Twenty-six years ago, the media reported that a young man named Matthew Shepard was beaten and strung up on a Wyoming barbed wire fence to die. The beating and murder were because Shepard was gay.
The perps were quickly found, tried for murder, convicted, and sentenced to prison. They’re still there.
It was a good news story about bad news and was widely reported. But it wasn’t true.
It has since been shown that Shepard and one of the perps were in the drug business together. Shepard was due to receive a $10,000 shipment of meth. The perp himself was gay and had been in a gay relationship with Shepard.
So, it wasn’t a hate crime by a straight Wyoming redneck against an innocent 21-year-old gay guy. It was a drug deal gone bad between two gay lovers.
But never mind that. Gay advocates seized on Shepard’s death as evidence of hatred in the heartland toward gays. His death spurred new federal hate crime laws, where criminally attacking someone becomes even more criminal if the someone is gay. (A friend in the law professor business is fond of saying that it’s impossible to commit just one federal crime.)
The flip side of that, of course, is that criminally attacking someone is now a little less criminal if the person is not gay.
Notably, the hate crime law passed in response to Shepard’s murder was, of course, not in effect at the time of his murder. The perps were nonetheless arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced – a sentence they’re still serving – for committing a crime.
It’s called murder, and the penalties are severe. Regardless of whether you hate the victim.
I’m guessing that you remember the Matthew Shepard story, but never saw the debunking of it. The debunking never got much coverage. Gee, I wonder why.
Fast forward four decades. Now we have the quadrennial spectacle called the Olympics. It’s become a little like the Superbowl. It’s infused with media money that wants to juice it up to sell you stuff.
In the Superbowl, that means a half-time show with celebrities who “accidentally” expose themselves and expensive television commercials that compete for edgy obscurity.
In the Olympics, we of course have doping scandals, but they’re not nearly as interesting ever since East Germany joined the Dark Force of capitalism. We do still have the mini-scandal of men winning women’s events on the pretense that they’re feeling feminine, that day, but that will sort itself out as the real women keep losing to them.
Today’s scandal is that the opening ceremonies included a bit where gay men dressed in drag mockingly imitated Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.
For those of you who were raised in the Church of No-religion and went to the College of No-education, the Last Supper is a large mural painted at the end of the fifteenth century on a convent wall in Milan by an Italian who was the quintessential Renaissance Man – a creative genius of art, engineering, science and architecture. It depicts the artist’s imagination of the supper between Jesus and his disciples the night before his crucifixion. It’s considered a masterpiece of art and a treasure of Christianity. It’s worth seeing.
I’m sure the gay Parisian in charge of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics thought the mocking of an icon of Christianity and western culture was very edgy and, therefore, artistic. I’m surprised there wasn’t someone more sophisticated to say “Oh, the mocking of Christianity thing? Hasn’t that been done?”
Because yes, it has. About a thousand times. I suppose it was edgy when an “artist” made a jar of urine with a submerged crucifix and called it “Piss Christ.” But that was nearly forty years ago, for Chrissake. The latest “edginess” is fake nuns in drag at baseball games.
Yawn.
There’s a reason I bring up these stories of Matthew Shepard and this week’s opening ceremonies of the Olympics. (BTW, women’s beach volleyball is more entertaining than most other women’s sports. Superbowl wardrobe malfunctions have nothing on these gals.)
It’s because they raise a question in my mind.
I’ve never had an issue with gays, mind you. A few of my friends and family are gays. I admire the struggle it must have been and the courage it must have entailed.
Anyway, I have enough stuff in my bedroom and my past to avoid judging people for what’s in theirs. (I say these sorts of things just to ensure that I’ll never succumb to pressure to run for political office or even – especially! – to serve on my HOA.)
All that said, there’s something amiss about publicly mocking people’s religion, especially when the mockery is just for publicity, faux edginess, and to sell stuff.
