Shepard came along at precisely the right time, with the right pretty face, victim of the perfect crime of homohatred.

The Lies of the Sexual Radicals

By Austin Ruse

Except in very rare circumstances the Catholic Church takes decades even centuries to determine if someone is a saint. Even martyrs are not raised to the altars right away. There is an exacting, indeed exhaustive process that tests and challenges all aspects of the person’s life. A miracle is required.

Would that seculars took such care. They elevate their own with an embarrassing speed and sometimes sloppiness. Another of their plaster saints has just come crashing down.

If you are of a certain age you will never forget the story of Matthew Shepard. A winsome boy who happened to be gay was tortured – beaten with a gun butt, burned with cigarettes – left alive, yet dying, tied to a fence in freezing weather.

Within a few hours of the discovery of his tortured body and several days before he finally succumbed to his wounds, we were told he died because of hate. His killers targeted him because he was gay, tortured and killed him not just because of their own homophobia, but the rampant homophobia of America.

The New York Times fed us this story. NYT columnists, principally Frank Rich, fingered the religious right. It was their fault for creating a climate of hate against gays. Thousands of stories appeared worldwide telling the Shepard story. He was compared to Christ. One pastor in Washington State gave a sermon called “Matthew Shepard Died for Our Sins.”

Vanity Fair ran a long story called “The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard.” Before he died, President Clinton opined on his attack and called for national hate-crimes legislation.

Over the years, the hagiography continued. Three made-for-TV movies aired about his life and death. One of them, The Laramie Project, is now a play being performed in schools all over the country. It is playing now at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C where the comparison to Abraham Lincoln is unmistakable. The Washington National Cathedral is currently sponsoring a sold-out “Tribute to Matthew Shepard.”

The importance of his story for the cause of gay rights cannot be overstated. As in this from the New York Times: “For homosexuals, the key to winning acceptance and respect has been to make themselves familiar, visible and known. Yet in almost thirty years of struggle to repeal state sodomy laws and win equal protection under law, the modern gay movement has never achieved a recognizable public face. Now, in a victim, a young man who wanted to be a diplomat, it has been given one.”

It all seemed settled and its significance clear.

But investigative journalist Stephen Jiminez just published The Book of Matt, which punctures the Shepard balloon. After ten years of research and more than 100 interviews, Jiminez, a gay man once sympathetic, reports that most of what you have heard about Shepard’s life and death is false.


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