Fridae

Judy Shepard, mother of hate-crime victim, Matthew Shepard told college students in Minneapolis that gay people need to show that they are as boring as everyone else, reported the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

"If the community hadn't been a mystery, my son would still be here", Shepard told an audience at the University of St. Thomas.

She said that the media too often focus on the "extravagant" people at the front of gay pride parades and ignore the more ordinary people at the rear. She also told the 300 people who were there "that you are nothing to be afraid of, that you are just like everybody else-boring".

Twenty-one-year-old Shepard who was a student at the University of Wyoming, died several days after he was attacked in a gay bashing near Laramie, Wyoming on a near-freezing night in 1998. The killing led to vigils and rallies throughout the country. The two men who left Shepard to die after beating and leashing him to a fence are now serving life sentences.

She was living in Saudi Arabia with her husband when they received a late-night phone call informing them about their son's beating.

After her son's death, her husband Dennis and herself created the Matthew Shepard Foundation to help fight hate crimes. She also travels across the US giving lectures and lobbying for a federal hate-crime law.

She also praised the men and drag queens at the Denver drag queen bingo parlor she goes to for being "so wonderfully honest about who they are". She encouraged gays who keep a low profile need to come out of the closet to serve as role models for young people who are struggling with their sexual identity but don't identify with drag queens.