This paper was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication in San Antonio, Texas August 2005.
If you have questions about this paper, please contact the author
directly. If you have questions about the archives, email
rakyat [ at ] eparker.org. For an explanation of the subject line,
send email to
[log in to unmask] with just the four words, "get help info aejmc," in the
body (drop the "").
(Feb 2006)
Thank you.
Elliott Parker
====================================================================
Giving a Human Face to Anti-Gay Violence
by
Professor Rodger Streitmatter
School of Communication
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016
[log in to unmask]
office phone: 202-885-2057
home phone: 202-675-8446
Submitted for presentation to the
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Interest Group
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
National Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, August 2005
Matthew Shepard
~
Giving a Human Face to Anti-Gay Violence
It was about 10:30 p.m. on October 6, 1998, when University of
Wyoming student Matthew Shepard walked into the Fireside Lounge not
far from campus. As the young man who was impeccably dressed in
jeans, a sport coat, and patent-leather loafers was sitting at the
bar and quietly sipping a cocktail, two local men approached
him. The pair of high school dropouts said they, too, were gay and
asked their new acquaintance to come home with them, intimating that
a sexual threesome would follow. Twenty-one-year-old Shepherd then
made the worst decision of his life, as he accepted their invitation.
As soon as the two men got their prey inside their pickup truck, they
began striking him with the butt of a Smith & Wesson .357-caliber
magnum handgun. But that physical brutality was only a warm-up
exercise, as the thugs then drove the blond-haired, blue-eyed
Shepherd to a remote area, just past the local Wal-Mart, where they
tied him spread eagle to a rough-hewn wooden fence, burned his arms
with lighted cigarettes, kicked him repeatedly in the groin, and
struck his head so hard and so many times that his skull
collapsed. After the men bludgeoned Shepard beyond recognition, they
left him to die in near-freezing weather. When a passing bicyclist
found him eighteen hours later, the only spot on his entire head that
was not covered in dried blood was just below his eyes—he had cried
while being beaten, so his tears had rolled down his face and washed
his cheeks clean. Five days later when Matthew Shepard took his last
breath in a local hospital, every major print and broadcast news
organization in the country reported his death.[1]
"For homosexuals, the key to winning acceptance and respect has been
to make themselves familiar, visible and known," the New York Times
stated on its editorial page. "Yet in almost 30 years of struggle,
the modern gay rights movement has never achieved a recognizable
public face. Now, in a victim, it has been given one."[2]
The country's most prestigious daily newspaper had begun reporting on
the Shepard story while the young man was still struggling to survive
his injuries, and that coverage quickly spread to the country's other
major dailies and to the television networks. That plethora of
stories helped propel mass rallies and marches in more than fifty
American cities—including several thousands men and women joining
Senator Edward M. Kennedy and openly gay Representative Barney Frank
for a candlelight vigil on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.[3] As Dan
Rather reported on the CBS Evening News, "Matthew Shepard's death has
set off a nationwide wave of demonstrations protesting anti-gay violence."[4]
The avalanche of news coverage combined with the eruption of public
condemnations resulted in the name "Matthew Shepard" becoming
embedded in the national consciousness—both in 1998 and in the years
since then. Whenever anti-gay violence is mentioned, people
instantly think of the five-feet-two-inch, 105-pound young man.
This paper has two major goals. First, it seeks to provide an
in-depth examination of the news coverage of Matthew Shepard. In
particular, this study attempts to illuminate four major messages
that the coverage communicated to the media-consuming
public: Despite the progress that had been made by the final years
of the twentieth century, a significant number of Americans continued
to hate gay people. By contrast, stories that were published or that
appeared on television news programs showed that the country's
leading journalistic voices expressed unrestrained outrage at how the
young man had been brutalized. A third message was that, according
to some news outlets, hate-crime laws needed to be expanded to
include attacks that were based on a person's sexual orientation. A
final statement that the extensive coverage communicated was that the
family of a gay person, at least in some instances, can be remarkably
loving toward and supportive of that individual.
The second goal of this paper is to explain why the news media
devoted such an enormous quantity of coverage to this particular
incident of anti-gay violence. As reported by several print and
broadcast outlets, twenty-one gay men and lesbians had been killed
during the year preceding Shepard's heinous murder, and yet the
country's leading news organizations committed relatively few column
inches of news print or seconds of television air time to those
deaths—or to any of the dozens of gay- or lesbian-related murders
that have occurred since then. And so, this manuscript seeks to
identify the specific factors that caused this single incident to
receive a uniquely large amount of attention.
