The Scarecrow Planted in My Heart Optimism and Faith and the Murder of Matthew Shepard -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matthew Shepard, born in 1976, the bicentennial year of our independence, is dead. He was beaten, tortured, had his skull bashed in, was lashed to a split-rail fence and left for dead in the near-freezing night of Wyoming--Equality State. When morning came two cyclists were horrified to learn the scarecrow they discovered was a barely recognizable human being. The men who discarded him hadn't recognized him as human either, before stripping him of his inalienable rights. Intolerance and hate crimes are festering sores on American society. Some will blame the victims, however. This lie that disfigures innocence and hope and leaves them tied up and left for dead on the side of the road. This lie, often profanely attributed to the Almighty, is repeated until everyone legitimizes violence, and those who are different ate turned into scarecrows. Matthew Shepard couldn't possibly defend himself against himself against two larger men, their vehicle, and their assault weapon. At 5-foot-2 and 105 pounds, the core American ideal of playing fair and picking on someone your own size gave way to Might makes Right. Matthew might have exercised poor judgment in ever getting near these two brutes, but the consequence of a bad decision or being deceived is not death--a consequence many governments reject. Murder is one of the top ten proscribed crimes in the Bible, and illegal in all 50 states. So why do the murderers of gay men so often walk away little or no jail time? Why are the stolen lives of gay men and lesbians deeply discounted in this society, and why does straight America allow it? Matthew Shepard's blood cries out from the ground and asks you what the outcome of our poor judgement will be, if we do not do something lasting and meaningful beyond the successful prosecution of these two men? You are sitting there alone or perhaps with a loved one or a whole family nearby, as you read these words, on white pages of paper or on computer screens. What are you going to do now? What are you going to do when your children, your students, your future young neighbors and friends, the people who will care for you in your old age, ask you, "How did it feel and what did YOU do?" There is no need to wait for that far-off day. One friend has diagnosed part of the problem, tracing it to our solipsistic nature, our parochial worry about acquisition. As we buy that next upgrade do we wonder about the emptiness that will fill the Shepards' house tonight and every night hereafter? What is it that will propel you outside your front door, and into the far greater realm of social justice? What are you, those with children, going to tell them about gay people and homophobia? Will you even bring it up, or wait till your children ask? Is that boy that just learned how to walk, or the girl just born last week and sucking at your breast, gay already? Are you prepared to encourage it? Are you as prepared to protect it with your entire being now? In 1977, while Matthew was eight months old, I was at Camp Kent, an escape from the oppressive cruel classmates back in Great Neck, NY. I enjoyed it until that year, when my being different posed a threat. The taunts began--I was now officially the Faggot. During the Parents Visiting Day one friend of many summers announced to me that evening, "I told my parents there was a kid in my bunk who's queer and I asked what I should do and they said, `Oh, don't talk to him.' " I had never met them; that's the last thing I ever remember him saying to me. What threat did I pose at thirteen years old. Our lives are now half over and surely he's forgotten me. Peer pressure demanded a change, a denunciation, a scarecrow. Denounced, for what? Complete athletic inability? A preference for arts and crafts? A wilingness to read? Little did I know then that I'd be endangered further, that one day literally loving my fellow man would make me a potential murder victim, everyday, in this country, and in many places around the world. That bitter initiation 21 years ago was not sufficient preparation for the full range of irrational, unthinking intolerance I would face for making love more than an abstraction. The apparent lack of a sex life in the dorm meant compelled dormitory neighbors to mete out a swastika on my door, along with unprintable epithets. Graduating to the working world, I gained a boss who disdainfully commented about "all those homosexuals" holding hands on the train after a weekend on Fire Island. The next job brought me a co-worker who, when drunk on company time, made sure to call me a "homo Jew bastard." Since I am adopted, this made him unflinchingly accurate on all three counts. My inability to laugh at this "joke" left me charged with having no sense of humor. The energy to have to confront a daily co-worker, a "friend" even, ebbed away. Being out of the closet as I am at my current job has not spared me the joy of receiving, via email from someone prominent there, the "joke" about "four gay guys at the funeral parlor picking up their lovers' ashes." My purported lack of humor was once again announced while no other recipient responded negatively. Nor am I enthused by two women who adore their gay male friends, but one bristles when she hisses the word "lesbian" so freely before me while the other, my boss at the time, looked at me--perturbed--but left the subsequent confrontation to me. What would the gay