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Loading ...Why the Shepard murder was different
10.10.2008 3:05pm EDT
What concerns me is that we did not take the opportunity to build on the moment to benefit more of the marginalized and less visible members of our community. A week after my first trip to Laramie in 1998, I found myself in an alley in Baltimore at a vigil for a young transgendered woman killed in a bias crime. A dozen people and a couple of cameras showed up, certainly not the throngs of people or media that showed up in Laramie.
For the last 10 years, I’ve told the story of going from a Family Research Council press conference on Oct. 9, 1998, to my office in Washington, D.C., and being bombarded with calls and e-mails about this young man who was found clinging to life in Wyoming after a brutal beating that was being described as a possible hate crime. I was working for glaad (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) at the time, and it was neither the first nor the last hate crime I covered.
But it was certainly the one that got the most community reaction in all those years.
Hours later, I was on a plane to Laramie at the behest of the students in the GLBT campus group. I ended up returning many times to face the media, to cover the trials and the community organizing, and to experience the emotional rollercoaster of this event.
One of the most affecting moments of my life was standing outside the courtroom and talking to the press about the “gay panic” defense that was being dragged out by Aaron McKinney’s desperate lawyers.
I remember saying: “If every straight woman did to straight men what those boys did to Matthew when someone made a pass at them, there would be far fewer straight men in the world.
While this kind of marker—can it really be a decade?—gives us an opportunity to reflect on what has changed as well as what hasn’t, I can’t help being reminded of Matthew and his family for what they separately went through.
The recent murders of Lawrence King and Simmie Williams, Jr. brought up all of the feelings of frustration and made me think of what their lives were like, how their families and friends must now feel, what will happen in the aftermath.
The reality is that our community has gotten better at drawing attention to hate crimes, which the mainstream media sometimes report, but rarely as thoroughly as they should.
Why Matthew’s murder got so much attention is a complicated question, but an interesting one as we gain some distance from the event.
NEXT PAGE: The question we should have asked
Keori may be young, but he brings up a good point. Anyone care to mention the gay black man who was dragged to pieces behind truck around the same time? I seem to remembr that it was not much of a news story and there certainly were no marches, plays, or charity events in his honor.
On the Sunday following Matthew’s death the worship leader in our church read a piece she had written interspersing the news accounts of what was done to Matthew with the an account of the crucifixion of Jesus. I think the power of that moment for our little faith community speaks to why Matthew Shepard’s death made such a deep impact. There are two particular forms of individual violent death that touch a deep visceral spot in the American cultural psyche. They are crucifixion and lynching. I believe that Matthew Shepard’s death was so deeply shattering, in a way that others have not been, because it symbollically touched that deep nerve. Matthew’s killers unwittingly chose to do something that immediately linked Matthew to something so deeply ingrained in the collective American mind that it “got through” to us in ways that other tragedies have not. The outspoken condemnation of those who demonstrated at Matthew’s funeral, counterbalanced by the “angels” who spread their wings, gave an even more biblical aspect to those days. Each tragedy that occurs is part and parcel of what was done to Matthew Shepard, but the way it all unfolded leant an archetypical element to Matthew’s death that continues to speak powerfully.
So Mathew exhibited poor judgment? Yeah, maybe he thought that he was going to hook up with one or both of the guys? Troy, people use poor judgment every day. That simple fact does not mean that this is anything that should have ever occurred.
I’m sure if he had known he was going to be tortured & murdered, he would have made a different choice. One’s promescuity does not justify what happened to him. Even if he had been doing the whole college football team, he didn’t deserve to die. From what I’ve seen of the SCC Community in my lifetime, if half the men who had annonymous sex with strangers were murdered, we would lose a sizeable percentage of our community in less than a week, as would the heterosexual community. This is no different than suggesting a woman should be raped if she dresses sexy.
I mean to take nothing away from the fact that Mathew Shepard was murdered. But as I read alot of different things on him the one thing I notice and can’t understand is why everyone seems to think he was so innocent. He got into a car with a couple of guys he didn’t know well. If I understand what I have read those guys or at least one of them played bi-sexual. So what did M. Shepard think was going to be going on? He was old enough to know not to get into a strangers car. I mean him no disrespect but he put himself into that car.
SCARECROW
They thought he was a Scarecrow,
that cold Wyoming night;
A tiny, tortured shadow,
beneath the gray moon-light,
impaled against the Laramie sky,
with no one near to hear him cry,
beneath the gray moon-light,
and no one near to hear his cries,
that cold Wyoming night.
They thought he was a Scarecrow,
they drove by, they walked by,
for years, they closed their eyes
in silence towards the Hate;
Some say ignorance is no defense,
and pity the penance that just arrives
too many lives, too many tears, too late.
They thought he was a Scarecrow,
lashed to a split-rail fence;
Crucified, forgotten,
just another Scarecrow,
lashed to a split-rail fence.
They thought he was a Scarecrow,
our Nation’s brought to shame;
The Religious Right
…they feed the Hate
…they breed the Lies
…they seed the Spite
Oh, Christ would weep,
for They are most to blame.
They thought he was a Scarecrow;
How could they’ve been so wrong?