Because this paper makes an original contribution to the body of
scholarship vis-à-vis the media and gay people, it relies mainly on
primary sources. More specifically, the author of this study
examined the thirty-eight news and feature articles, editorials, and
commentary pieces related to Matthew Shepard that appeared in the New
York Times, the prestigious news organ that many of the country's
other journalistic enterprises follow in determining what topics to
cover and how to cover them, between October 1998 when Shepard was
beaten and November 1999 when the second of his killers was
convicted. The author also examined all forty-two news segments
about the topic that aired on the ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC television
networks during that same time period (through the Television News
Archive at Vanderbilt University). This core body of material was
supplemented with examinations of several dozen additional items that
were published in a wide variety of other newspapers and magazines
including the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Boston Globe, Los
Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Washington Post, Newsweek,
Time, U.S. News & World Report, Harper's Magazine, The Nation,
National Review, The New Republic, and Vanity Fair. Secondary
sources that were consulted for this study included the books Up from
Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America by Larry
Gross and All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America by
Suzanna Danuta Walters.
Hatred of Gay People
A discussion of the degree to which the gruesome murder of Matthew
Shepard illuminated the hatred that many Americans of the late 1990s
felt toward gay people rightly begins by looking at what motivated
the vicious attack.
The New York Times was among the first news organizations to report
on the backgrounds of Russell Henderson, twenty-one, and Aaron
McKinney, twenty-two, who were arrested after a pistol covered in
Shepard's blood was found in the back of McKinney's
pickup. Henderson had dropped out of Laramie High School and worked
off and on at various jobs, including as a roofer; he had been
convicted twice for drunk driving. McKinney had followed a similar
route and also was the father of a four-month-old son born to his
girlfriend; he had recently been convicted of robbing a Kentucky
Fried Chicken franchise.[5]
Although neither man had a steady job, every few weekends they
managed to scrape together enough money to buy a hefty supply of
methamphetamine—also known as crystal meth or crank. One of their
friends said Henderson and McKinney had smoked or snorted about
$2,000 worth of the drug the weekend before they crossed paths with
Shepard. That friend speculated, in fact, that the men may have
still been feeling the effects of their recent binge on the night
the attack took place.[6]
Henderson and McKinney came into the Fireside Lounge about an hour
after the college student had arrived, ordering a $5.50 pitcher of
beer that they paid for by pulling quarters and dimes from their
pockets. The bartender told the New York Times that the two locals
were the ones who first made contact with Shepard, leaving their
barstools and moving to where the lone man was sitting, several feet
away from them. The three men talked for quite awhile and then left
the bar together about 1 a.m..[7]
Exactly what happened after they climbed inside the pickup is
difficult to know for sure, as the only details came from Henderson
and McKinney when they went on trial for first-degree
murder. According to their testimony, soon after the three men were
alone, Shepard placed his hand on McKinney's leg, presumably as a
signal that he was ready to proceed with the sexual activity that he
thought would be unfolding. But Shepard's gesture prompted McKinney
to say, "Guess what? We're not gay, and you just got jacked. It's
Gay Awareness Week!" That last sentence came in response to the fact
that gay and lesbian activists had posted fliers around Laramie to
promote a series of activities leading up to National Coming Out Day,
which was scheduled for the next week.[8]
McKinney then began hitting Shepard, according to Henderson's
testimony, with his fist and the butt of the handgun, while
repeatedly yelling "Queer!" and "Faggot!" Law enforcement officials
speculated that hatred was the primary motivation of the two killers,
as they took the $20 inside Shepard's wallet but did not steal his watch.[9]
News organizations soon reported that hatred of gay people was by no
means limited to these two men. An NBC Nightly News segment included
a patron of Wild Willie's Cowboy Bar in Laramie saying, "If you come
to Wyoming and you're gay, you're lookin' for trouble,"[10] and the
New York Times reported that a billboard advertising a nearby history
museum had been vandalized so the original statement "Shoot a Day or
Two" would read "Shoot a Gay or Two."[11] Based on an entry in the
homecoming parade at Colorado State University, according to ABC
World News Tonight, college students were no more tolerant of gays
than members of older generations; the bicyclist who had found
Shepard hanging from the fence had said he initially thought the body
was a scarecrow, so members of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity mocked the
killing by adding a scarecrow to their float and using spray paint to
scrawl the words "I'M GAY" across the figure's face.[12] (Salon
magazine was one of the few news outlets that reported the fact that
the words "UP MY ASS" were also painted on the scarecrow's backside.)[13]
Perhaps the most disturbing evidence of gay hatred was broadcast to
media consumers as part of the coverage of the slain student's
funeral. All of the major television networks—ABC, CBS, CNN, and
NBC—covered the event, which meant that millions of viewers saw
protesters standing outside St. Mark's Episcopal Church carrying
pickets reading "No Tears for Queers" and "Fags Die, God
Laughs."[14] The country's major news magazines reproduced some of
the hateful signs as well. A Time cover story titled "The War on
Gays" included a photo of an angry man shouting at members of the
Shepard family while holding up a sign that said "AIDS Cures
FAGS,"[15] and one of the pictures that accompanied Newsweek's
coverage of the funeral showed a man smirking as he leaned against a
large placard reading "God Hates Fags."[16]
Hatred of gay people did not end with harsh words. During the
previous year, according to ABC World News Tonight, twenty-one gay
men and lesbians had been killed specifically because of their sexual
orientation.[17]
Outrage from the News Media
Beginning with the earliest stories, it was clear that news
organizations had no intention of limiting their coverage of Matthew
Shepard's murder to answering who, what, when, and
where. Journalistic voices immediately communicated their outrage
that a college student had not only been killed but had been savagely
tortured as well.
