But Judy Shepard is still uneasy about her son's emergence as worldwide gay-bashing poster boy. "I feel very conflicted about it, that's the best way of putting it," she said.

She resents some of the invasion of privacy, and closely guards access to her surviving son, which thus far the media has respected. But she's pleased with the awareness it's brought to the problem. "The gay community didn't need it, but the straight community needed it -- to see what gay people were going through."

She also worries about the backlash the gay sympathy seems to be generating in some circles. Jeffrey Montgomery, spokesman for the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, says the number of gay-bashings seems to be holding relatively constant, but "what we're seeing has been a marked and terrible increase in the severity, viciousness and brutality of the crimes."

"I think some people are feeling more threatened now," Judy said. "I'm just hoping it's a last gasp."

While Matthew's death forced millions of Americans to accept the reality of gay bashings, Shepard thinks many still believe it was an isolated incident. According to Montgomery, there have been 28 more gay-bashing murders since Matthew Shepard's bludgeoning, but only two of the most ghoulish received even modest national attention: Billy Jack Gaither had his throat slashed, his head cracked open by an ax-handle and his body burned on kerosene-soaked tires in Alabama in February; and two weeks later, Henry Edward Northington was decapitated, his severed head carried a mile from his body to be placed on a busy footbridge in a common gay cruising area.

Shepard was shocked to learn of those 28 murders. "We should all know about these deaths," she said. "It's unfortunate that the media isn't reporting them."

Thanks to her activism in the last six months, Judy Shepard has joined Betty DeGeneres, Ellen's mother, as a sort of National Gay Mom -- our picture of the quintessential straight mother comfortable with her gay child.

But Shepard smiles at that characterization, since she admits she had to struggle with Matt's sexuality. "There's a grief that comes because the life you expected isn't going to happen," she said. "But at the same time, you realize that, as a parent, you don't raise your children to be an extension of what you want. Letting go of that is really important. I think part of the problem lies with the fact that a lot of parents are ignorant of the gay community, and what it's really about. Because what they are exposed to is the stereotypical picture."

Shepard has also worked closely with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) this past year, and found the universal concern among parents is fear for their children's safety. "It's a larger element for parents of gay kids, because the fear and ignorance and maybe even the hate manifests itself in a more violent way. There is a climate in this country that sort of makes it OK to be homophobic. The jokes and the stereotypical portrayal seem to make it OK. And that's what scares parents, because nobody says 'Don't do that; that's not right.' "

While it seemed strange that Shepard spent the anniversary of her son's death promoting a documentary about hate crimes, she actually asked the film's producers to debut it that day, knowing she would have to speak at the premiere, appear at the press conference and conduct interviews much of the day. She says she's used these opportunities as a way engage her grief productively. "If I didn't have a focus and a goal, I'd just be hiding under the covers."

Her husband Dennis has not been so lucky, she said. "As a family, we decided something needed to be done by us. And I was elected, because Dennis needed to work in Saudi Arabia," where he is a safety engineer for an oil company. The differences in the way they've grieved were apparent at the April sentencing, where Judy and Dennis testified back to back. Judy was calm, betraying anger only at the very end, more sad at the loss of her boy than angry with the man who'd taken him from her. But Dennis was openly seething with fury.

She acknowledged the disparity. "As far as grieving at a different rate than Dennis, yes, I'm doing it in a different way because I talk about it all the time. Probably that puts us in different places, but I think that's a good thing, because we can share with each other what we're going through, and it gives us each a different purpose. He's also really frustrated at not being able to do more, because he's in Saudi Arabia. If he were in this country, he'd be right beside me doing everything I do. He's really frustrated about it."

Judge Barton Voight's gag order prohibits her from discussing the McKinney trial directly, but she said she's eager to put all the legal travails behind her. "It will be a relief to have it over. A relief yes, but not a resolution."

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