Hate Crimes: Matthew Shepard Essay

Wyoming, October 7th 1998. Aaron Kriefels is cycling in a remote rural area when he sees what at first he believes to be a scarecrow tied to a fence. He looks closer and sees not a scarecrow, but a young man badly beaten and close to death. The victims name was Matthew Shepard. On Dec. 1st 1976, Matthew Shepard was born in Casper, Wyoming. He attended elementary school in the states, but after his first year in high school his family moved to Saudi Arabia. He then attended the American School in Switzerland where he was elected as a peer mediator. His friends and peers felt comfortable talking to him and he was someone you came to when you needed advice. He was described by his father as â€Å"an optimistic and accepting young man who had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people’s differences. â€Å"[1] In February 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, Matthew was beaten, robbed, and raped, causing him to withdraw from school. According to his mother, from then on he was prone to experiencing panic attacks and depression. Although this time in his life was extremely difficult, Shepard still graduated in May then attended Catawba College in North Carolina and Casper College in Wyoming, before settling in Denver. Shepard became a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, and was chosen as the student representative for the Wyoming Environmental Council. Shortly after midnight, on October 7th, 1998 Shepard met two men (Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson) at the Fireside Lounge. He was offered a ride home, but shortly after leaving they robbed, pistol-whipped and tortured him, tying him to a fence leaving him to die. Matthew was left in the freezing cold suffering from his injuries before slipping into a coma. In total, it took 18 hours before he was found and rushed to the hospital. Upon arrival it became apparent that his injuries were too severe and the doctors couldn’t operate. On October 12th, Matthew Shepard died of his injuries, never having woken up from his coma. During the trial, McKinney tried to justify his actions by originally pleading that he and Henderson were driven to temporary insanity by alleged sexual advances by Shepard. I believe this is one of the key factors in understanding why people do what they do when it comes to homosexually based hate crimes. When men ‘check out’ or ‘hit on’ women they believe it is there right. The right to gaze upon a woman’s body is something they genuinely believe is a man’s right. There is no female equivalent to a man’s gaze. It is something that is seen as powerful and socially intimidating, and when the two men in the bar noticed Shepard looking at them it made them believe they were being hit on as if they were women. Both Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson felt they needed to defend not only their masculinity but their heterosexuality. This is very important because, later on in the trial when McKinney states that while in the car Matthew made an apparent sexual advance toward him, instead of backing away McKinney begins hitting Shepard. After feeling like he had been emasculated back at the bar, I bet he was just looking for an excuse to exert power over Matt. Whether he had in fact made sexual advances toward Aaron isn’t the point, the point is that McKinney chose to defend his heterosexuality by literally beating the life out of him and showing him that he had the power. Both McKinney and Henderson were of slight build, but with Matthew being even smaller and only reaching 5’1 it only solidified in the minds of the two men their power of the homosexual man. What happens next is what changed this from a triggered â€Å"Gay Panic Defense† (which is, in my opinion a completely bogus and ridiculous excuse for those who can’t control their fists) to a hate crime and a murder. After severely beating Shepard in the moving truck, Henderson tied him to the fence. Their decision to tie his body up for everyone to see is part of their intensions to make it a public display of what they believe should be private. In an interview for the Laramie Project (a play based on the events of Matthew’s death), McKinney’s girlfriend tells writers about why the two men really decided to invite Matt into their car. After being disgusted at the thought of being hit on by a gay man they go to the bathroom where they plan to put on a gay pretense in order to lead Shepard into their vehicle and rob him. They wanted him to be punished for â€Å"coming onto straight people. † By lifting his body in midair and tethering him to the fence they were aware that someone would find him that way. They didn’t hide or trash or burry the body, they made it a spectacle. But in doing this, you can deduce that this murder wasn’t fully about Matthew Shepard. He was a trigger, he was someone they could take advantage of. They used his body to show not only to Matthew himself, but to Laramie and the surrounding community that they were defending their ‘manhood. ’ And in one of the most brutal ways you can imagine. Hate crimes towards people who are a different sexual orientation then others are more common than people think. There are a lot of organizations that try to help stop these hate crimes but I think that these situations should be in the news more often. People need to be more aware about what they say and what they do because you never know who could be listening. It could be your children who will take what you say as the truth. It could be someone walking near you or even in the same room and be deeply offended by what you say. You never know who you could offend, be it a friend, a co-worker or even a family member. People need to watch what they say because you never know who will be listening. Hate crimes must be stopped and it will take people to take action against it in order to make the world a better place.