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| The Gay St. Sebastian |
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| actually, that may be a redundancy....... |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, October 14, 1998. I believe we can now, with no hesitation, feel safe in condemning the murder of young Mathew Shepherd, the very small man beaten to death in Wyoming some days ago. There is really little left to say about it. Shepherd was gay and he apparently came on to two thugs in a bar. They literally beat him down to the brain stem, and left him spread eagled on a deer fence like he had been crucified. Whatever happens to those two young men is too good for them. Even so, I have been made somewhat queasy by the adulation now surrounding Shepherd, both in public address and written offering. Some of it clearly emerges from the bosom of his family, who seem to have been ideal parents for a gay son: tolerant, loving, and intelligent. But some of the worship comes from the gay community which, as always, is overboard and slip from hyperbole to gibberish quicker than a Baptist preacher on a sermon tear. The result is the creation of a gay St. Sebastian, murdered for his beliefs. Nothing in this horror strikes the manipulated chord as surely as the crucifixion motif. It seems rather forced. In the First World War, the allies exaggerated German cruelties by telling the story of how an allied prisoner, usually a Canadian, to inflame that important ally, was killed by crucifixion and hung for days in agony in full view of the men in the other trenches. It was a myth, of course, but an effective one. The spin meisters for the Gay Council of Martyrdom can’t have Shepherd sprawled over a fence. He has to have been crucified. And he cannot be just a small, very nice young man of average achievement. If I might quote from an editorial in the Daily Camera: Matthew believed in the worth of every human being….that we are “part of the same family called Humanity” and that “each of us has the right to lead a rich and rewarding life.” It is true that young men of college age tend to emote such clichés and new insights as if they were newly minted on their own lips. But we have no actual quotes of Matthew Shepherd saying anything. We have only translations of his soul by spokesmen who spend annoying amounts of time heaving silent sobs on camera for Mr. Shepherd, who they knew – if at all – only vaguely. To return to the editorial “That is one lesson which we are very certain he would share with you if he could.” Before locks of his hair are used to miraculously cure gallstones and genital warts and Shepherd is beautified before installation as a gay saint, let’s rope ourselves in a focus on the real crime. A five foot two gentle soul – race, religion, sexual orientation unknown and unimportant – was savagely beaten to death by two large men and two female accomplices. If he had been a member of the Aryan Nations, the crime would have been the same. He may have been killed because he was gay, but he may have been killed because he was there and available to drunken thugs who were simply looking for an excuse to inflict pain. They exist. |
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