The reason the alleged perpetrator did this? Because he was embarrassed as Matthew allegedly "cruised" him.

There are people out there who think "it's just another fag, he deserves to die" and leave it at that. There are those who feel that hate-crime legislation is needed; there are others (like one of the US senators from my state) who feel that gays aren't entitled to so-called "special rights." To them I say,

You may or may not know about P-FLAG's Project Open Hand, showing that a big reason for gay-bashing and gay teen suicide is due to people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson calling homosexuality "evil," or "sinful" or "wrong." If you haven't, it's because these "people" (I use the term loosely) threatened to sue P-FLAG for the ads, even though everything in them was true. These so-called people are using the Bible to show that their hatred has been blessed by G-D. However, in my opinion, these people are merely "cafeteria christians," choosing what they want to follow, not following what they don't want to (and saying they don't have to follow G-D's law because Jesus told them so). Well, what they're doing is nothing more than violating the Word of G-D in the name of striking against someone who is different. Before the gays, it was the blacks. Before the blacks, who knows? And don't forget, it's always been the Jews. Point is, if these people didn't have someone to hate, they wouldn't have a reason for living.

What is needed is for a message to go out to these bigots, saying that what the four people involved did is nothing less than murder in the same way that people were thrown to the lions in Rome, as Jews were killed for thousands of years just for being Jewish, as blacks were mistreated, first by their own kind in Africa, then after being brought to the Americas, by their slaveowners, as were the Armenians by the Turks in the early part of the 20th century. It doesn't matter who does the hating and who acts on it.

Bill McKinney, Aaron McKinney's father, said that if Matthew Shepard hadn't been gay, the world's attention wouldn't have been turned to this crime, and his son wouldn't be guilty in the eyes of the world. To Mr. McKinney, I say,

If Matthew Shepard hadn't been gay, what your son did WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED! What your son did was wrong. All he had to do was walk away from Matthew Shepard and do nothing. He didn't. He and Russell Henderson took Matthew Shepard, beat him, used a pistol butt to break his skull, stripped him naked, did other unspeakable things to him, then just as one trusses up a carcass as a trophy, they hung Matthew Shepard as if he was being crucified, on a fencepost, with no consideration for the sanctity of life. And then you have the audacity to say that it was Matthew's fault for being gay? I daresay, it was your fault for being human and not instilling values in your son which say that we are all G-D's children - white, black, red, yellow, brown, male, female, gay, straight, bisexual, whatever. And NO ONE, not you, not your son, not those who protested at the funeral, NO ONE, can tell me that what your son did was right or that Matthew is not in heaven.

He took a life because Matthew Shepard was somehow different than your son, and your son saw that as something evil, as a threat to himself, and rather than walking away from it, he killed that which was different.

There are already some sites up as far as for discussion of this, for more news on what's happening. I don't have them available. Go to The Human Rights Campaign for a starting point.

There are more sites I will mention, because they are continuing to spread the same vitriol which many believe gave the impetus for the killing of Matthew Shepard. They are:

This site is for AFA, which was involved in the "Truth in Love" campaign in mid-1998. The site says that gays are politicizing Matthew's death. While they tell their people to send condolences to the Shepard family, they refuse to own up to the fact they may have been part of the cause of Matthew's death. What I'm finding is that this is a christian thing, just like it was a nazi thing - blame someone else for your mistakes.

This site is for the Family Research Council, another so-called christian group who spews the vitriol and refuses to take responsibility for its actions. Again, they tend to forget that not all families are christian, and not all christians are families.

The Westboro Baptist Church, where Fred Phelps presides over his family. His people were at Matthew's funeral saying that he is condemned to fire and brimstone because he was gay. He even has the audacity to put a .wav file on his site which he purports to be Matthew's voice saying that we should listen to phelps.

DONT!

Go there and write him a note and tell him what you think of him, but be brief and polite. Then do a good deed in his name. Make a contribution to the Matthew Shepard Memorial Fund in his name, and ask that the family send the thank you note to freddie.

