Tag Archives: Matthew Shepard

October 6, 1998: The Murder of Matthew Shepard

October 6, 1998: Remembering The Heartbreaking Murder of Matthew Shepard

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23 years ago this night, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson for the first time at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, Wyoming and became the victim of one of the most brutal and heinous anti-gay hate crimes in history.

McKinney and Henderson said that they would give Matthew a ride home but instead  they drove him to a remote rural area and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and torture Matthew, tying him to a fence and leaving him to die. Matthew hung there all night in the freezing, in pain and alone until he was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, a cyclist who initially mistook Shepard for a scarecrow.  Matthew was still alive but by that time has slipped into in a coma.

Matthew suffered fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. He experienced severe brainstem damage, which affected his body’s ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature, and other vital functions and there  were about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face, and neck. His injuries were so severe that doctors could not operate.

Matthew was pronounced dead at 12:53 a.m. on October 12, 1998.

Both McKinney and Henderson were convicted of the murder, and each received two consecutive life sentences.

What happened to Matthew angered both America and the world. His senseless murder garnered immense media attention that brought forth and shone a light on the bigotry and hated that LGBT individuals endure

The life and death of Matthew Shepard changed the way we talk about, and deal with, hate in America. Since his death, Matt’s legacy has challenged and inspired millions of individuals to erase hate in all its forms. Although Matt’s life was short, his story continues to have a great impact on young and old alike.  His legacy lives on in thousands of people like you who actively try to eradicate the hatred from those who preach against us and fight to replace it with understanding, compassion and acceptance.

On October 2009, the United States Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (commonly the “Matthew Shepard Act” or “Shepard/Byrd Act” for short), and on October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the legislation into law

Rest well sweet Matthew. We shall never forget.

Gay History - October 6th: Judy & Barbara, The MCC, Brokeback Mountain and The Castro Sweep [Rare Video]

Gay History – October 6: Judy & Barbara, The MCC, Brokeback Mountain and The Castro Sweep [Rare Video]

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October 6th.

1791: France adopts The French Penal Code of 1791, marking it as the first Western European country to decriminalize same-sex acts.

1928: The New York Times reported that George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells had protested the seizure of the lesbian novel “The Well of Loneliness” by English customs agents. The novel had been published in France and was being imported into England.

1963: Judy Garland sings with Barbra Streisand on Judy’s variety show. It is their one and only performance together.

1968: A group of 12 people congregated for the first meeting of the Metropolitan Community Church in Huntington Park, California. Founded by Rev. Troy Perry, who held the first meeting in his living room, the religious organization centralizes its ministry efforts around the LGBT community.

1989:  In the annals of bloody misconduct by members of the San Francisco Police Department, the events of October 6, 1989, called the Castro Sweep ranks high on anyone’s list. 

In reaction to a small, peaceful protest against federal neglect of people with AIDS at the San Francisco Civic Center, about 200 San Francisco police officers rioted in the Castro neighborhood, beating protesters and passersby, sweeping seven city blocks of all pedestrians, and placing thousands in homes and business under house arrest for the duration.  The incident which would become known as the “Castro Sweep” and prolonged a rift between the city’s law enforcement and LGBT community that had began a decade earlier with the White Night riots sparked by a lenient sentence for the killer of the city’s first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, and Mayor George Moscone.

Journalist Brett Averill wrote in the Bay Area Reporter:

“… a bland plea for more AIDS funds ended five hours later with bloodied heads, mass arrests, and the specter of fully armed riot police marching through the heart of the Castro sweeping  demonstrators and confused passersby from the streets and sidewalks.”

Before the night was through, the police had shut down an entire city neighborhood and arrested 53 people and injured 10.

The next night over 1,500 people came out to the Castro to symbolically reclaim the street.

Then-Police Chief Frank Jordan, who became mayor three years later, responded to the incident by demoting his own brother, Deputy Chief Jack Jordan, for how he handled the affair. Jack Jordan suddenly resigned from the SFPD a month later.

Read all about The Castro Sweep from participant and fellow LGBT historian Gerard Koskovich by clicking  HERE  and HERE.

1997:  Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain is published in this week’s issue of The New Yorker. The story, later turned into a hit movie depicts the complex romantic and sexual relationship between two men in the American West from 1963 to 1981.

Brokeback Mountain ranks 12th among the highest-grossing romance films of all time.

1998: On this night one of the brutal and vicious hate crimes in American history happened when Matthew Shepard was brutally attacked, pistol whipped, tied to a fence and left to die by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.  It was reported that Shepard was beaten so brutally that his face was completely covered in blood, except where it had been partially washed clean by his tears. Shepard, who was still alive but in a coma, was discovered 18 hour later on the morning of October 7th.   Matthew passed away a few days later on October 12, 1998.

