Box Turtle Bulletin

More Details On Syracuse Shooting

Details continue to emerge in the shooting case in Syracuse. It is now much clearer that Latiesha Green, 20, was a transgender woman. She began transitioning when she was sixteen. Police had originally identified her as a gay man.

Latiesha and her brother, Mark Cannon, 18, had been invited to a party. According to reports, they were sitting in the car when party guests gathered around the car and began yelling anti-gay slurs. Dwight DeLee went into the house and got a .22-caliber rifle. He then put the rifle into the driver’s side window and fired one shot. The bullet passed through Mark’s arm and struck Latiesha in the chest.

Despite being shot, Mark drove to the family’s home as his sister lay bleeding heavily in the front passenger seat. She died a short while later. According to paperwork filed with the court, the bullet had damaged both of Latiesha’s lungs and aorta, causing massive bleeding.

A vigil was held in front of Latiesha’s home on Monday evening. Another vigil is being held at noon today at Hedricks Chapel at Syracuse University.

[Hat tips: Autumn Sandeen, Werdna, and Rod McCullom]

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to remember those who were killed due to anti-transgender or anti-gender-variant prejudice.

Transgender Day of Remembrance began in 1999 to honor Rita Hester, who was stabbed to death on November 28th 1998. This year will mark the tenth anniversary of her death. The event has grown over the past decade to include memorials in more than a hundred cities in all over the world.

The Remembering Our Dead web site contains profiles of some 353 people who have lost their lives around the world — some of them, their names are unknown. In fact, we really don’t know the full extent of hate crimes motivated by prejudice against variant gender identity and expression. As imperfect as the FBI’s statistics of hate crimes based on sexual orientation are, they provide even fewer clues to what’s going on against transgender and gender-variant people.  Federal law only mandates the collection of statistics for crimes based on sexual orientation, not sexual identity or expression.

To find a memorial event near you, please visit the Transgender Day of Remembrance website.

LaBarbera Award: Mike Huckabee

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is our latest LaBarbera Award winner for suggesting that gays haven’t been beaten enough to earn the right to marry.

Huckabee appeared on ABC’s “The View,” where he had this exchange with host Joy Behar about same-sex marriage:

HUCKABEE: It’s a different set of rights. People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, to be employed, to do anything they want. But that’s not really the issue. I know you talked about it and I think you got into it a little bit early on. But when we’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights.

BEHAR: Well, segregation was an institution, too, in a way. It was right there on the books.

HUCKABEE: But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge.

Huckabee appears to suggest that civil rights must meet some sort of minimum violence test. If so, then gays and lesbians certainly meet that test, all too sadly. In the most recent set of hate crime statistics released by the FBI, there were nine murders logged as hate crime incidents in 2007. Of those, five were attributed to sexual orientation, two to race, and two to ethnicity/national origin.

And that toll continues unabated this year with the murders of Lawrence King, Simmie Williams, Jr., Tony Randolph Hunter, and Angie Zapata. Just last Friday Moses “Teish” Cannon was shot and killed with a .22-caliber rifle.

It is beyond outrageous and disgusting for Huckabee to suggest that violence is a determining factor on whether any group deserves equal rights. Which is why he is now a two-time winner of the LaBarbera Award.

Anti-Gay/Trans Murder In Syracuse

A person identified in news reports as “a gay man who identified as a woman” was shot and killed Friday night in Syracuse.

According to Syracuse police, Dwight R. DeLee, 20, shot and killed Moses “Teish” Cannon Lateisha Green with a .22-caliber rifle Friday night because he didn’t like that she was openly gay. Teish was sitting in a car with her brother Mark Cannon, 18, outside a house where they had been invited to a party.

According to police chief Gary Miguel:

“There was no previous argument between these individuals, there was no previous fight, there was no bad blood,” Miguel said. “Our suspect took a rifle and shot and killed this person, also wounding his brother, for the sole reason he didn’t care for the sexual preference of our victim. Isn’t that sad? Isn’t that a sad situation that that’s the sole reason why?

“I talk to you about this atmosphere of violence and that certain individuals believe that violence is the answer no matter what, and here’s just another example,” Miguel said.

Mark Cannon suffered a non-life-threatening wound in the arm from the same bullet which killed Teish.

Cannon’s family accepted Teish’s sexual orientation and identification as female. Often when family members spoke of Cannon, they used “she”:

“Teish was loving, caring and compassionate,” said Rhonda Gary, Cannon’s aunt. “She carried herself with respect.”

Delee pleaded not guilty to charges of second degree murder. He is being held without bail. The investigation is continuing to determine if the shooting should be prosecuted as a hate crime.

Update: According to police, Teish was “not dressed as a woman” at the time of the shooting. I don’t know what that is meant to say exactly. I’ve updated the post to be more gender neutral, but I’m still looking for published confirmation as to Teish’s self-identity.

