for All

As a community, we are all-too-familiar with the story of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was tragically attacked and killed in 1998, prompting a slew of conversations surrounding the role of homophobia and bigotry Matthew’s death.

His parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, received an outpouring of donations, which they used to start the Matthew Shepard Foundation. The initial focus was to support parents and their LGBTQ children, though the direction has since evolved over more than two decades.

“Currently, our main areas of expertise are hate crime policy legislation and training with law enforcement, in addition to providing legacy work programming that helps to keep Matt’s memory and his intentions alive through the foundation,” says Dana Juniel, director of strategy and communication for the Matthew Shepard Foundation. 

The foundation hosts their annual gala to support these aims, celebrating individuals and organizations for their leadership and commitment to replacing hate with understanding, compassion, and acceptance.

This year’s celebration took place Saturday, October 9, and the support of the gala allows the foundation to continue to amplify Judy and Dennis’s voices in representing what Matthew would want them to be doing.

“Our theme this year is ‘Our Time To Be Heard,’ and we just want to reiterate that your voice is the strongest tool that you have in the fight against hate,” Juniel says. “… We have to use our voices to make change, as hate crimes are actually growing, especially those targeting the LGBTQ community, specifically trans women of color.”

Due to COVID-19, the foundation held their first virtual gala last year, which was not only met with praise from their supporters but also allowed the foundation an opportunity to expand their reach. 

The 2021 gala was a hybrid model: the virtual and in-person event featured the same programming, in addition to some extra, virtual components during the dinner of the in-person event, “So, you can’t go wrong with either ticket option,” Juniel says. The foundation plans to continue a hybrid model in the future.

A highlight of the gala is the awards: the Spirit of Matthew Award, the Dennis Dougherty Award, and the Making a Difference Award. The decision making process is internal, with the staff and board led by Judy and Dennis.

Take a look at 2021’s awardees:

Spirit of Matthew Award: Schuyler Bailar

The Spirit of Matthew Award recognizes a young person who embodies the spirit of Matthew Shepard: kind, forward-thinking, and advocating for their peers, meant for those committed to social justice, equal rights, and activism.

This year’s awardee is Schuyler Bailar, a 25-year-old swimmer and the first openly transgender NCAA Division 1 swimmer. He is an LGBTQ rights and inclusion activist, also working full-time as a public speaker and life coach.

“During COVID, Schuyler, I believe, had expanded his reach on social media, posting a lot of really empathetic and empowering messages for trans youth, and we watched that occur,” Juniel says. “… So when the time came around to talk about the main components of what the Spirit of Matthew means for us and someone who’s doing the kind of work we believe Matt would be doing if he was here, Schuyler was an obvious choice.”

After he first graduated college, Bailar was unsure he wanted to pursue an advocacy career full time. He tried out a job in HR that was aligned with his advocacy work, though he realized it left no room for his other passions. 

He quit the job two years ago, and Bailar says he doesn’t think he could have foreseen what followed. Especially once the pandemic hit, he essentially had no work due to COVID restrictions, so he turned his focus to Instagram.

Bailar says, with the events of the last couple of years especially, social media has become more specifically linked to social justice. Bailar had been doing social justice work for about five years, and once the pandemic hit and everything went virtual, he says his Instagram became a place where he began doing more advocacy work.

He says, “Over the past year-and-a-half, I’ve seen a good amount of growth on my account and the sort of community that I’ve built—people who aren’t trans or who are allies, to trans people and just queer people in general—it became a place really easy for me to provide education in short bursts.”

Bailar aims to offer resources both for queer people and their discovery, but also for allies who can use the information to enrich their knowledge and learn about the experiences of their LGBTQ friends.

With his LGBTQ inclusion work, Bailar has a life coaching business and runs support groups for queer and trans people, essentially heading his own community-oriented business. He just released a new book, Obie Is Man Enough, about a Korean American, transgender kid and swimmer for middle-grade students and up. “I feel like it also carries that spirit of Matthew, if you will, because it’s about a queer trans kid living his life, you know, and trying to help me through that story,” Bailar says.

Ahead of the gala, Bailar imagines it will be an emotional night for him. While it is a joyous event, the ultimate reason everyone gathers together in that space is to honor Matthew.

“I think there’s a lot of joy in Pride … but there’s also massive danger, and there’s also so much death, that hasn’t ended, that isn’t stuck in the 1970s, right? This is happening now, especially to people of color, so I want to bring that reminder of why we do this work and why this award is important, because there’s a lot more work to be done so that kids like Matthew can be alive and not honored through a foundation.”

Dennis Dougherty Award:Craig Hella Johnson

The Dennis Dougherty Award is named in memory of a member of the Matthew Shepard Foundation’s family who helped establish the Foundation’s beginnings and evolution. The award is given to those who have played an essential role in the foundation’s growth and integrity. Craig Hella Johnson, a choral conductor, composer, and arranger, is this year’s awardee.

