When looking at the photographs from the aftermath of the Matthew Shepard murder, one is immediately taken aback by the raw emotion present, from love to fear to hatred. From the grainy quality, it is clear these are not modern photos, but they are not old enough to be a comfort that this sort of hatefully motivated brutality is a thing of the past. It has only been about 20 years since the death of Matthew Shepard on October 12th 1998, and with that, Matthew Shepard has been gone almost as long as he was alive, a fate hard to swallow.
Matthew Shepard was a beloved son and a freshman at the University of Wyoming when he was brutally tortured to death in Laramie, Wyoming. He was singled out to be robbed and murdered because he was gay. The details of his death are gruesome and disturbing, and for those who were old enough to remember, his story is burned into the consciousness of America. One cold night, almost twenty years ago, Matthew Shepard was lured from a bar by two men, Russell A. Henderson, 21, and Aaron J. McKinney, 22, and their girlfriends, Chasity V. Pasley, 20, and Kristen L. Price, 18. Â It was believed that Henderson and McKinney lured Shepard out of the bar by saying that they were gay, as well, and they targeted Shepard because he made a pass at one of them. They assaulted him violently and left him tied to a fence post for 18 hours when a biker spotted him. Shepard died five days later in the hospital.
From the moment the Shepard case came to light, there was an immense media frenzy and controversy. The Westboro Baptist Church gained fame protesting Shepard’s funeral with the hateful and homophobic messages they are now infamous for. Shepard was uplifted as a symbol in the LGBTQ+ community, putting hate crimes against gay people at the forefront of national debate. Rebecca Isaacs, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington was quoted saying in 1998, ”There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence. People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion.”
Lawmakers debated over whether to pass laws giving sexual orientation the same federal protections under hate crime legislature as race, for example. With lawmakers having stated that doing so would “criminalize pro-family beliefs” and “basically sends a message that you can’t disagree with the political message of homosexual activists,” it is sadly of no great surprise that sexual orientation wasn’t protected under federal hate crime legislature until President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2009, fittingly titled The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
Ultimately, it’s not clear if Shepard was murdered because he was gay, but there is strong evidence. Henderson states that they attacked Shepard simply to rob not because he was gay, but McKinney at the time of his arrest repeatedly referred to Shepard with homophobic slurs, and his lawyers attempted to use the “gay panic defense.” The gay panic defense is a legal defense that finding out someone is gay is enough to launch someone into an uncontrollable rage. This legal defense has been used many times to lessen the charges people have faced from killing gay people. In this case the judge threw out the charges and Henderson and McKinney were both sentenced to two life sentences.
While Matthew Shepard’s family held a funeral for him, he was never officially laid to rest. There were fears that his grave would desecrated or vandalized or would lead to “weird pilgrimages.” It has recently been announced that Shepard’s ashes will finally be laid to rest at the Washington National Cathedral an “Episcopal house of worship that is a fixture of American politics and religion” on October 26th this year in a private, off limits area. He will be part of a select group of national heroes of significant cultural importance who have been laid to rest there from Helen Keller and her teacher and friend Anne Sullivan to President Woodrow Wilson. This is believed to be the perfect solution so that not only can Matthew Shepard’s friends and family can come visit him but also  for “others to sit and reflect about Matthew, and about themselves, and about their friends” as is the hope of Dennis Shepard, the father of Matthew Shepard. They believe that he would very much love to be laid to rest there because he enjoyed Episcopalian churches in life, and the cathedral has been accepting of the LGBTQ+ community, holding a same sex marriage in 2010, hosting a showing of a documentary about Matthew Shepard in 2013 and in 2014 hearing a sermon from a transgender preacher. Bishop Budde, the bishop who will preside over the public ceremony on the 26th and the private interment alongside since retried gay reverend Reverend Robinson, says that “Mr. Shepard will be a quite welcome addition.”
It’s a fine line to walk, turning a young man into a martyr and a symbol. Matthew’s own father didn’t want his son’s death used to push an agenda or his funeral to be turned into a media circus, a fair desire, but this unfortunately often happens organically. Death and tragedy, and  especially murder doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and at the turning point of the 20th century, a time of great change, Matthew’s death couldn’t be ignored and neither could his sexuality. He deserved so much more than to be a symbol; he deserved to have a full life, but this bitter ending may be slightly more bittersweet as Matthew is laid to rest as a great American and one of historical significance.