Why should his killing absorb the popular culture so much more than the 30,000 other murder victims we’ve buried since his death?
Shepard’s killing closely resembled the random violence that explodes every day somewhere in this country: he was beaten with a pistol in the course of a robbery, then tied to a fence in freezing temperatures. His murderers also came across as depressingly typical—losers and drug abusers with long criminal records.
Despite the fact that MTV followed its broadcast of the movie about Shepard’s death with 17 hours of special programming promoting new hate crimes legislation, the film itself remained honest enough to leave open the major question about the murder. Why does it deserve “hate crime” designation in the first place?
Shepard’s two killers belonged to no groups dedicated to persecuting homosexuals, nor had they established a pattern of anti-gay violence. On the same night they robbed and beat Matthew, they also brutally attacked two young Mexican Americans, neither of whom was homosexual. It’s true that after their arrest, the murderers briefly floated the idea of a “gay panic” defense—claiming that Shepard made sexual overtures to them and they lost control. The MTV movie rightly ignored such accounts, widely rejected by legal authorities and journalists who probed the case.
On what basis, then, does the killing represent a hate crime? The two impoverished and sullen killers might have resented the well-dressed Shepard’s apparent wealth, and his free-spending at he bar where they met. They might also have targeted him because of his diminutive size—Matthew stood 5’2”, and weighed only 105 pounds.
The entire debate on why two predators selected Shepard illustrates the stupidity behind current and prospective hate crime laws. What difference does it make if they killed him because they hated homosexuals, or rich people, or short people, or all of the above? The unfortunate young man is just as dead, and even without hate crimes laws in Wyoming, the two killers got double life sentences.
Wyoming’s well-deserved tough-on-crime reputation didn’t deter the two murderers from their evil deed, so how could a new hate crimes statute have done so—or added to their ultimate punishment?
A comparison with the James Byrd murder in Jasper, Texas, shows the nakedly manipulative intent in the media focus on Shepard. No one questions that racial hatred motivated Byrd’s three murderers, and the depraved nature of the crime, with Byrd dragged to his death behind a pick up truck, exceeded even the viciousness behind Shepard’s death. Nonetheless, the Byrd killing has hardly inspired three different television movies from the powers-that-be in Hollywood.
On one level, the emphasis on Shepard may reflect the fact that gay executives wield more power in the entertainment industry than do African-Americans. On the other hand, there’s also an uncomfortable political difference: as a victim of hatred based on his race rather than his sexual orientation, Byrd was already covered by both federal and Texas state hate crimes statutes—though prosecutors didn’t need to use such laws to get the death penalty for two of the three killers.
In other words, the Byrd case could hardly lend itself to arguments for expanded hate crimes laws since the dead man had already been “protected” by such legislation—altogether ineffectively, it turns out.
Like all crime victims, the kind and gentle Matthew Shepard deserves our sympathy. But the sad story of his death also deserves better than its awkward and endless media exploitation to advance a cultural and political agenda.
(e3mil columnist Michael Medved hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show that focuses on the intersection of pop culture and politics. You can contact him at www.michaelmedved.com.)