Update (11/20): New reports are emerging (thank you werdna) which are clarifying the situation:

The weekend victim of a brazen murder in Syracuse, N.Y.,  was transgendered, family and friends now tell area media outlets. Police originally had identified the victim as Moses Cannon, 20, and gay. Family members, however, now say Cannon went by the name Latiesha Green and was in the process of transitioning.

WSYR TV is reporting that Teish Green began transitioning at the age of sixteen. These are also the first reports that I’ve seen in which her entire chosen name was given.

Suspect Arrested in Elderly Couple’s Murder

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police has announced that Michael Brown, 56, was arrested Saturday in San Diego. He was wanted for the murder of Eric Hendricks, 73, and Milton Lindgren, 70 in October.

According to court records, two murder charges were filed against Brown on Thursday and a warrant for his arrest was issued. While neighbors believed that the murders might have been a hate crime, police have not said what led to the deaths.

North Carolina Home Destroyed In Anti-Gay Arson

A fire destroyed Catawba, North Carolina home Friday night, and authorities are investigating it as a hate crime. The nearby Newton Observer News Enterprise takes it from there:

Melvin Whistlehunt was at work when he got a call from his mother at 2:30 a.m. Friday that his home was engulfed in flames. As firefighters began hosing down the house at 1275 Buffalo Shoals Road, it became clear the home was set on fire intentionally. What they found launched an immediate hate crime investigation.

The fire was intense, but it didn’t keep Jason Drum, chief of the Bandys Crossroads Volunteer Fire Department, from noticing graffiti written across the back of the brick home within five minutes of arrival. Someone used white spray paint to write a derogatory message referring to sexual orientation and race.

Drum asked Whistlehunt’s mother, who lives next door, if the graffiti had been there. She told him it was new.

Whistlehunt said everyone who knows him is aware he’s gay, but few people have outwardly criticized him for it. “I don’t know of anybody who would go this far,” he said.

2007 Hate Crime Report: Sexual Orientation Hate Crimes Increase, Most Violent

The FBI just released its hate crime report for 2007. While hate crimes overall decreased slightly from 2006, crimes based on sexual orientation increased during the same period. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation also continue to be the most violent, with more than half of all hate crime murders in 2007 attributed to sexual orientation.

Hate crimes based on biases against transgender persons are not explicitly included in the FBI’s hate crimes statistics. It is unclear whether any of the bias crimes tracked according to sexual orientation include gender identity or expression.

Here is the overall breakdown of hate crime offenses for 2007 compared to 2006:

Overall, hate crime offenses in 2007 went down slightly from 2006. Hate crime offenses based on religion fell by 8% from 2006. More than two-thirds of those reports are anti-Jewish offenses. Hate crime offenses based on sexual orientation now statistically tie those based on religion.

Of nine murders logged as hate crime incidents in 2007, five were attributed to sexual orientation, two to race, and two to ethnicity/national origin. In 2006 there were only three hate crime murders reported by the FBI. All of those were on the basis of race. But as we reported last year, a number of known hate crime murders based on sexual orientation did not make it into the FBI’s hate crime statistics that year.

Hate crime offenses based on sexual orientation continue to be the most physically violent:

These FBI statistics rely on the voluntary cooperation of local law enforcement agencies to report hate crimes which occur in their jurisdictions. This reporting is neither mandatory nor funded. So not all agencies participate, and those that do often do so inconsistently. For more information on how this occurs, please see our report, Federal Hate Crime Statistics: Why the Numbers Don’t Add Up.

This year, there were 13,241 law enforcement agencies participating in the Hate Crimes reporting system, covering 260,229,972 of the U.S. population. That compares to 12,620 law enforcement agencies in 2006 covering 255,086,543 of the U.S. population.

Of the five bias categories tracked by the FBI, two of them are not covered by the current federal hate crimes law. Disability is one of those categories. Can you guess the other one?

Update: I’ve updated this post to reflect that the statistics are these statistics are of hate crime offenses. The FBI maintains three sets of statitics: Hate crime incidents, offenses and victims. Multiple offenses (i.e. assault and robbery) can occur in the same hate crime incident involving one or more victims. The breakout for each category is as follows:

Elderly Gay Couple Slain In Indianapolis

Milton Lindgren, 70, and Eric Hendricks, 73, were found dead Monday morning in their Indianapolis-area home, and friends of the couple believe that the slaying was a hate crime.

Indianapolis police describe the killings as violent. It appears the two men died in separate rooms of blunt force trauma. They had been dead for several days before they were discovered. Large amounts of blood in both locations may indicate violent attacks.

Such evidence of overkill is a very common hallmark of anti-gay hate crimes. According to neighbors, Milton and Eric had suffered anti-gay harassment in recent months. Police reports show that the men had their phone and cable lines cut twice in the past few months, and anti-gay statements were posted on their front door.

