Seven thousand hate crimes occur every year in the United States, said the keynote speaker for Coming Out Week.

Thomas Howard, program director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, conversed Monday night with a group of 50 students about the realities of hate crimes and hate incidents that occur on a national level and within the campus community.

“None of us have the right to make another person feel less about themselves,” Howard said. “Something shouldn’t come out of our mouth unless it’s true, kind and necessary.”

The Matthew Shepard Foundation was founded by Dennis and Judy Shepard in memory of their 21-year-old son, Matthew, who was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming in October 1998, according to the foundation’s Web site.

Howard presented poignant facts and information about the fears and pain experienced by the victims of hate crimes and how the thoughts of the persecutors are often a reflection of the environment they live in.

“Different isn’t wrong until we’re told it’s wrong,” he said. “We walk around so blind to other people’s experiences.”

Samantha Underwood, co-president of the Gay-Straight Alliance, said CMU has been involved with National Coming Out Week since 2003. She said the discussion opened her eyes to the issues of hate all around her.

“He shed a lot of light on hate and all of its facets,” the New Baltimore senior said. “Everybody is affected by hate.”

Video clips and discussion brought out stories from the audience. Many students felt comfortable sharing their personal stories of being on the receiving end of hate incidents because of their sexual orientation, race, gender and weight.

Howard has experienced first-hand the torment of persecutors because of his sexual orientation. The breaking moment in his life was when he was kicked out of college for the suspicion that he was homosexual.

“I went to bed every night for 21 years praying to Jesus that he would change me,” Howard said.

Howard said teaching people to be comfortable with their own differences and the differences of others can bring us closer to a world of acceptance.

“It’s your generation that is changing things,” he said. “We can only claim ignorance until we’ve been educated.”

With education and experience, Howard said, a person’s worldview can change. He said hate incidents still occur every day and everyone has the power to make a difference.

“The universe brings these little lessons to us until we chose to hear them,” he said.

Howard said there are 30 states in the U.S. that can fire a person based solely on his or her sexual orientation, and Michigan is one of them. Howard had the audience consider how hate manifests itself at CMU.

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E-mail the author: Kara Scheerhorn