friends she adores say about her lack of support? Gay friends are often acquired as one would adopt a pet or an entertainment, and it' an indignity. This lack of sensitivity from people you essentially like and like you leads to residual mistrust of coming out to new people. Note my own irrational fear of telling recently discovered cousins in Britain. Will my coming out break the firmly forged bonds of genealogical research and mutual respect and affection we've formed? Shall I soon be feeling a change in the weather? Am I taking a risk or sending a signal of trust? Bearing a secret unnecessarily--the facts that define me completely--is unbearable. Am I protecting myself or insulting them utterly? Why has this been a "necessary" precaution, one even recommended by liberal relatives here? In England, Daniel--at three-and-a-half-years-old-jumped on my lap and asked me, "Have you got any children?" and later "And why not?" when I told him no, what can I have told him? That I "just don't" was a satisfied him while everyone laughed at his articulate, natural inquiry. But I ask myself the same question. "And why not?" Because legally, I am not really allowed to have any, not the way I would like--in legally recognized matrimony. My childrearing is certainly is not encouraged. In many corners I am an international criminal, and a target. I must content myself with the sporadic little cousin on my knee, who whispers a youthful secret in my ear, and sometimes, if I am lucky, will draw a special picture that will land on my kitchen cabinet, held by magnets. My "evil gay liberal agenda" includes developing and maintaining a relationship with these children, and maybe seeing their children's drawings in my kitchen museum. Meanwhile, the America has toothpaste commercials informing us that kids, and their teeth, have to remain strong to "make it in today's competitive world." They're kids. Why are they competing, and who is going to lose? Which of is is more depraved? God has placed us in your lives in a very real way, not an objectified one, not one to be seen with a distanced mixture of pity, fear, and even loathing. We are made in God's image, but we all look different. So what does God look like then, the face in the mirror or the one across the street? It seems clear: God does not want everyone to be the same. Perhaps the best way to praise God is to start praising each other a lot more. It is time to do more. Letter writing campaigns and demonstrations are great, but the strongest weapon in your arsenal is your mouth. Start confronting hatred and start treating people more humanely. Perhaps it means saying "stop it" when the crude fag joke is being repeated at work, and making a big fat "gay" deal about it. Join just one social justice organization, if only for a year. Voting this year and every year is also vital. Ask any black South African and she'll tell you just how lucky you are that you can vote. Even that horribly backward country, once liberated, put gay rights into its constitution. A century of apartheid taught them something about caring for The Other. Fifty years from now you shall have lived through many things, but as a witness or as a participant? Act on the desire that things should be different. Make *yourself* different. The death of Matthew Shepard has brought something to the fore. The ferocity of the attack upon him is mitigated only by the outporing it has brought from the world. The Information Age cries for interactivity and action, not the passive sadness that characterizes these tragic events. Here is what you must ask yourself: Am I a member of a community and a society, or is my life limited to these four walls, the things in it, and the route of my daily life? Am I just a satellite? As for me, I am an optimist, the way Matthew Shepard was when he decided to go to the University of Wyoming, and when he decided to stick it out despite previous incidents? I am also an optimist the way Anne Frank was, hiding in her attic hiding place during the world's very darkest hour. I am an optimist like my grandfather's cousin, who was forced to burn the bodies in ovens at Auschwitz, and later testified against the monstrous guard Kaduk, who was punished. I am an optimist like the Berliner who waited decades to see the Wall come down. I am an optimist like the people of Sarajevo in 1992, who held a beauty pageant, despite every single thing in their lives crumbling around them. I am an optimist like Nelson Mandela, who sat in that cell for years, and who became President of that brave nation while it actively seeks to reconcile the victims and the perpetrators. I am an optimist like that student in Tianenmen Square, facing the tank, convinced it won't hurt him. I am an optimist, but in a way I imagine Atlas had to be--weary, weighed down, and worried, as his daughters guarded the Golden Apples growing on a nearby tree, visible but unreachable. I am an optimist in a world where some are able to weep for others while others hate them for this special gift. The final questions left for you are these: Why are the optimists all crying this week? Will you comfort them? Will you join them? Will they become your scarecrows? You have to have an answer for these questions, because we are *all* in trouble if you don't. We're pounding on the doors to your hearts, and your silence will not protect you. --17 October 1998 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright (c) 1998, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021, sethbook@panix.com