Thursday marks 25 years since Matthew Shepard's death, but activists say LGBTQ+ rights are still at risk

Thursday marks 25 years since the death of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming who succumbed to brutal injuries six days after being beaten by two young men and abandoned while tied to a fence in a remote area near Laramie. 

Shepard's murder is remembered as one of the nation's most notorious and egregious hate crimes. It was also a watershed moment for the LGBTQ+ rights movement that would help catalyze legislation for years to come.

From the perspective of the movement's activists — some of them on the front lines since the 1960s — progress was often agonizingly slow, but it was steady.