This will take you to Operation Rescue, another organization we need to worry about. I just checked there, and it's getting worse.

This will take you to what is called the Gay Change Web Ring, which is a network of (as of 8/23/99, 34) sites geared to try to convert gays to being straight. This includes beings such as Nicolosi, Socarides, Exodus International, and that sort of ilk. I strongly suggest you take a trip through the ring and let the members know that what they're doing is morally wrong.

If you look at all the sites listed here, there seems to be one common link to all of them: they all are Christian (so they say) sites. Most of the gay-change sites say that you need to become their brand of Christian in order to be saved, etc. Strange, isn't it? There is no site saying to follow Allah, or to be Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Taoist, or to follow the teachings of Confucious. They're always Christian. Makes you wonder, hmmmmm?

Never forget this man.

EVER.

Hate is not a family value, unless your name is Fred Phelps, or Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson, or Newt Gingrich, or Pete Knight (R-CA, whose brother died of AIDS and who has a gay son, and who feels that they are not entitled to equal protection under the law), or Buck McKeon (R-Santa Clarita area of CA), or Randy Cunningham (R-San Diego) or Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) or "B-1 Bob" Dornan (who still hasn't learned his lesson yet, who is still an equal-opportunity bigot and who lost his bid to return to Congress and is blaming people other than himself for his loss, twice now) or Trent Lott (R-Miss. - who believes that kleptomaniacs are better than gays), or Jesse Helms (R-NC - who still uses the rhetoric "Would you want a black person to represent you in Washington?"), or Bob Barr (R-GA, who still has problems with "homosexuals in the miliary" - do you think we should tell him that one of the greatest generals in U.S. History, the Marquis de Lafayette, was gay?, and who would rather have just "Christians" in the military, not Wiccans, not Jews, not anyone else), or former California attorney general Dan Lungren (who believes that not all California citizens are entitled to equal rights), or Pete Wilson the former governor of California, who still doesn't believe in equal rights for all the state's citizens), or Mitch Skandalakis, who tried to become Georgia's lieutenant governor in 1998, who sought and got gay support in 1994 to become the Fulton County Commissioner (Atlanta, GA), but came out virulently against gays in 1998 - heaven forfend that people think he's for equal rights for gays! (heaven also forfend that he take the blame for his anti-everyone vitriol in 1998), or Reggie White, the bigoted ex-football player, or Gary D. Groves of Michigan, (who feels a wrongly-convicted gay man (Michael Batey) "should feel at home in prison. Lots of opportunity to bend over and pick up the soap,") or the Boy Scouts of America, which has decided that not all boys deserve to be scouts and that those straight people who support gays in their attempts to be scouts should be ostracized and kicked out of the organization (by the way, did you know that Russell Henderson, one of Matthew's killers, was a Boy Scout?), Laura Schlesinger, Psy.D., the radio talk-show person, who feels that GLBTQ people are "biological mistakes," or Representative Sally Kern of Oklahoma, who thinks that gays are worse than terrorists, but conveniently forgot that the bomber of the Alfred Murrah Building back in 1995 was Christian, just like her (so much for her Christian love).

If you want me to enter another name on this list (and I hope it grows and grows), click on the link below and tell me who you want added. Let's put ALL their names up here and bring their hatred into the light where it can be seen. Then write and tell these people (and I use the term very loosely) that their hatred is visible for the world to see. Please, tell everyone you know about this page and have them come visit it. Put a link to it if you'd like (and please let me know that you do).

There are ways people deal with Matthew's death. Some, like fred phelps, have used it to forward his anti-gay vitriol. A gentleman in Washington state put his grief about Matthew into poetry, and he's asked me to post them to my site. Here they are: #1, #2 and #3. All copyrights, etc., revert right back to Kenny Quick, aka KC, or ICQ chat # 34994818. If you want to let him know how you feel about his poems, click here.

This Matthew Shepard Memorial Web Ring site is owned by Michael Liebmann.
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