Police are looking for 56-year-old Michael L. Brown as a person of interest.

Edgar Garzon’s Killer Sentenced

A judge in Queens Friday sentenced John L. McGhee to 22 years to life for killing of 35-year-old Edgar Garzón (pictured) in 2001.

Shortly before 4 a.m., on Aug. 15, 2001, Edgar was walking home after leaving a gay bar in Jackson Heights when McGhee jumped out of a car and savagely attacked him with a baseball bat or a lead pipe. Garzón’s skull was crushed. He died on September 4, 2001 in Elmhurst Hospital Center. He never regained consciousness.

According to police, at least two men were present at the assault who drove away in a red car. One of them, Christopher Ricalde, 14 at the time, came forward in 2003 and identified McGhee as the assailant. Ricalde was the sole eyewitness to the attack to come forward.

McGhee fled to England in December 2001, where police tracked him down in 2003. Britain sent him back to the U.S. in June 2006 after determining that he lied on a visa application. New York City police met his flight from England and arrested him.

McGhee’s 2007 trial ended in a mistrial.

Edgar’s mother spoke during the sentencing:

“There is a deep wound in our hearts that will never heal,” said Leonor Garzon, Edgar’s mother, at the October 17 sentencing. “As you see Mr. McGhee, you have taken us from living a good life… Today, our companions are sadness and loneliness.”

Leonor spoke through a translator with her husband, Armando, standing by her side. Calling the 2001 attack a “brutal and cruel injustice,” Leonor said McGhee, 40, attacked her son “from behind without giving him the opportunity or space to defend himself.”

Edgar Garzón was born in Bogotá, and moved to New York at 16 and became a U.S. citizen. He made his living designing sets for local theater groups.

School Bus Driver Charged In Anti-Gay Assault

A school bus driver in Bourbonnais, Illinois, has been charged with leading a homophobic attack on a ten year old boy.

Kankakkee Sheriff’s Police Department charged Russell A. Schmalz, 46, with mob action, endangering the life of a child, and battery in connection with an incident in which he taunted the student passenger and encouraged other students to chase and beat the child:

The incident occurred last Friday,” [Chief Deputy Ken] McCabe said, alleging that Schmalz was taunting the boy by calling him “gay.”

“When the boy got off the bus the driver encouraged several other students to go after him and tackle him. Our investigation shows that occurred,” McCabe said.

Investigators are also investigating allegations that Schmalz himself got off the bus and grabbed the boy. Bourbonnais School District officials said the driver has been terminated.

Today In History: Rest In Peace

Ten years ago today, family and friends were gathering in Casper, Wyoming, to say their final good-byes to Matthew Shepard. Earlier that morning, Matthew’s parents, Dennis and Judy Shepard, met with reporters before the funeral for a very brief public statement. Choking back tears, Dennis said:

On behalf of our son Matthew Shepard, we want to thank the citizens of the United States, and the people of the world, who have expressed their deepest sympathy and condolences to our family during these trying times. A person as caring and loving as our son Matt would be overwhelmed by what this incident has done to the hearts and souls of people around the world… We are honored and touched beyond measure…

Please understand and respect my family’s request for a private and dignified farewell to our son today. Matt’s family and friends, loved him deeply, and we need to share a quiet goodbye to him. Matt himself would have been the first to honor another family’s request if this had happened to someone else.

We should try to remember that because Matt’s last few minutes of consciousness on earth may have been hell, his family and friends want more than ever to say their farewells to him in a peaceful, dignified and loving manner.

By all accounts, Matt’s funeral at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was peaceful, dignified and loving. Only selected friends and family were allowed to attend, in an attempt to keep the service quiet and private.

The scene outside the church was in equal parts dignified and circus-like. Crowds of mourners stood quietly in the gentle snowy weather to pay their respects, while police, reporters, photographers and satellite trucks buzzed around them.

A short distance away stood a contingent of protesters from Fred Phelps’ notorious Westboro Baptist Church. They were there holding signs that read, “God hates fags,” and “Matt In Hell.” But they were surrounded and shielded from the church by counter-protesters — for want of a better word — who fashioned large white bedsheets into giant angel wings.

While Westboro’s tactics were the most talked-about example of anti-gay extremism on display that day, they weren’t entirely alone. Ten years ago today also saw Robert Knight’s Family Research Council use the occasion of Matt’s funeral to denounce Phelps — and to boast about their part in the ex-gay advertising blitz that had begun the day before Matt’s murder. The FRC’s statement condemned Phelps’ tactics while sharing his message of condemning Matthew to hell:

While we share Mr. Phelps’ opposition to the homosexual political agenda, his belief that homosexuality is a sin, and his call for punishment of Mr. Shepard’s killers, we do not endorse his tactics, and have asked his group to stop letting themselves be used by the media to crudely caricature Christians.

