Friday, October 7, 2011

Thirteen Years Later


I begin with a confession; this is a very difficult blog to write. Thirteen years ago yesterday my home town of Laramie, WY was thrust into the spotlight when Mathew Shepard was beaten and left to die because of his sexual orientation. I want to share with you my perspective of what it was like to be in Laramie at that time and what it has been like to be from Laramie since. In doing this, however, I want to make it clear that I am speaking only from my experience and do not presume to speak for the people of Laramie.

Until recently the events of thirteen years ago would have been something I would have been very reluctant to talk about. I think this is true of a lot of Laramie residents. When you introduce yourself and say you are from Laramie, Matthew Shepard’s brutal death is often the first thing people think about. The natural inclination is to take a defensive posture and defend Laramie or speak about nuances that have gotten lost in the media covering what happened. The truth is that these reactions truly are not helpful and are out of truth not about the event itself but rather feeling like I have to defend myself for being from Laramie. Understand too my memory is also clouded by the media’s decent onto the town. The reporters hounded us as High School students as we left school to give them a sound bite about local reaction. Memories of TV cameras pointing into classroom windows while we were simply trying to do our work. These also have not been helpful to me as I have tried to really think about that time over the years. My goal has been to move beyond such things and what follows is my attempt to do so.

What has really stuck with me all these years more than even the brutal event itself has been the community reaction to it. Almost immediately the University and High School students mobilized to create a way of saying that what had happened was not acceptable and had nothing to do with the Laramie we knew. Almost everyone’s backpack or bag had a yellow ribbon on it supporting Mathew’s family.

When Fred Phelps and his hate group from Westboro Baptist Church decided to protest there was a group who bravely surrounded them wearing white robes with large angel’s wings to block the hate from sight. This simple moment of love and resistance is one that has stuck with me and to this day acts as an example when I plan acts of resistance.

I remember Mathew’s mother’s courage and compassion when she decided to ask the DA not to seek the death penalty in the case of Mathew’s killers. In this act she stopped the cycle of violence right there. It must have taken a great deal of courage and overcoming a great deal of pain for her to act in this way.

But what of Laramie? I’m sad to report that though there are positive things like the Matthew Shepard Symposium at the University of Wyoming each year dealing with issues of homophobia, the environment that allowed this kind of act to happen still exists. The issue of homophobia is still one that has yet to be dealt with in significant ways. But this is not true only of Laramie. You see it would be easy if we only had to irradiate homophobia in Laramie, but the conditions that allowed Mathew Shepard to be killed exist far too pervasively in our society. For every Mathew Shepard we hear about there are hundreds who are victims physically and emotionally of homophobia that we do not here about.

So I turn to my faith and ask for forgiveness for my silence. Thank God for the ability now to reflect on this and continue said reflection. And the strength for this native son of Laramie to continue the fight against homophobia and to fight for my LGBTQ sisters’ and brothers’ equality where ever that might lead me.

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