Laramie, Wyoming

I'm struck by how that sentence resembles an equation: We're not gay and you just got jacked. Russell and Aaron aren't "gay"--here, a synonym for "powerless"--because Matthew just got "jacked."

As they beat him with the .357 Magnum and their fists, Russell laughs out loud. They take his wallet from him, further confirming their superiority. Shepard begs for his life, which only makes him more equivalent in their eyes to the piece of nothing that they want him to be.

Henderson and McKinney drive him out to a prairie owned by the Warren Livestock Company, where everyone in Laramie goes to commune with nature. People bike and run and walk their dogs here; and though the livestock company owns it, people act like it is everyone's. The prairie is windswept and rugged, and Russell and Aaron would have seen incredibly beautiful stars at midnight when they took him there.

I think it's significant that they killed Shepard in such a beautiful place. Many people have noticed something strangely religious about this crime, and the attack looks more and more so the more you walk around the site. The fence to which they tied him is surrounded by long, flat stones that look like altar stones. And the fence itself is small, too tiny to keep out even a baby deer; it is purely symbolic, like a gold cross on a chain. It is the idea of a fence, and that's enough; they were demonstrating the idea of their election, their superiority. The press, in calling it a crucifixion, was not far off; it certainly looks like a site for holy sacrifice.

While they're whaling on Shepard, they repeatedly hit him in the groin. They have to hit him in the groin: What else will finally get across the idea that they are not the victims? One thing that is perpetually underemphasized in the discussion of gay-bashings is the sense of overcoming one's disgrace and terror. Almost all the antigay murderers in Arthur Dong's documentary Licensed to Kill mention their fear of being raped or beaten up, as they were by men in the past. In a major study of gay-bashers, almost all expressed fears of being raped by the men they sought to beat. In the minds of bashers, gay-bashing means not being attacked anymore (never mind that gay people haven't hurt them). Aaron and Russell, too, have been victims their whole lives, and now they want to be the opposite.

That's why they sacrifice him. Even after they force him to tell his address so that they can rob his house, even after his nose is broken and his skull is cracked, there remains a taint of victimhood on them that they cannot expunge except by leaving Shepard tied there in their stead. They even remove his shoes, out of some insane fear that he might get up and walk away. He isn't spread-eagled, like Christ on the cross, but lying on the ground tied by his wrists, like an animal offering.

In that holy place, it feels like all their worthlessness has been redeemed. Shepard's face is covered in blood.

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