One indication of the news media's strong editorial position came
through the words they chose to use when describing the victim. The
New York Times set the tone by characterizing him as "trusting,"[18]
"clean-cut,"[19] "soft-spoken,"[20] "polite,"[21] "sweet,"[22] and
"boyish."[23] The Washington Post followed suit, telling its readers
that the slain youth had possessed a "cherubic face"[24] and had been
"shy,"[25] "sensitive,"[26] and "slight of stature, gentle of
demeanor,"[27] while quoting the police officer who found Shepard on
the fence as saying he looked "like a child" rather than a
man.[28] Newsweek painted a highly sympathetic portrait of the young
man as well, calling him "meek,"[29] "well-groomed,"[30]
"sweet-tempered and boyishly idealistic,"[31] while beginning one
story with the statement: "From his first breath, life was a struggle
for Matthew Shepard. He was a preemie at birth—a tiny slip of a kid
who would grow up to be barely five feet tall. He was shy and gentle
in a place where it wasn't common for a young man to be either: in
Wyoming, a state that features a bronco buster on its license plate."[32]
The Times, Post, and Newsweek all also took their places on a list of
news outlets that compared Shepard to another man who was savagely
beaten and then left to die: Jesus Christ. "There is incredible
symbolism about being tied to a fence," the Times said in its
front-page story reporting the student's death. "Many people are
comparing it to a crucifixion."[33] The Post made a similar
observation, commenting on "the powerful Christ-like imagery of
Shepard being assaulted and strapped to a fence."[34] The news
magazine's reference to the image came in the form of a quotation
from the young victim's godfather: "The only way I can be released
from the bitterness and anger I feel is when I concentrate on the Son
of God being crucified the same way almost 2,000 years ago."[35]
That trio of publications took the lead in expressing rage about the
grisly crime as well. The Times said, on its editorial page, "The
details of Matthew Shepard's murder are a public horror."[36] The
country's most respected newspaper did not stop there, as one of its
liberal columnists accused the Family Research Council of being an
accomplice to the murder. Specifically, Frank Rich criticized the
right-wing organization for airing television ads portraying
homosexuality as a disease that could be cured. "The ads ooze
malice," he wrote. "In one of them, homosexuality is linked to drug
addiction and certain death by AIDS." Such messages led to physical
attacks like the one against Shepard, Rich argued. "If you wage a
well-financed media air war in which people with an innate difference
in sexual orientation are ceaselessly branded as diseased and sinful
and un-American, ground war will follow."[37]
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen made strong accusations as
well, blaming conservative politicians for Shepard's murder. "I will
figuratively place the young man's body at the doorstep of Senate
Majority Leader Trent Lott," Cohen wrote. That reference was to a
statement by Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, in June 1998 that
homosexuality was a disease comparable to kleptomania. "Lott has
likened a sexual preference to a wacky mental disease and also called
it a sin," Cohen wrote. "In his rhetoric, he and others have, bit by
bit, robbed homosexuals of their humanity." The columnist ended his
piece with the statement: "Anti-gay politicians have given voice to
some of the ugliest sentiments in American society—legitimizing the
sort of hate that left Matthew Shepard tied to a fence and near
death, lynched on account of being gay."[38]
In Newsweek, the words of outrage came from media critic Jonathan
Alter. "Violence against gays is a fact of life and a national
disgrace," he wrote. Like Cohen from the Post, Alter blamed Trent
Lott and other Republican leaders, saying there was a direct
connection between "gay-bashing in Washington and gays actually
getting their heads bashed in." Alter then added another element to
the argument by comparing violence against gays to the physical abuse
that African Americans had suffered a century earlier. "Just as
white racists created a climate for lynching blacks," he wrote, "so
the constant degrading of homosexuals is exacting a toll in blood."[39]
Among the television journalists who expressed outrage at the murder
was Tom Brokaw. "It's a crime that goes beyond despicable," the NBC
Nightly News anchor said during one broadcast.[40] And during
another he shook his head as he asked, with an expression of
bewilderment, "What causes someone to turn on another human being
with such anger, such hatred?"[41] His network colleague Katie
Couric provided an answer to that question when she said, on the
Today show, "Conservative Christian political organizations certainly
are helping to create an anti-homosexual atmosphere in many parts of
the country."[42]
Debate over Hate-Crime Laws
Even the most committed advocates of many public policy initiatives
spend years trying to move their particular concern into the
spotlight of media attention. But then, suddenly, a single event can
propel that little-noticed issue onto the national agenda. Matthew
Shepard's murder played that role for a proposal to expand hate-crime
laws to include sexual orientation.
