Matthew Shepard would be 30 this year [View All]

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On December 1st Matthew Shepard would have turned 30. It is hard to believe that this man would be 30 today.



One has to wonder what his life would be like if he had lived. Would he be the diplomat he had hoped to be? Would he be with a guy and maybe even have adopted a child? Clearly had he been straight he would be alive today. Maybe he would be married with kids. A world with literally infinite possibilities snuffed out.



Many gays and lesbians thought that Matthew Shepard would be our version of the Birmingham bombing. The killing of the four little girls in Birmingham brought in stark relief the choice that moderate whites had infront of them. Either support the butchers of those little girls or support the Civil Rights movement. In droves, white moderates supported the Civil Rights movement. The true, honest, cruelty of the enemies of Civil Rights were brought to bear in that one bombing. From that moment on it was all over but the signing.

Matthew with his boyish features and almost naive sweetness was to be our symbol of the viscious cruelty of the supposedly religious people who hate us. A boy beaten to death by men who pretended to be gay and then tortured him to death. If there ever were an exhibit A for the hatred we face, this was it.

There are very few gays or lesbians who are more than one degree of seperation from having been beaten up as an adult for being gay. In other words, most of us who haven't been beaten up ourselves know a person who has. We all know where we were when we heard about Matthew. We know because we said to ourselves "but for the grace of God". Far from being cynical we were being real when we told the country that Matthew represented us. So why wasn't Matthew our Birmingham bombing.

He wasn't perfect, that's why. First we heard he had AIDS. Then he supposedly harrassed some straight men. Then, Disney, in their first foray into fantasy masquarading as news, told us that "Oh no, it wasn't the fact he was gay it was a drug deal gone bad". So instead of hearing about the real evils of anti gay bigots hiding behind the holiest book ever written we heard about the imaginary sins of Matthew Shepard.

Thus in the wake of now nearly 8 years since his death we have seen no hate crime laws passed. Indeed we elected as President a man who refused to sign a hate crimes bill soley due to the fact it would have included gays and lesbians. The intervening years have seen hate crimes against gays and lesbian increase in every single year to the point that gays and lesbians are now the second most likely victims of hate crimes in the entire country. Only Muslims are more likely to be victims of those crimes.

While gays and lesbians have seen some tremendous gains in the last 8 years we have also seen a major backlash in the wake of the 2004 election. We still haven't shown our enemies to be the evil people they are. I have no idea what our galvanizing moment will be. Mark my words, there will be another Matthew Shepard, likely another several. Eventually society won't make excuses anymore. Eventually the great moderate straight world will see they have two choices either support us or support people willing to murder the lies of Matthew Shepard. Just like after Birmingham there will be no middle ground.

No amount of made up news can change that.