What A Gay College Stunt's Murr Can Teach Us About Hate In Ameri Today

Contents:

• MATTHEW KEADG GAY PORNSTAR VIOS
• GAY HOLLYWOOD: 45 OUT AND PROUD LGBT STARS (PHOTOS)
• FORMER GAY ADULT FILM STAR JASPER ROBSON DEAD AT 21
• WHAT A GAY COLLEGE STUNT'S MURR CAN TEACH US ABOUT HATE IN AMERI TODAY
• MATTHEW KEADG GAY PORNSTAR VIOS

MATTHEW KEADG GAY PORNSTAR VIOS

Two months after he officially retired om the gay porn dtry, Jasper Robson has died at the age of 's not yet clear what felled Robson, who suffered om a heart ndn, acrdg to Towleroad. Robson is the third young gay porn star to die recent months. McKney, his nfsn to the police, said that he and Henrson had targeted Shepard for robbery by pretendg to be gay and lurg him to their tck, where, McKney alleged, Shepard placed his hand on McKney’s knee, which prompted the bludgeong.

Anti-gay attacks were not prosecutable as hate crim at the time unr eher Wyomg or feral law. In fact, the time sce Matthew Shepard’s ath, there has emerged a growg factn of dissenters who believe that the most famo Amerin victim of what looked to the world like barbaric anti-gay vlence — whose life and ath have spired plays, films, and other works of art performed thoands of tim across the world — was not killed a hate crime at dissenters found their largt source of validatn 2013, when journalist Stephen Jimenez published The Book of Matt: Hidn Tths About the Murr of Matthew Shepard.

Shepard wasn’t murred for beg gay, Jimenez argu, but bee of a dg al gone wrong.

GAY HOLLYWOOD: 45 OUT AND PROUD LGBT STARS (PHOTOS)

Some crics acced Jimenez, who is gay himself, of poor sourcg and flimsy njecture, but his vtigatn was nvcg enough to spire doubt the hearts of many, or affirm the misgivgs that others had long held. And if there is still wispread doubt about the hateful motivatns Matthew Shepard’s murr se, which the fendants’ own lawyers openly attributed a btal killg to gay panic, then chartg the path of everyday hatefulns on the streets of Tmp’s Ameri prents an entirely new media giv unrroborated stori — om fudged anecdot on Facebook to full-sle fake news (a term that is beg largely meangls) — the power to spread like wildfire. After lyg a a for days, as vigils were held for him around the world, Shepard died the middle of the night a Fort Colls, Colorado, hospal on October 12, as surely as Shepard’s name beme shorthand for gay tragedy after his ath, the town of Laramie beme shorthand for anti-gay hatred.

In the days between Shepard’s attack and his ath, the NBC Nightly News wh Tom Brokaw ran a segment featurg a bar patron sayg, “Gays get what they serve. ” Many Laramie townspeople rented that their muny was quickly stereotyped by the natnal prs as a bunch of homophobic hicks.

“Everyone tak note of bee happened Wyomg, and then sudnly ’s ma to be typil of Wyomg: ‘Oh, ’s a redneck place — we expected , ” one Universy of Wyomg stunt told Vany Fair reporter Melanie Thernstrom at the as the natn grieved over Shepard’s ath, which spired tearful words om recently out Ellen DeGener and a nmnatn of hate crim om Print Bill Clton, the settg of Wyomg afford out-of-state mourners a certa emotnal distance om the tragedy: This uld happen to any gay kid, y, but the reasong went that uld pecially happen to any gay kid an sular and nservative patch of the Amerin people tend to assume that the kd of hatred that breeds vlence, btaly, and murr is somethg pletely foreign to , as dividuals. ’s one of the great Amerin falsehoods: Though we live a untry built on the foundatns of genoci and slavery, where racism and sexism and homophobia still n rampant, there are apparently very few actual racists or sexists or homophob here.

FORMER GAY ADULT FILM STAR JASPER ROBSON DEAD AT 21

One gay man summariz the ethos: “If I don’t tell you I’m a fag, you won’t beat the crap out of me.

”Spicns had long ago started brewg that Shepard hadn’t been the victim of gay hate after all, but rather of a different Wtern cliche: a dg-related robbery meetg a vlent end. Durg the special, McKney said he’d been motivated only by robbery, not hatred of gay people. Or, at least, Laramie’s macho-wboy culture was now culpable for a ls abomable lookg to the alternate theori surroundg Shepard’s ath, I asked my girliend, who grew up gay northern Wyomg the ’90s, whether people there nsired him a gay martyr.

“You n’t have a gay martyr whout any visible gayns, ” she said.

WHAT A GAY COLLEGE STUNT'S MURR CAN TEACH US ABOUT HATE IN AMERI TODAY

The burst of visibily that Shepard’s ath brought to the existence of gay people Wyomg soon flared out. ”Bl nclus that “the mystery remas — not so much why Matthew died, but why the gay muny, after almost five s of mpaigng for equal rights, reli so fundamentally on the image of the perfect martyr to reprent the e. Jimenez and others who float dg vlence theori, cludg members of the right-wg prs nvced of a massive gay nspiracy, chalk up the phback agast those theori to polil rrectns and an unwillgns to reckon wh unfortable tths.

Wh hours of Shepard beg shed to the hospal, his iends had ntacted media pani claimg he’d been attacked for his sexualy; Shepard’s story as a gay martyr, some argue, was wrten long before all the facts uld be gathered. Prentg Shepard as a squeaky-clean sat, however, don’t do his memory any favors; he was a real live person, not jt our gay poster child.

MATTHEW KEADG GAY PORNSTAR VIOS

Even if Jimenez is right, and Shepard had once slept wh his attacker, or bought and sold meth, those thgs still wouldn’t matter if he was tly targeted, one way or another, for beg gay. To imply that a man who may or may not have prevly slept wh other men nnot harbor hatred for gay people, for stance, reveals a profound misunrstandg of the power and pervasivens of ternalized 20 years later, ’s impossible to know exactly what happened to Shepard, and why — but the evince, however murky, is now stronger than ever that his story is more plited than appeared s earlit eratn.

That don’t mean, however, that anti-gay sentiment uldn’t have played any part his ath.