Ruth Institute Blog

This week it became obvious that America’s sexual revolution has been built on lies. Three of the cases which transformed the legal system and altered the moral ecosystem are based on fiction: Roe v Wade, which became the foundation stone for abortion rights; Lawrence v Texas, which decriminalised sodomy and led inexorably to same-sex marriage; and the murder of Matthew Shepard, which transformed disapproval of homosexual acts into hateful homophobia.

This was underscored this week with the publication of , by gay journalist Stephen Jimenez.

The death of Shepard, a gay 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, has become a symbol of American homophobia and a shibboleth of the anti-gay bullying movement. In October 1998 he accepted a lift from two locals, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. They drove him to a field, robbed him, pistol-whipped him, tied him to a fence and left him to die.

This vicious incident has become the most notorious anti-gay hate crime in American history. Shepard became a martyr: a gentle soul who had been murdered simply because he was gay. The reaction was immense.

In 2009 President Obama signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a federal law against gay hate crimes which was named after Matthew Shepard. Elton John and Lady Gaga have sung about him. Three films have been made about his death. A play, “The Laramie Project”, has been performed more than 2,000 times around the world. The first openly gay NBA Player, Jason Collins, wore the number 98 in his honour during the 2012-2013 season. A foundation perpetuates his memory “to replace hate with understanding, compassion, and acceptance”.

But in a book published this week, Jimenez debunks this hagiography. After interviewing more than a hundred people, including the murderers, he has concluded that the murder had little to do with Shepard’s sexuality and a lot to do with drugs. America’s most reviled hate crime was not a hate crime after all.

It turns out that Shepard was a regular crystal meth user and a meth dealer, that his killer, McKinney, had been on a meth bender, that McKinney and possibly Henderson dabbled in gay sex, that McKinney had partied with Shepard and had even had had sex with him. It is a seamy story, full of gut-wrenching violence. But it is not a story of homophobic rednecks torturing and murdering a refined, gentle gay activist.

Writing in The Advocate, the leading US gay paper, Aaron Hicklin asks, “did our need to make a symbol of Shepard blind us to a messy, complex story that is darker and more troubling than the established narrative?”

But the hallowing of Matthew Shepard is just the latest chapter in a mythology of grievance and sexual oppression.

Keep reading.