Subtle ways we make violence acceptable are unacceptable

You may have heard — if you speak to people, use any type of social media or news outlet — that Matthew Perry died a couple of weeks ago.

I grew up with Must See TV on Thursday nights, before streaming and on demand. Plus we lived in the country and only had about three reliable channels. So the show “Friends,” was a familiar and happy part of my childhood.

My best friend Crystal and I shared a blooper of the pivot episode recently and it still makes us laugh.

October also marks another death, something that was recently brought to my attention. The 25th anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard was less talked about, less a part of our public consciousness.

I’m guessing this is a jarring shift in conversation. I’m sorry, but kind of not. Sometimes, we need to be jarred.

Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old college student. He was brutally attacked Oct. 7, 1998, on his way home and left tied to a fence in a field outside of Laramie, Wyoming. He was beaten, burned, tortured.

He succumbed to his injuries, Oct. 12.

This happened, this terrible thing was done to someone’s child for the simple crime of being different. Shepard was gay.

For that reason, two men abducted Shepard, and drove him to a remote area where they beat and tortured him. They left him tied to that fence overnight, alone, hurting and in the cold. It would be 18 hours before a passerby would find the boy.

If it’s hard for you to read this, it should be. But please don’t look away. Don’t put it out of your mind to focus on life that is less uncomfortable.

Shepard’s parents started the Matthew Shepard Foundation in the wake of his death. Their focus: to erase hate, with the hopes of one day being able to close their doors.

Marking the 25th anniversary of their son’s death has brought questions about what has changed.

It makes me ask, are we better now? Do we show more tolerance and acceptance to anyone that we view as different in our worlds? Do we take time to try to understand others around us better, or, at the very least, do we make it known, clearly, that violence of any type is unacceptable?

I was a teenager when this happened. I now have teenagers in my life that I love dearly and have watched grow up.

It’s hard for me to imagine the agony the Shepard family went through. But it is necessary, I think, for us to step back and put ourselves in others’ places, even when it’s painful.

I think sometimes the perception of differences — opinions, religions, politics, lifestyles — can become a narrow focus that drives us to alienate those people, to make us less sympathetic or empathetic to those individuals as human beings.

The moments that led up to Shepard’s attack didn’t start with the violence.

It’s much more subtle. It’s the comments, jokes, slights and other ways of disregarding someone that we see as separate from ourselves. That’s where it starts.

The children in my life have faced bullying at school. One has a physical difference that will always be with him, and has made him the target of one relentless middle school child. I know there are others who look away when this is happening, who stand by and do nothing. Not my business, not my problem, they think.

Another has the absolutely kindest heart I have ever encountered, but is also absolutely, unabashedly different. He loves art and animals and creating things. And one day at a school event, a group of sixth graders who had been picking on him formed a circle and started throwing rocks at this incredibly wonderful and kind child. Just because he’s different.

The thing is, this behavior doesn’t come naturally to children.

Go into any preschool or kindergarten classroom and you know.

Kindness is what comes naturally. It shines through so brightly that you can’t help but be inspired by it.

So, I ask again, what has changed in the last 25 years? What still needs to change? Where does that change need to start?

This answer is easy and well-known, although the knowing doesn’t make it easy.

It starts with us.

It starts with being better human beings — no matter how different we may be — because what we do is what we teach the children around us. It is what we convey as acceptable or unacceptable behavior to the people around us.

Donna Farley is the editor of the Daily American Republic. She can be reached at dfarley@darnews.com.