I don’t mock gay people for being gay. Now that would be edgy in today’s culture. Gay people don’t mock Islam or the Prophet. That would be edgy in today’s culture. Nobody mocks transsexuals. That would be edgy.
Why is it OK to dig up the most overused trope of political correctness by mocking Christians and Christianity?
There’s nothing edgy about mocking Christians. It happens all the time now. In fact, it always has. The first mocking of a Christian was of Christ who died a humiliating death after an excruciating torture. Almost all his disciples were later mockingly tortured to death as well.
This mockery of Christianity continued unabated up to the present with fake nuns in drag at baseball games.
That said, I object to renewed mockery of my Lord and Savior by attention-seeking queers who are being paid to do so with public funds.
I understand that mocking Christians is part of your gig. It apparently gets your rocks off. You insult Christians to the point that they’re angry and hurt, and then you go home (I hope) to get your jollies about it in your bedroom.
I suggest that you masturbate to something else. I remind you that when it comes to mockery, you live in glass houses.
the Aspen beat 
One thing you’ll never see is gay men in drag mocking the prophet Mohammed. One reason is that in Islamic societies, they throw gay men off of roofs, so there aren’t any gay muslims to do the mocking. The other reason is that if it occurred to somebody to create a spectacle in the opening cermonies of the Olympitcs that mocked Islam, the performers would be slaughtered on the spot.
My point is that the sort of spectacle performed at the Olympics only is possible because Christians permit it. We shouldn’t. .
That’s a thought-provoking comment. I’m just thinking out loud. Maybe we should permit it, but condemn it. Because that’s who we are.
And yet they are closet gays by the fact that they believe women are for procreation only but young men/boys are for sex. Many have seen this in practice while fighting in the Middle East.
Well and powerfully said, Glenn. One gets the sensing that America — decent America — has had about enough of queers and other deviants strutting their childishness and demanding attention like other two-year-olds.
Spot on … very spot on.
Do you also remember when the gay lobby was demanding an end to the anti-sodomy laws, that were eventually ruled as unconstitutional in 2003? SCOTUS ruled so in Lawrence v. Texas.
See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZO.html
Anyways … I distinctly remember many in the then gay lobby advocating that they just wanted their privacy as consenting adults to do whatever it is they like to do in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Yeah … I can agree that having privacy in one’s own bedroom is a good thing, as long as nobody is getting hurt and there is no coercion or children involved.
However, now the LGBTQ+WTF? lobby seems to be taking a country mile, or more … lots more, out of that inch of privacy that was advocated for some 20+ years ago. So … why does the LGBTQ+WTF? lobby now insist on force feeding their “private” bedroom behaviors down the throats of everyone else?!? Their private bedroom activities are force fed into public school classrooms, USA Main Streets all over the country during the entire month of June (and sometimes well into July too) and now into sports events big and small.
See: https://fox5sandiego.com/pride-in-san-diego/city-leaders-honor-50-years-of-lgbtq-pride-in-san-diego-kick-off-celebrations/
Side Note: I still find it strange that these events are called Pride parades and festivals, as I am constantly reminded that pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
See: http://www.deadlysins.com/pride/
Anyways … there is nothing edgy about the latest LGBTQ+WTF? obscene public displays by morbid faux nuns, weird naked middle-aged men marching down the streets of San Francisco, or this sick and disrespectful opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics. It has all become so banal. Gross, but banal. Much like dog vomit or a dog turd on your green lawn.
Although … it would be very interesting to see the Paris Olympics drag queens and fellow weirdos take their show on the short road to the Paris Muslim quarter. Let’s see them parade around in Paris’ police no-go zones and maybe the rest of the world can watch some real cultural diversity in action. That could be a gold medal event worth watching … at least from a distance.
In the meantime, if you really want to be edgy and an out-of-the-box iconoclastic rebel, then try studying hard, graduating, getting a career, paying taxes, getting married, purchasing a home, paying more taxes, then having kids and raising them while going to church on Sundays, and also having weekend BBQs with burgers, brats, steaks, beer and wine, and your family and friends.