“Craig was an obvious choice, and we were actually shocked that we hadn’t already honored him, so we’re really excited about that,” Juniel says. 

Johnson says the true beginning of his relationship with the Shepards was when he personally learned of Matthew’s death while living in San Francisco in 1998.

“It affected me so deeply, like so many people,” Johnson says, “and I carried that with me for many years, feeling like, ‘I have to express my response to this somehow.’”

Around 2013, he met Dennis and Judy Shepard through his friend Michele Josue, who directed the documentary Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine. Johnson met the Shepards and shared his idea to compose a huge piece in honor of Matthew. Following a two-hour conversation, which Johnson calls “a very meaningful and powerful time together,” they approved.

“I didn’t have any sense of what would really happen with this piece … I was eager just to complete it for my own heart and my own sanity. I needed to do this,” Johnson says.

Johnson finished Considering Matthew Shepard in 2016 with the group he founded, Conspirare. He was ready to have that be the end of the line, but the label they recorded with at the time reached out and told him they were interested in recording the composition and bringing it to a larger audience. 

Since then, the piece has been published, he and Conspirare have performed it in around 35 cities, and it’s since been performed in even more cities around the world by other groups.

“Through this piece, I feel very connected to the foundation,” Johnson says. “I’ve always been wanting to advocate for their work, certainly. I often refer to them as ‘warriors for love.’ They are just extraordinary, in the way they’re just fearless—so persistent, so brave … I feel like a real partner in supporting them.”

Johnson says the piece served an additional purpose, asking “In the face of such confounding darkness,” in this story and so many others, “is there anything to be learned, is love to be found at the core of this life?” 

He says that performing this piece poses that same question to those witnessing it, inviting them to face the entire story, not avoiding the darkness and sorrow of Matthew’s death but letting it sit beside the abundance of amazing work the Foundation has been able to do to help erase hate and expand our capacity to love in the world.

“I see that happening throughout all the work of the Foundation, you know; lives are changed; hearts are opened; minds are opened, and prejudices are diminished and softened,” Johnson says. “It was a part of telling my own story too—I mean, it’s kind of a coming out for me as a composer.”

Leading up to the Gala, Johnson says that the award is a profound honor, though it could be nearly impossible to articulate fully what it means.

“It’s a living answer, and sort of in a way, it’s a paradox of so much of life,” Johnson says. “… I hope that others will feel grandly inspired to, you know, take a step toward this organization to support it, to engage around the work, and then the gifts that are returned, just being associated with this work, are many.

Making a Difference Award: Wilson Cruz

The Making a Difference Award recognizes people and organizations committed to replacing hate with understanding, compassion, and acceptance. Wilson Cruz is this year’s awardee, known for his groundbreaking role on the 90s TV drama, My So-Called Life, which made him the first openly gay actor to play an openly gay character in a leading role on a U.S. television series.

Juniel says honoring Cruz is a long-time coming, but his work on Star Trek: Discovery presented challenges until this year, especially fitting timing following his Apple TV docuseries Visible: Out on Television, which he executive produced

OFM was not able to interview Cruz ahead of the gala due to scheduling conflicts, though we caught up with him in 2020, where he shed some light on the docuseries.

“Visible is about the history of LGBTQ images on television and how those depictions changed our culture, but also how those depictions changed TV and the way TV was used to have a conversation about LGBTQ rights,” Cruz tells OFM. “I could not be prouder of the fact that this is my first executive producer credit. I think that says a lot about who I am and the kind of material that I want to put out in the world.”

He continues to help push LGBTQ representation to the next level with the gay Star Trek character Medical Officer Hugh Culber (which has since received praise for setting a precedent in the representation of gay characters, in both that universe and media in general) and reflected on the progress for LGBTQ people in media since his iconic role more than 20 years ago.

“When you have a medium as intimate as television that lives in people’s living rooms, bedrooms, and the most intimate places in their homes, it became this tool in which we could present ourselves, tell our own stories, and tell the truth about who we are,” Cruz says. “… I think television in many ways was the driving force in terms of leading the conversation around LGBTQ rights, especially through the 90s to present day.”

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Juniel says the Foundation is excited to honor the three awardees, but the gala truly is about Matthew, Judy, and Dennis, offering an experience unlike any other.

“When (Judy) does her keynote address, you have to be there to hear it. The driving force to why people continue to come every single year is because you want to hear those powerful words from Judy, because, in the LGBTQ space, I don’t think that there’s a more authentic person that’s representing true allyship, and what that looks like … I’m hoping that that’s really the thing that gets people excited about attending every year.”

The Matthew Shepard Gala took place October 9. To learn more, visit the foundation’s website.