During the 1970s and 1980s, forty states and the District of Columbia
had passed laws that increased fines and jail time when prosecutors
were able to prove that a crime had been committed specifically
because of the victim's race, religion, color, or national
origin. Twenty-one of those states and D.C. also had opted to
include sexual orientation in their laws. But Shepard's attackers
had not been charged with a hate crime because Wyoming was one of the
ten states that had not enacted a hate-crime law of any type.
"Gay leaders hope that Mr. Shepard's death will galvanize state
legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation or broaden existing
laws," the New York Times reported in one page-one article. "Wyoming
has been a holdout on hate-crime laws, rejecting three bills since
1994." The story also pointed out who objected to the public policy
change, as well as why. "Conservatives, particularly Christian
conservatives, generally oppose such laws, saying they extend to
minorities 'special rights.'"[43]
The Times established itself as a strong proponent of expanding the
definition of a hate crime to include an attack motivated by a
victim's sexuality. "Members of minority groups have often had to
pay a terrible price just for being who they are," the editorial
began, going on to say that African Americans and Jews were the most
frequent targets of violence. "But other groups have been the
victims of that murderous impulse too, and homosexuals have always
been among them." After describing the attack on Shepard, the Times
ended the editorial by stating: "His death makes clear the need for
hate-crime laws to protect those who survive and punish those who
attack others, just because of who they are."[44]
In the months following the incident and as the trials of Russell
Henderson and Aaron McKinney approached, the Times continued to
campaign—in news stories as well as in editorials—for hate-crime laws
that included sexual orientation. Indeed, some articles on the issue
sounded like they had come directly from press releases crafted by
advocacy groups. "The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says the
laws are valuable because they shape the way society thinks about
itself and they draw boundaries of what society will tolerate," one
story read. "Advocates argue that society speaking out, clearly and
specifically, against crimes directed at members of a minority group
can make the members of that group feel less isolated and
threatened. And, they say, police officers might become more
vigilant about such crimes if the laws require training on the issue,
as the laws in eight states do."[45]
One of several occasions on which the Times promoted the issue on its
editorial page came in the wake of Henderson's decision to plead
guilty to murder charges in exchange for avoiding a possible death
sentence. The paper applauded the judge who sentenced the killer to
two consecutive life terms, but it criticized the Wyoming legislature
for failing to enact any type of hate-crime law. "In the days and
weeks after Matthew Shepard's murder, it seemed that the nation would
be awakened to the virulence of anti-gay beliefs that propelled the
murder," the Times stated. "Yet in a very short time, the old
prejudice that homosexuals are not discriminated against and do not
warrant 'special' protection has resurfaced."[46]
Hate-crime laws—whether related to sexual orientation or other
factors—were not endorsed, however, by all liberal-leaning news
organizations. A Washington Post editorial, for example, dubbed the
effort to enact such laws "misguided."[47] A commentary piece on the
opposite page illuminated the Post's reasoning. "What Henderson and
McKinney allegedly did was a terrible, evil thing. But would it have
been less terrible if Shepard had not been gay? If Henderson and
McKinney beat Shepard to death because they hated him personally, not
as a member of a group, should the law treat them more lightly?"[48]
The Boston Globe also opposed hate-crime legislation. "No new law is
needed to punish the tormentors of Matthew Shephard," the Globe
wrote. "Everything they did—kidnapping, aggravated robbery,
murder—is covered by Wyoming's criminal code. It shouldn't matter
why the murderers in Laramie did what they did. They should be
punished because of their deeds, not because they are bigots."[49]
Regardless of the arguments for and against hate-crime laws,
Shepard's murder prompted considerable debate on the issue, in
Wyoming and several other states. Ultimately, however, neither the
media attention nor the discussion led to any additional laws being
enacted. As NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw put it in 1999, "It appears the
death of Matthew Shepard has done little to change any minds."[50]
Love for a Gay Son
Another important message sent by the news media's
coverage of the Matthew Shepard murder and its aftermath centered not
on the young man who was killed but on his parents. The
long-standing stigma that accompanied homosexuality had prompted
generations of Americans to shun the gay or lesbian members of the
family, but the stories that were written and broadcast if the wake
of this high-profile crime provided a dramatically different model.