We seem to be in short supply of these types of cool and edgy rebels. G’day!
https://ifunny.co/picture/rebelling-from-society-in-2021-date-with-intent-to-marry-0GUXaz0A9?s=cl
“I’m guessing that you remember the Matthew Shepard story, but never saw the debunking of it.”
Yes.
Why can’t these questinable fellas go to Epstein Island?
What a minute!
I never agreed to ‘acceptance’. I only agreed to ‘tolerance’, as was initially pleaded for. Methinks the queer community of outspoken pedos and groomers had best stop attempting to revise the history, and be very damn happy with tolerance, and conduct their ‘affairs’ both public and private keeping in mind that tolerance, like patience, has it limits.
Thanks for bringing the Matthew Shepard story to a wider audience. As a Wyoming resident, I have been furious for years about the leftist media’s lies about Shepard. They knew he was killed in a gay meth deal gone bad, but wanted to tear down the manly image of a Wyoming cowboy.
The opening ceremony of the Olympics was not just anti-Christian, it was tacky and dull and boring. And derivative. They can’t create anything, so they copy the greatness of others. I think we should point and laugh.
Another interesting piece Glenn. I would also add that mocking Christians is so easy because well, what are they gonna do? Try mocking Islam and then take book on the number of beheadings that happen on the Left bank. Or try mocking Hinduism and watch the riots and burning begin. But mock Christians and you get the entire world’s attention (great for advertisers eh?) but as far as a backlash you get…crickets.
Da Vinci’s The Last Supper is also an excellent exercise in vanishing point perspective. But I digress. Let me move on to my main topic.
My long-time take on the Matthew Shepherd story is this. Every Friday night in America, postadolescent kids and single young adults in the millions, both male and female, step out on the street to start a weekend of sleazing around. Some imagine it to be the innocent fun of dressing up some, having a few drinks with some pals at a clean club in the local entertainment district and doing some harmless flirting. The guys maybe dream of getting lucky and the gals maybe dream of hooking up with a dreamy guy but they don’t make that the purpose of their night out.
Other people have more serious intents. Many are outright cruising for sex according to their interest and orientation. Others are looking for yet more intense kicks. Usually that mean drugs. The outright predators are, of course, on the prowl looking for whatever kind of victim they happen to prefer. Or maybe they adapt their predations to whatever victim they happen to encounter.
Every weekend, the story comes to a bad end for some number of these people. It can ending in handcuffs, getting booked and having a court date. But not for a offense more serious than simple driving under the influence, getting into a simple altercation, vandalism or some form of disorderly conduct. Sometimes it is more serious though, and the crimes can run the gamut from drug possession all the way up to homicide.
Other outcomes can include experiencing an unwanted sexual encounter or an outright sexual assault, being seriously injured in an vehicle accident, being the victim of a serious assault or ending up in the emergency room. Or you can end up dead. I know know how many people die every weekend.
Don’t forget, sometimes the weekend stretches into the week, and then there are the people who make sleazing around into a seven-day-a-week business.
Matthew Shepherd was one of the millions who was out sleazing around, and of the some, I don’t know how many, who come to a very bad end every week.
That’s what I thought about Shepherd all this time, that he was one of the millions out sleazing around and that his binge came to bad end. Never heard the story about him being a drug trafficker himself or that he had an amorous relation with one of the men who killed him, although I did hear that he was binging on meth with the two men he was riding with.
Yeah, wipe out hate and make the world antiseptically safe for young people who want to drink themselves comatose, binge on drugs and cruise for quickie sex every weekend. Some. I don’t quite think that’s the right takeaway from the Matthew Shepherd story.
Well how else is one to destroy Western Culture from within? Today few even understand the dynamic of Western Culture, just that White Europeans are involved so it has to go. Just wait until they are immersed in Islam of Communism.