The horrific event would become one of the most notorious anti-gay hate crimes in American history and spawned an activist movement that, more than a decade later, would result in passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal law.

For details on the Matthew Shepard story as a whole please visit here.

2014:  The Supreme Court refused to hear appeals on seven of the petitions arising from challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage.  Which meant that the lower-court decisions striking down bans in Indiana, Wisconsin, Utah, Oklahoma, and Virginia should go into effect clearing the way for same-sex marriages in those states and any other state with similar bans in those circuits.  Indeed, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (who had declined to defend his state’s ban on same-sex marriage) indicated this morning on Twitter that, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the mandate in the Virginia cases would issue at 1 p.m., at which point “marriages can then begin.”same-sex marriage cases”.

After 20 Years The Remains Of Matthew Shepard Are To Be Put To Rest

After 20 Years The Remains Of Matthew Shepard Are To Be Put To Rest

Featured, Gay History, Gay News Domestic & U.S. Politics,

It was the hate crime that shocked not only the nation but the world.

On the night of October 8th, 1998 Matthew Shepard was brutally attacked, pistol whipped, tied to a fence and left to die tied to a fence by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in Laramie, Wyoming.  It was reported that Shepard was beaten so brutally that his face was completely covered in blood, except where it had been partially washed clean by his tears. Shepard, who was still alive but in a coma, was discovered 18 hour later on the morning of October 7th.  

Matthew passed away a few days later on October 12, 1998 and the world mourned.

Now, 20 years later Matthew’s remains will finally be put to rest.

The New York Times reports:

For 20 years, the ashes of Matthew Shepard have not been laid to rest. Mr. Shepard’s killing in 1998, when he was a 21-year-old college student, led to national outrage and, almost overnight, turned him into a symbol of deadly violence against gay people.

Mourners flocked to his funeral that year in Casper, Wyo., but there were also some protesters, carrying derogatory signs. Mr. Shepard’s parents worried that if they chose a final resting place for their son, it would be at risk of desecration. Now they have found a safe place. On Oct. 26, Mr. Shepard will be interred at the Washington National Cathedral, the neo-Gothic, Episcopalian house of worship that is a fixture of American politics and religion.

“I think it’s the perfect, appropriate place,” Dennis Shepard, Matthew’s father, said in an interview on Thursday. “We are, as a family, happy and relieved that we now have a final home for Matthew, a place that he himself would love.”

 

 Requiescat in pace, Matthew (1976-1998)

 

Gay History – October 12th: Matthew Shepard Dies On This Day In 1998

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Gay/LGBT History Month - October 12th: The National Coalition of Black Gays, Andy Warhol and Matthew Shepard Dies and the World Mourns.

October 12th.

1774 – Adolph Jans van Oldeberkoop of Frisia Netherlands, a fifty year old customs officer, was convicted of seduction to sodomy and banished for two years.

1971 – The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs recommended the repeal of a law prohibiting homosexuals from working in or frequenting bars. This occurs 2 and a half years AFTER the Stonewall Riots.

1979 – The National Coalition of Black Gays sponsored a conference in Washington DC, The First Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference.  It was one of the first organizations to initiate HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in the black community, including pamphlets that used coded terms familiar in the black community with men who would never identify with the gay community. The group fades from existence by 1986.

1985 – Andy Warhol appears on The Love Boat. REALLY!  Warhol made a guest appearance on now the Pacific Princess naturally playing himself. The plot of the episode concerns a Midwestern housewife played by Marion Ross (yes, Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days), who is startled to find Warhol on board since she doesn’t want her husband, played by Tom Bosley (aka Mr. Cunningham) to know that in her dark and misty past she hung out at Warhol’s Factory in New York. A sample bit of dialogue: Warhol wanders the deck with a camera, and Isaac the bartender quips, “When did Andy Warhol become the ship’s photographer?” Cue laugh track.

1998 – College student Matthew Shepard dies five days after being beaten and tied to a fence post in Laramie, Wyoming by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson 

Media reports contained the graphic account of the pistol-whipping and his fractured skull which shocked the nation. It was reported that Shepard was beaten so brutally that his face was completely covered in blood, except where it had been partially washed clean by his tears.

Matthew  suffered fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. He experienced severe brainstem damage, which affected his body’s ability to regulate his heart rate, body temperature, and other vital functions. There were also about a dozen small lacerations around his head, face, and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. While he lay in intensive care, and in the days following the attack, candlelight vigils were held around the world.

Shepard was pronounced dead at 12:53 a.m. on October 12, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital, in Fort Collins, Colorado. He was 21 years old and the world still mourns for him.

 

FIRST LOOK TRAILER: Matt Shepard Is A Friend Of Mine – Video

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Matt Shepard

The official trailer for the new award-winning documentary MATT SHEPARD IS A FRIEND OF MINE, which explores the life and tragic death of Matthew Shepard, the gay student brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in one of the most notorious hate crimes in U.S. history. Framed through the personal lens of friends and family, it’s a story of loss, love, and courage in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Premiering Monday on Logo TV at 9PM.