Television viewers met Dennis and Judy Shepard on the day the
grieving parents buried their son. Cameras showed the father and
mother, tightly gripping each other's hand, standing somberly outside
St. Mark's Episcopal Church as snow fell around them, determined to
tell the world about their son. "Matt was the type of person who, if
this had happened to another person," Dennis Shepard said, "he would
have been the first on the scene to offer his help, his hope, and his
heart." Before the father finished his brief statement, his wife
broke down and cried openly, the cameras capturing the image and
broadcasting it nationwide. Across the street, protesters could be
seen carrying signs that read "Matt in Hell" and "No Fags in
Heaven." The correspondent for ABC World News Tonight finished her
report by saying that the Shepards "chose to ignore" the
protesters. "Instead, they gave thanks to the thousands of well
wishers from around the world who they say have comforted them in
their time of sorrow."[51]
Katie Couric of NBC gave television viewers a much more intimate
look at the couple when she interviewed them on the Dateline news
magazine show four months after the funeral. "He wanted to go into
diplomacy," Dennis Shepard said of his son, "and work overseas for
human rights." Judy Shepard spoke during the program as well, but
her voice was so soft that listeners had to strain to hear her
words. "He wasn't my son," the mother said. "He was my friend, my
confidant, my constant reminder of how good life can be."[52]
Dennis and Judy Shepard had been living in Saudi Arabia when their
son was attacked, the father working as an engineer for an oil
company. They flew to Wyoming to be with Matthew as he lay comatose
in the hospital and then to bury him. But when Dennis Shepard
returned to his job halfway around the world, Judy Shepard stayed in
the United States. She wanted to retreat into the privacy of her
role as a stay-at-home wife, but gay rights activists persuaded her
that she could be a uniquely effective public spokeswoman against
anti-gay violence.
When reporters—whether they worked for the Atlanta Journal,[53] Los
Angeles Times,[54] or Minneapolis Star Tribune[55]—asked her why an
upper-class woman who had wanted nothing to do with the public
limelight had agreed to give up her comfortable life with her husband
and crisscross the country, traveling by herself, to speak before
dozens and dozens of groups in such far-flung towns as Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, and Willimantic, Connecticut, Judy Shepard's answer was
always the same: "I'm doing this for Matthew."[56]
Journalists also repeatedly asked Shepard about when and how she and
her husband learned of their son's sexual orientation. They had
suspected Matthew was gay long before he came out to them, she said
in a Boston Globe story, so she read everything she could find about
how parents could make it easier for gay children during the
often-traumatic process of acknowledging their sexuality. "I tried
to educate myself," she said, so she and her husband could react as
supportively as possible. After absorbing what experts and other
parents of gay children had to say, Judy Shepard concluded that the
ideal response would be to accept the news matter-of-factly. She and
her husband even rehearsed that conversation that they knew was
coming, she said, so when Matthew—at age eighteen—finally told them,
they didn't so much as blink an eye. "We acted like it was no big
deal, even though our hearts were pounding a mile a minute," she
recalled. "That seemed to us like the ideal reaction, so that was
how we reacted. Matthew's well-being always came first."[57]
Judy Shepard shared other details about her son's life as well. He
had become fluent in three foreign languages—French, German, and
Arabic—while attending boarding school in Switzerland, she said, and
had worked to raise money for AIDS research. Not all aspects of
Matthew's life had been pleasant, however, as his mother also told of
how, during a trip to Morocco during his senior year in high school,
he had been gang raped by six men. "After that, he had the posture
of a victim," she said. "He was the kind of person whom you just look
at and know if you hurt him that he's going to take it—that there's
nothing he can do about it, verbally or physically. When he walked
down the street, he had that victim walk."[58]
Even though the stories painted Dennis and Judy Shepard to be
highly caring and compassionate people, the public was still
unprepared for the act of human generosity the couple performed in
November 1999. After Aaron McKinney was found guilty of first-degree
murder, the Shepards asked the judge to show leniency to the man who
had tortured their son. Because of that request, McKinney was
sentenced not to death but to life in prison, with no possibility of
parole. Dennis Shepherd delivered the news to a stunned
courtroom. "I would like nothing better than to see you die, Mr.
McKinney," the father told the killer. "However, this is the time to
begin the healing process—to show mercy to someone who refused to
show mercy to my son."[59]
"The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard"
When looked at from an analytical perspective, some of the messages
sent by the killing combined with the extensive news coverage of that
heinous crime were conflicting. On the one hand, the incident
indicated that a significant slice of late-1990s American society
hated gay people. On the other hand, the myriad statements of
outrage published and broadcast by the nation's leading news
organizations indicated that many of these powerful institutions were
appalled that a young gay man had been treated so
monstrously. Efforts to broaden hate-crime laws to include sexual
orientation offered mixed messages as well; the prestigious New York
Times fervently supported the proposal, but other liberal
journalistic voices opposed it. One topic related to Matthew
Shepard's murder on which there was no ambiguity was that his parents
loved him and supported him—completely and unconditionally.
