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.