 

FIRST LOOK: Matt Shepard Is A Friend Of Mine ( Documentary Trailer)

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Matthew Shepard

 

Watch the official trailer for the new award-winning documentary MATT SHEPARD IS A FRIEND OF MINE, which explores the life and tragic death of Matthew Shepard, the gay student brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in one of the most notorious hate crimes in U.S. history. Framed through the personal lens of friends and family, it’s a story of loss, love, and courage in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine will begin a theatrical rollout in twelve cities during February 2015, following a year of acclaim on the festival circuit and recent accolades at the Side by Side Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. A winner of four Best Documentary awards, Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine will first open in New York and two other cities on February 6, followed by Los Angeles on February 13, and continue expanding into select markets across the U.S. and Canada.

Everytime I see Matthew Shepard’s face my heart breaks all over again.

 

Andrew Coulter-Sullivan Defends “Matthew Shepard Was A Meth Dealer” Lie and Writer Stephen Jimenez

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Sullivan Sucks

 

“The question here is whether the crime was solely a function of the homophobic hatred of two strangers who beat up and brutally murdered someone merely because he was gay. That’s the official line of the Matthew Shepard Foundation and the Human Rights Campaign. Of course these motives could also have been involved. I’m arguing that meth can explain all of it, but may not be the only factor involved. I can’t read the meth-addled minds of the foul murderers. I can detect bullshit from the gay rights establishment. No one wants to confess a meth robbery gone haywire, and they may have thought the gay panic defense might work – and it didn’t. The Matthew Shepard Foundation and the Human Rights Campaign should not be smearing and demonizing good faith work by a courageous openly gay journalist. They need to apologize, and correct the record. At some point, their convenient untruth must stop.” – Andrew Sullivan, responding to the uproar that followed after columnist Julie Bindel titled “The truth behind America’s most famous gay-hate murder.”which praised the widely discredited 2013 book The Book of Matt, by hack journalist Stephen Jimenez who claims “without any proof that Matthew Shepards brutal murder in 1998 was drug-related and not motivated by anti-gay hate.

Jimenez’s book has been described as “fictional” and “trash” by the lead detective in the case. People familiar with the murder – including one of the killer’s appellate attorneys, Albany County Sheriff Dave O’Malley, and Albany County Undersheriff Robert Debree – have condemned the book as factually challenged.

It’s ironic that Andrew Sullivan could write “I can detect bullshit from the gay rights establishment.”  And yet…he’s totally oblivious to his own.

Andrew Sullivan has become the Ann Coulter of the gay journalist community and now makes his cash by being an outspoken, absurd lunatic, and anything for a buck hack.  Sinking so low to as even defaming the memory of the dead.

Award winning LGBT journalist and Editor-In-Chief of the Bilerico Project, John Becker weighs in:

“In Sullivan’s latest desperate bid to exchange contrarianism for clicks, he’s decided to desecrate the memory of a murder victim — one from his own community, no less.

“Sullivan takes a book that’s been thoroughly debunked, pulls out so-called ‘facts’ that never emerged during the investigation, trial, or sixteen years of intense scrutiny and have been repudiated by police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, and brands them as ‘truth.’ Why? Because he says so, that’s why. That this new ‘truth’ also provides him with an opportunity to bash two things he hates — the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes laws — is, of course, purely coincidental.

“Spitting on a Matthew Shepard’s grave in order to take petty political swipes and drive up traffic to your website?  That’s disgusting.

I think we can all agree.  It time for Andrew Sullivan to go.

Sandy Rios Calls Matthew Shepards Murder “a total fraud,” at FRC’s Values Voters Summit – Video

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Sandy Rios

On the fifteenth anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s violent hate fueled murder in Laramie Wyoming, Sandy Rios a Fox News contributor, appeared at the conservative Values Voters Summit, hosted by the certified anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, and made the horrific claim that the “story” of the 1998 anti-gay murder of Matthew “wasn’t true,” and is “a total fraud,” and a “fairy tale” used as “propaganda” by LGBT activists.

Via the Huffington Post:

In Rios’ retelling, however, Shepard’s murder was part of a long-term plan by liberals and the LGBT community to create a society that is accepting of gay people.

It is up to Christian conservatives, Rios argued, to stop that acceptance. “We can’t let [gay people] keep breaking hearts and taking lives,” she said, one of a number of references Rios made to her theory that gay men are responsible for the AIDS epidemic.

“You think youth is worshiped in heterosexual sex? It is top of the line [for gay men]. And they like young men, young virile men,” Rios told a crowd of hundreds in the ballroom of the Omni Shoreham Hotel. “You get old and you’re a gay man? There’s so much rejection.”