Another topic on which there has come to be general agreement is what
may rank as the most intriguing question related to the incident and
the extensive news coverage of it: Why did this particular instance
of anti-gay violence attract so much attention and thereby propel the
issue into the national spotlight to a degree unparalleled by any
other event before or since?
Vanity Fair magazine attempted to answer this question in March 1999
with a story titled "The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard." The
exhaustive article, which extended for fifteen pages, ultimately
concluded that the decisive factor was how the media portrayed the
victim. "Parents throughout the country felt that Matthew could have
been their son, an idea many had never contemplated before about a
gay person," the piece argued. "In part, this may have been a result
of the fact that while he was described as gay, the press did not
portray Matthew as a sexual adult. He was depicted as having
parents, rather than partners, and those parents were loving and
affluent." Shepard's physical characteristics added to this media
image of Shepard's being an innocent—perhaps even angelic or
beatific—boy rather than his being a world-wise man, the Vanity Fair
story continued. "Photographs in the press showed him as having a
fragile, childlike appearance—a look of pale purity, the translucent
beauty favored in religious art."[60]
Two books that chronicle the increased visibility of gay men and
lesbians, both published in 2001, also sought to explain what set the
Wyoming incident apart from other murders. In Up from Invisibility:
Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Media in America, author Larry Gross
wrote, "Shepard might have been typecast for the role of a sad young
man."[61] This statement reinforced a recurring theme in Up from
Invisibility: The various forms of media—not only news outlets but
also such media genres as motion pictures and entertainment
television—consistently portray gay men not in a broad range of roles
but as being either victims or villains. According to Gross's
analysis, journalistic operations devoted large quantities of news
coverage to Shepard because certain details about him, such as his
having been slightly built and his having been gang raped in Morocco,
meant that those organizations could transform him into the epitome
of the stereotypical "victim" that the news media were so comfortable
with as one of the two standard classifications for gay men.[62]
In All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America, Suzanna
Danuta Walters argued that Shepard's murder "garnered a tidal wave of
attention" from newspapers and television news programs because the
young college student was "non-threatening" as well as an
"All-American kid from the heartland."[63] These characteristics
were consistent with the major theme driving All the Rage: There was
a substantial increase in the presence of gay people throughout the
American culture during the final years of the twentieth century, but
the specific individuals who became visible were largely limited to
men and women whose characteristics fit within certain parameters of
societal acceptability. "In this age of new gay visibility, for
example," Walters wrote, "one of the most popular television
characters is the narcissistic, shallow, Cher-loving, boy-chasing,
fashion-obsessed, show-tune-singing Jack of Will & Grace—a sturdy
stereotype if ever there was one."[64] Likewise, newspapers and
television networks shifted into overdrive when covering the Shepard
murder, Walters argued, because the victim's non-threatening nature
(by virtue of his small size and innocent appearance) combined with
his All-American attractiveness (by virtue of his blond hair, blue
eyes, and upper-middle-class social status) placed him well within
the media's accepted bounds of a gay person worthy of attention.[65]
Although these three perspectives—the one by Vanity Fair and those of
the Gross and Walters books—use somewhat different words and focus on
slightly different aspects of who Matthew Shepard was, they generally
are in concert with each other. They ultimately agree that the most
important factor leading to the remarkably large quantity of news
coverage was the physical appearance and the character of the
victim—or at least the aspects of the victim that news media outlets
chose to emphasize about him.
The quotations and citations included in the current study highlight
some of the various words and phrases that journalistic organizations
chose to use in portraying Shepard, clearly contributing to the
impression that he, despite being twenty-one and therefore legally an
adult, was really more of a boy than a man. The New York Times
called him "trusting," "sweet," "boyish"; the Washington Post spoke
of his "cherubic face," his "shy" and "sensitive" nature, his
"slight" stature, his looking "like a child"; and Newsweek added that
he was "meek" as well as "sweet-tempered and boyishly
idealistic." The comparisons to Jesus Christ nailed to a cross
reinforced the image of a pure and blameless victim.
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that another dynamic
leading to the extensive news coverage involves the gruesome nature
of the crime. Two homophobic thugs in a Western state lied to a gay
college student in order to lure him out of a bar, took him to a
remote area, tied him to a fence, tortured him, and beat him so
savagely and so relentlessly that his skull collapsed and his face
was no longer recognizable—the kind of details that create a riveting story.
That it was Matthew Shepard's physical appearance and character
traits that propelled this particular incident into a unique status
vis-à-vis news coverage was reinforced by how two other acts of
anti-gay violence were portrayed in the press. Five months after
Shepard died, an Alabama man was bludgeoned to death with an ax
handle and his body was then burned on a stack of rubber tires,[66]
and, a few more months after that grisly incident, an Army private
stationed in Kentucky was dragged from his bed and killed by fellow
soldiers who beat him with a baseball bat.[67] And yet the name of
neither man—Billy Jack Gaither nor Barry Winchell—became part of the
public consciousness at the time or has remained part of the American
memory to the degree that the name Matthew Shepard has.