Will they give us back his life?
Can they bring us back his smiles?
Who now will sing his songs?
Perhaps, someday, their hearts will open,
for even stones are known to break;
‘tho not as softer hearts are broken
as sons are left alone to die of hate
…so please remember Matthew Shepard
for all Our Children’s sake.
(c) “Bud” E. Lewis Evans, 1998
http://rainfish2000.blogspot.com
It’s true that if Matthew Shepard had not been young, male, and good-looking, he might not have been so readily adopted as the poster-child of a movement, both in the US and beyond (I remember how shocked and moved I was as a high-school student in New Zealand at the time). But the particularly striking nature of the crime, and the small-town heartland environment in which it took place, made it seem emblematic of a kind of violence that was (is?) part of the darker regions of the American psyche. At the same time, there is something universal – even religious – in the images of Shepard’s murder: it is no coincidence that a celebrated magazine article ran the headline “the Martyrdom of Matthew Shepard.”
But I think – uncharacteristically – it was Time Magazine which actually best summed up the reason why many of us felt Shepard’s murder so personally:
‘What people mean when they say Matthew Shepard’s murder was a lynching is that he was killed to make a point. When he was 21 years old, the world’s arguments reached him with deadly force and printed their worst conclusions across him. So he was stretched along a Wyoming fence not just as a dying young man but as a signpost. “When push comes to shove,” it says, “this is what we have in mind for gays.”‘
May I SCREAM at my GLBT friends across the border! In Canada, we have had a seesaw ride between parties that hate us (the Cons)and parties that espouse us (the Liberals, NDP, Bloc & Green) whereby the Cons are VERY near forming a majority gov’t. Have you known ANY governing party to not submit a platform to the electorate but 7 days before a Federal election?? They are still hiding all that they will UNDO for our freedoms should they receive the majority that the media are predicting NOW that they will receive. I am sure now that my partner and I must marry to protect the right the courts of Canada has granted us, that will now be undone by this majority COns gov’t. GET OUT THERE…VOTE AGAINST STEPHEN HARPEWR NOW>>>HE DOES NOT TELL US WHAT HE INTENDS TO DO W/A MAJORITY IN GOV’T
The sky is truly falling in Canada !!!!
D Hill
I still chuckle when I see people use “LGBTQI.” It just looks like alphabet soup.
Keori, I’m guessing that you’re young. If you are, you really can’t possibly imagine the impact that this incident had and what it represented.
I postulate that Matthew Shepard’s murder made national headlines because Matthew was a sweet, wholesome, whitebread college boy, with white Christian parents living in “the heartland.” The beatings, rapes, and murders perpetuated against minority LGBTQI people do not get national attention because “brown people” just aren’t considered worth the air time by the corporate media. Who cares if a “fag nigger” dies or is beaten? Angie Zapata? Who is that? This phenomenon has only increased during the this most blatantly racist, sexist, hateful administration and its media whores in FOX and CNN.
It’s not just hatred of LGBTQI people that promotes violent crimes. It’s the hatred and shunting aside of EVERYONE who isn’t straight, white, Christian, wealthy, and photogenic. For months we heard about Madeleine McCann in America. So an adorable white British kid went missing in Portugal. Why is that more newsworthy than the hundreds of girls and women who are kidnapped and trafficked as sex slaves in southeast Asia every day? Because no one cares about impoverished brown people, people who are different, people who have no one to speak for them.
I’m not saying Matthew Shepard’s murder wasn’t tragic. It was. It’s still a tragedy in that Wyoming still has no sexual orientation/gender identity-presentation hate crimes laws. But this is a problem much bigger than just queer folk. This problem goes to the root of why we as a society are willing to brush aside everyone who is different in any way.
Nice idea for a piece, but after reading it I had no more insight into the murder and reaction than before I read it.
Thank you, Cathy, for this article. Thanks also to 365Gay for reprinting. Isn’t it sad and frustrating to repeat that in these 10 years we have not been able to pass the Matthew Shepard Bill?
After an event which still brings tears to our eyes and fear/anger/frustration to our souls, there are many who have or will speak OUT, and many, many more of us who have not or cannot or will not raise our voices to cry for equal justice in this “one Nation, under God, with liberty and justice for ALL.”
The murder of Shepard is not a matter of just one small town or just one country. The world knows about it and how we deal with it is evidence of what is beeing done to prevent this injustice to keep on happening to our friends and loved ones.
Thank you for bringing it up again.
It is tragedy and a Travisty that In this day and age That a Select Group who Follow a theology that Abhores Violence and Preaches “Do Unto Others.. Love thy neighbor,” and Supposedly follows a Doctrine of Peace, fills the Minds and hearts with Fear and Hate. This is Christianity? If it is some has opened the Gates of Hell! Greed fules us,Fear Rules us. Complacency will be our down fall. Liberty and freedom do not come cheap or easily. How Many More Innocents will have to die before change is brought about! I agree with David, Cathy Well written. Carl.
Cathy,
Thank you for this well written, sensitive and insightful article. Maybe more in the GLBT community will be energized and more active in our communities helping enact legislation that will protect ALL our sisters and brothers.
David