BY NAOMI CRAINE
The brutal killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student
in Laramie, Wyoming, has become the latest flashpoint in the
"culture war." Across the United States thousands of people
have turned out for vigils and rallies protesting his lynching.
One thousand people attended Shepard's funeral, while a small
group of rightists picketed across the street with signs such
as "No Tears for Queers."
Democratic Party politicians and other liberals are using the killing to push for the extension of laws that allow stiffer penalties for offenses deemed to be "hate crimes," undermining democratic rights and fanning the flames of rightist demagogy. Right-wing politicians and pundits are posturing as the defenders of free speech and opponents of supposed "special privileges" for gays.
Shepard was severely beaten the night of October 6 and left tied to a fence post in near-freezing weather. By the time he was found 18 hours later, he had entered a coma. The 21-year- old University of Wyoming student died in the hospital October 12.
Two young men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, have been charged with first degree murder, kidnapping, and robbery. Police say the two met Shepard at a bar in Laramie, drove him to an isolated field, struck him repeatedly in the head with a pistol, and tied him to the fence. They then reportedly returned to town and assaulted two Latino youths. Their girlfriends, Kristen Price and Chasity Pasely, have been charged with being accessories after the fact for allegedly offering false alibis and disposing of evidence.
McKinney's companion, Kristen Price, told the television news show "20-20" that the two men assaulted Shepard "to teach him a lesson not to come on to straight people."
McKinney and Henderson could be sentenced to death if convicted. Price and Pasely face up to three years in prison and fines.
Polarized response to lynching
This brutal killing sparked outrage across the country.
Hundreds of people marched in Laramie, a town of 27,000,
October 10. Protests in San Francisco, New York, Washington,
D.C., numbered in the thousands. Smaller actions denouncing the
murder have been taking place on campuses across the country.
Giving lip service to this sentiment, the U.S. House of
Representatives passed a resolution by voice vote decrying the
killing October 15.
The response to the beating has been polarized. An October 13 college parade in Fort Collins, Colorado, included a float with a scarecrow labeled "I'm gay," mocking the assault on Shepard. The parade passed a few blocks from the hospital where Shepard lay dying. Three days later, a dozen people staged a picket across the street from Shepard's funeral in Casper, Wyoming, with signs such as "No Fags in Heaven" and "No Tears for Queers."
When nearly 6,000 people rallied in New York October 19 in a "political funeral" for Shepard, the city administration mobilized 1,000 cops who arrested more than 100 protesters, on the pretext that there was no permit for the action.
Ultrarightist politician Patrick Buchanan once again exemplified the right-wing "culture war" demagogy that will increasingly be used to justify acts of brutality and street thuggery. Matthew Shepard's death "is already being used to launch a new round of Christian bashing," Buchanan wrote in his October 21 syndicated column. Seeking to draw on the fears and resentments of panicked middle-class layers in society to scapegoat gays, he continued, "The left is now using Shepard's murder both to diabolize Christian teachings on homosexuality and to impose on society its own moral code - in a new U.S. Hate Crimes Prevention Act."
Buchanan went on to state that the murder in Wyoming only received so much attention because the "alleged killers appear to belong to a class that is hated with a passion - white males who despise homosexuals." The column advocated use of the death penalty against McKinney and Henderson and praised the "law-and-order tradition" of Wyoming.
At the same time, Buchanan didn't miss a beat in pushing rightist propaganda against abortion. "We live today in a strange land where ethnic slurs are federal crimes," he said, "but a doctor who takes a hammer and smashes the head of a baby being born is performing a constitutionally protected act." With thinly veiled racism Buchanan concluded, "Why has the left not demanded that all interracial assaults and rapes be made hate crimes?... Because the weight of those numbers would crush the myth about America" as "irredeemably racist, homophobic, nativist, [and] sexist."
Liberals call for `hate crimes' laws
The response of many liberal politicians and gay rights
organizations has been to call for more "hate crimes"
legislation. These laws increase the penalties for "bias
related" crimes above those usually imposed for the same
action. Forty-two states have some form of "hate crimes" laws,
about half of which include crimes against gays and lesbians.
House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and Attorney General Janet Reno are both campaigning to broaden federal legislation that would make it easier for federal authorities to step in to cases of alleged crimes motivated by a person's gender, disability, or sexual orientation. The editors of the New York Times and other liberal dailies applauded this stance.
Right-wing forces have seized on these moves as an opportunity to pose as defenders of democratic rights. "Should government plunge deeper into stigmatizing thoughts and attitudes?" asked right-wing columnist George Will in an October 15 column. He went on to denounce the "ever-more- elaborate structure of identity politics."
Shepard's murder and the polarized response to it occur in the context of an increased political scapegoating of gays by the ultraright as part of the supposed "moral degeneracy" of bourgeois society. It goes hand-in-hand with attacks on the right of women to choose abortion, demands to reinstitute prayer, and ban sex education in the public schools. This scapegoating gets wind in its sails from government moves like the 1996 "Defense of Marriage Act" signed by President William Clinton, denying federal recognition to same-sex unions. Some recent examples include:
A newspaper ad campaign by the Center for Reclaiming America featuring "former homosexuals" who claim to have "overcome" their sexual orientation through prayer.
Televised remarks by Senate majority leader Trent Lott in June in which he called homosexuality a sin and compared gays to alcoholics and kleptomaniacs who should "learn to control that problem."
A rally of 1,500 people in New York October 13 outside the opening performance of the play Corpus Christi, demanding it be shut down as "blasphemous" for supposedly portraying Jesus Christ as gay.
A ruling the same day by the U.S. Supreme Court that let stand a Cincinnati city law barring antidiscrimination laws protecting gays.
And, according to one survey, a 76 percent increase of attacks by police against gays last year.