It seems clear that it was certain aspects of how the Wyoming victim
was portrayed that distinguished him from the other two men. The
college student was seen as a waif-like child who had been taken
advantage of because he was puny and unable to defend
himself. Gaither and Winchell had clearly been characterized as men,
not boys. Gaither was a middle-aged, working-class man with only
average looks; Winchell was a muscular, battle-ready soldier who
fought back against his attackers, losing to them only because they
outnumbered him. Neither Gaither nor Winchell was from the
upper-middle class, neither attended a Swiss boarding school or spoke
three languages, and neither was innocent to the ways of the
world. Matthew Shepard was the only one of the three who had blond
hair and blue eyes, who was of diminutive stature, and who was meek
in demeanor—the epitome of the weak and effeminate gay man who wore
patent-leather shoes and sipped cocktails as he sat alone and
vulnerable in a bar, almost as if he were waiting to be attacked and
then to be transformed into the archetypal gay victim.
[1] See, for example, James Brooke, "Gay Man Dies from Attack," New
York Times, 13 October 1998, A1; Tom Kenworthy, "Gay Wyoming Student
Succumbs to Injuries," Washington Post, 13 October 1998, A7; CBS
Evening News, 12 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Dan
Rather; the segment was reported by Cynthia Bowers); CNN, 12 October
1998 (the newscast was anchored by Judy Woodruff; the segment was
reported by Brian Cabell); NBC Nightly News, 12 October 1998 (the
newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by
George Lewis in Laramie, Wyoming, and Pete Williams in Washington).
[2] "The Lesson of Matthew Shepard," New York Times, 17 October 1998, A14.
[3] Allan Lengel, "Thousands Mourn Student's Death," Washington
Post, 15 October 1998, A7.
[4] CBS Evening News, 24 November 1998 (the newscast was anchored by
Dan Rather; the segment was reported by Richard Schlesinger).
[5]
James Brooke, "Men Held in Beating Lived on the Fringes," New York
Times, 16 October 1998, A16.
[6] JoAnn Wypijewski, "A Boy's Life," Harper's Magazine, September 1999, 62.
[7] James Brooke, "Men Held in Beating Lived on the Fringes," New
York Times, 16 October 1998, A16.
[8] James Brooke, "Witnesses Trace Brutal Killing of Gay Student,"
New York Times, 21 November 1998, A9.
[9] James Brooke, "Witnesses Trace Brutal Killing of Gay Student,"
New York Times, 21 November 1998, A9.
[10] NBC Nightly News, 9 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored by
Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O'Neil).
[11] James Brooke, "After Beating of Gay Man, Town Looks at Its
Attitudes," New York Times, 12 October 1998, A9.
[12] ABC World News Tonight, 14 October 1998 (the newscast was
anchored by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters
in Fort Collins, Colorado).
[13] Lily Burana, "Letter from Laramie," Salon, 16 October 1998
(http://archive.salon.com/news/1998/10/16newsb.html)
[14] ABC World News Tonight, 16 October 1998 (the newscast was
anchored by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters
in Casper, Wyoming, and Rebecca Chase in Atlanta); CBS Evening News,
16 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Dan Rather; the segment
was reported by Cynthia Bowers); CNN, 16 October 1998 (the segment
was reported by Joie Chen); NBC Nightly News, 16 October 1998 (the
newscast was anchored by Tom Brokaw; the segment was reported by
Roger O'Neill in Casper, Wyoming, and Pete Williams in Washington).
[15]
Steve Lopez, "The War on Gays: To Be Young and Gay in Wyoming,"
Time, 26 October 1998, 39.
[16]
Jonathan Alter, "Trickle-Down Hate," Newsweek, 26 October 1998, 44.
[17]
ABC World News Tonight, 16 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored
by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters in
Casper, Wyoming, and Rebecca Chase in Atlanta). The death figure was
attributed to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.
[18]
"Murdered for Who He Was," New York Times, 13 October 1998, A18.
[19]
Michael Cooper, "Killing Shakes Complacency of the Gay Rights
Movement," New York Times, 21 October 1998, A1.
[20]
Frank Rich, "Journal: Loving Him to Death," New York Times, 24
October 1998, A17.
[21]
Frank Rich, "Journal: Loving Him to Death," New York Times, 24
October 1998, A17.
[22]
Frank Rich, "Journal: Loving Him to Death," New York Times, 24
October 1998, A17.
[23]
James Brooke, "Wyoming City Braces for Gay Murder Trial," New York
Times, 4 April 1999, A14.
[24]
Justin Gillis and Patrice Gaines, "Pattern of Hate Emerges on a
Fence in Laramie," Washington Post, 18 October 1998, A1.