In the video below, Rios claims that the murder of Matthew Shepard was “a drug deal gone bad,” that Shepard’s murderers “had sex with him,” and professes that his murderers “were gay or bisexual.”

I am speechless.

Hack “Author” Claims Matthew Shepard Was A Drug Dealer And His Killer Was His Bisexual Lover – Video

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Stephen Jimenez

“Author”, for lack of a better word,  Stephen Jimenez has slandered and bashed the memory of Matthew Shepard since 2002 and now more then ten years years later he is doing so once again in his disgusting new book  “The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.” 

Jimenez claims that he first became interested in Matthew’s story because he was writing a screenplay on Matthews murder. But claims he found proof that “Aaron McKinney was a male hustler, had been familiar with gay guys and gay bars” and “that he really did like having sex with gay guys and that he was not unfamiliar with homosexuality and the gay world,” which in Jimenez’s mind at least seemed to contradict the “gay panic” defense that McKinney’s lawyers were putting forth. What began as a trip to “fill in some color and detail” for a screenplay turned into a “13-year investigative obsession,” according to Kirkus reviews:

Drawing on both in-depth research and exhaustive interviews with more than 100 individuals around the United States, Jimenez meticulously re-examines both old and new information about the murder and those involved with it. Everyone had something to hide. For Aaron McKinney, one of the two men convicted of Shepard’s murder, it was the fact that he was Shepard’s part-time bisexual lover and fellow drug dealer. For Shepard, it was that he was an HIV-positive substance abuser with a fondness for crystal meth and history of sexual trauma. Even the city of Laramie had its share of dark secrets that included murky entanglements involving law enforcement officials and the Laramie drug world.

Jiminez has been peddling this story since 2002, two months before reporting began for a “20/20” piece on the Matthew Shepard killing, which Jimenez sold to the ABC program and had decided beforehand that methamphetamine motivated the murder and not anti-gay bias writing  in an e-mail that the “‘hate crime’ motivation of Shepard’s death” was a “flawed theory.”

Now more than 10 years later he is still recycling this hateful theory, which by the way he has no concrete evidence or proof of to make a quick buck. And for Andrew Sullivan to shill for this sleazy feral maggot whore’s work makes him no better.

Fuck you Stephen Jimenez.  You better hope that we never meet.

 

Iowa High School Principal Stops School Production Of “The Laramie Project”

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Laramie_Book_cover

Known as one of the more progressive states in the midwest (one of the very few midwestern states that allow same sex marriage), Iowa is beginning to tarnish that image, or rather one local high school. Media attention is increasing after high school principal is denying students production on The Laramie Project, that is based on the life and senseless murder of Matthew Sheppard because the subject matter is too adult. Here’s more:

The Heartland Connection reports that Ottumwa High School Principal Mark Hanson nixed the show from being performed by the school’s drama club because he felt it was “too adult,” though he noted it “does preach a great message.”

Hanson’s decision was supported by Superintendent Davis Eidahl, who said he wanted “the focus of our Ottumwa High School productions to be for the entire family.” [………]

Officials for The Matthew Shepard Project responded to the controversy on their Facebook page, saying they were “disappointed” by the school’s decision:

“The story of what happened to Matthew and the impact on Laramie offers a meaningful opportunity to engage both the student population and the community in a conversation about hate and the violence it breeds.Teenagers -– whether they be in Iowa, New York City, or any other part of the country –- are living this ‘adult content’ every day in their schools, communities and homes. Students of all ages deal with the issues of bullying, hatred and bias on a daily basis.”

Why is this play not appropriate for high schoolers? This makes one wonder what would be considered “too adult” by these school administrators. Would they have no problems doing the world renown Shakespeare tragedy of Romeo & Juliet that centers on murder, suicide, destructive codependent personalities, drug use, child abuse, oversexualization of minors, delusions of grandeur, mob like mentality…I could go on but you get the point.

It’s always disheartening (and irksome) when educators use such blanket language that also servers as utter hypocrisy. The silver lining that these students will be able to produce the play off campus does not pacify not being able to do the play because of the vague reasoning behind the controversy. This play isn’t too adult for you. It’s too gay for these school administrators and this banning is an insult to not only those that have been working on producing this heartfelt, informative play and those that have dealt with or may still be dealing with bullying.

This is a family story, just not the type of family these school administrators are so loosely trying to justify. Families need to see what happens when ignorance and hate are allowed to grow into something horrible. How bullying is not acceptable in any form. We need to be brave enough and honest enough to show the world as it truly is so that we can learn from it. And after all the recent news of Trayvon Martin and others that have their lives shortened in this country only for it o be swept under the rug is more proof that the lesson of love and acceptance is something we can learn at any age.

Educate. Don’t discriminate.