[25]
Tom Kenworthy, "Hundreds Gather to Remember Slain Man as 'Light to
the World,'" Washington Post, 17 October 1998, A3.
[26]
Allan Lengel, "Thousands Mourn Student's Death," Washington Post,
15 October 1998, A7.
[27]
Tom Kenworthy, "Gay Man Near Death after Beating, Burning,"
Washington Post, 10 October 1998, A1.
[28]
Wil Haygood, "Honor Thy Son," Washington Post, 13 July 2003, D1.
[29]
Howard Fineman, "Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming," Newsweek, 26
October 1998, 43.
[30]
Howard Fineman, "Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming," Newsweek, 26
October 1998, 43.
[31]
Mark Miller, "The Final Days and Nights of a Gay Martyr," Newsweek,
21 December 1998, 30.
[32]
Howard Fineman, "Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming," Newsweek, 26
October 1998, 42.
[33]
James Brooke, "Gay Man Dies from Attack," New York Times, 13
October 1998, A1.
[34]
Tom Kenworthy, "Hundreds Gather to Remember Slain Man as 'Light to
the World,'" Washington Post, 17 October 1998, A3.
[35]
Howard Fineman, "Echoes of a Murder in Wyoming," Newsweek, 26
October 1998, 42. The godfather's name was Steve Ghering.
[36]
"The Lesson of Matthew Shepard," New York Times, 17 October 1998, A14.
[37]
Frank Rich, "Journal: The Road to Laramie," New York Times, 14
October 1998, A23.
[38] Richard Cohen, "Legitimizing Hate," Washington Post, 15 October
1998, A23.
[39]
Jonathan Alter, "Trickle-Down Hate," Newsweek, 26 October 1998, 44.
[40]
NBC Nightly News, 9 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom
Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O'Neil).
[41]
NBC Nightly News, 12 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored by Tom
Brokaw; the segment was reported by George Lewis in Laramie, Wyoming,
and Pete Williams in Washington).
[42]
John Corry, "Murder in Wyoming," American Spectator, December 1998, 72.
[43] James Brooke, "Gay Man Dies from Attack," New York Times, 13
October 1998, A1.
[44]
"Murdered for Who He Was," New York Times, 13 October 1998, A18.
[45]
Rick Lyman, "Hate Laws Don't Matter, Except when They Do," New York
Times, 18 October 1998, D6.
[46] "A Stiff and Proper Sentence," New York Times, 6 Apri1 1999, A26.
[47] "A Murder in Wyoming," Washington Post, 14 October 1998, A14.
[48] Michael Kelly, "Punishing 'Hate Crimes,'" Washington Post, 14
October 1998, A15.
[49] Jeff Jacoby, "The Lessons of Laramie," Boston Globe, 15 October
1998, A19.
[50]
NBC Nightly News, 5 February 1999 (the newscast was anchored by Tom
Brokaw; the segment was reported by Roger O'Neil in Ft. Collins, Colorado).
[51]
ABC World News Tonight, 16 October 1998 (the newscast was anchored
by Peter Jennings; the segment was reported by Lisa Salters in
Casper, Wyoming, and Rebecca Chase in Atlanta).
[52] Dennis and Judy Shepard interview by Katie Couric, Dateline, 5
February 1999.
[53] Kirk Kicklighter, "Mother's Tale of Murdered Son Briings Quiet,
Then Tears," Atlanta Journal, 19 January 2001, E1.
[54] Julie Cart, "Matthew Shepard's Mother Aims to Speak with His
Voice," Los Angeles Times, 14 September 1999, A5.
[55] Terry Collins, "Matthew Shepard's Mom Fights the Hatred that
Killed Her Son," Minneapolis Star Tribune, 29 March 2001.
[56] Julie Cart, "Matthew Shepard's Mother Aims to Speak with His
Voice," Los Angeles Times, 14 September 1999, A5.
[57] Adrian Walker, "Mission Found After Son Is Lost," Boston Globe,
25 March 2000, B1.
[58] Melanie Thernstrom, "The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard,"
Vanity Fair, March 1999, 267.
[59] Angie Cannon, "In the Name of the Son," U.S. News & World
Report, 15 November 1999, 36.
[60] Melanie Thernstrom, "The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard,"
Vanity Fair, March 1999, 272.
[61] Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the
Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 174.
[62] Larry Gross, Up from Invisibility: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the
Media in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 174.
[63] Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay
Visibility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), xvi.
[64] Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay
Visibility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 13.
[65] Suzanna Danuta Walters, All the Rage: The Story of Gay
Visibility in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), xvi.
[66] Kevin Sack, "2 Confess to Killing Man, Saying He Made a Sexual
Advance," New York Times, 5 March 1999, A10.
[67] Francis X. Clines, "Killer's Trial Shows Gay Soldier's
Anguish," New York Times, 9 December 1999, A18.
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