The ‘truth in love’ media campaign reaches out to people struggling with homosexuality and offers them hope for change and redemption. In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, homosexuals are included in a list of sinners, who, if unrepentant, will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Ten years have passed since Matthew Shepard has been laid to rest. Where are we at today?

One thing is undeniable. We’ve made great strides in changing how people view LGBT people. More people are “out” than ever before, living openly for the most part in relative safety.

And yet, too many things still haven’t changed. It is still legal to fire people from their jobs for being gay. Marriage rights are only secure right now in one state. Wyoming is one of twenty states which still does not have a hate crimes law to cover sexual orientation. And the federal hate crime statute still covers race, religion, and national origin — but not sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.

Yet official statistics continue to show that when hate crmes do occur against LGBT people, those crimes are more likely to be violent crimes when compared to other classes which are already protected.

In these ten years since Matthew’s death, we have continued to lose countless lives — singled out simply for who they were. We’ve lost Brandon Teena, Danny Overstreet, Phillip Walstead, Amancio Coralles, Satendar Singh, Scotty Joe Weaver, Daniel Fetty, Steven Domer, Roberto “Poncho” Duncanson, Sean Kennedy, Angie Zapata, Michael Sandy, Simmie Williams, Jr., and Lawrence King — just to name a very few.

As Judy Shepard has said on the tenth anniversary of her son’s death, so much has changed. Yet so much remains the same.

See also:
(Oct 16) Today In History: Rest In Peace
(Oct 13) Today In History: “Something In the Culture”
(Oct 12) Today In History: Matthew Wayne Shepard (Dec 1, 1976 – Oct 12, 1998)
(Oct 11) Today In History: The Vigil
(Oct 10) Today In History: Armbands and Scarecrows
(Oct 9) Also Today In History: Details Emerge
(Oct 9) Today In History: “We Just Wanted To Spend Time With Him”
(Oct 8) Today in History: Two Men Arrested
(Oct 7) Also Today In History: Another Assault In Laramie
(Oct 7) Today In History: “Baby, I’m So Sorry This Happened”
(Oct 6) Today In History: Before Matthew Shepard

Today In History: “Something In the Culture”

I hadn’t planned on posting another installment, but I just happened to run across this at the library Sunday. It’s from the Winter 1998/9 edition of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review. Ten years ago today, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) rose on the House floor to address the chamber on the need to amend the Federal Hate Crimes law to include sexual orientation. A portion of that speech was adapted as an op-ed in the HG&LR.

Recently a very decent young man was brutally murdered by two savage individuals. I am particularly struck by this, because — given the reason that those two mentally and morally deformed individuals murdered that young man — it could have been me. Had I, alone and unarmed, confronted these two thugs, I could have been subjected to the same brutalization that Mr. Shepard was in Wyoming, because his crime was to be a gay man. Something in the culture in which these two young men grew up led them, without an ounce of humanity, without a scrap of decency, to set upon this young man with a weapon, beat him, and leave him not quite dead, but at the point of death, alone, and in a way that added further his torment.

I am encouraged by the number of people who have spoken out against this savagery. I am optimistic, having spoken with leaders on both sides in the House, that we will take an important step and add to the Federal hate crimes legislation a provision that would say that if a young man who happens to be gay, as I happen to be gay, is set upon by thugs in the future who are so consumed with prejudice as to lose any shred of their humanity and kill him, that in appropriate circumstances, if the Attorney General found that certain very stringent requirements were met, and if a Federal presence were necessary, the Federal presence could be there. So, I hope we will add this to the legislation now pending.

But we need to go beyond that. I do not argue that those who have been critical of various proposals that gay and lesbian people have put forward are guilty of murder or of even creating a murderous climate. But this savage murder does call us to the need to improve what we as a society do to protect other young Mr. Shepards from this kind of brutality in the future.

In particular, we have debated on the floor of this House measures whereby Members have sought to penalize secondary schools for setting up programs to that do two things. First, they would offer protection to the young gay men and lesbians who find themselves tormented and abused and sometimes physically assaulted in school. Second, some of these schools would try to teach young people in their teens that brutalizing people because they don’t like their sexual orientation is not acceptable human behavior.

I hope that one thing that will come out of this terrible murder will be a cessation of those efforts to prevent schools from trying in turn to prevent this kind of behavior. It is not random that the terrible murder was committed upon a gay man, and it is shocking that a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old could be so bestial in their attitude toward a fellow human being. These are people not long out of high school themselves. This underlines the importance of allowing educators to deal with prejudice. We talk about teaching values. But when some talk about teaching the value of tolerance, when some talk about condemning violence based on someone’s basic characteristics, we are told we cannot do that. We have been told that we cannot let a school teach acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Think about that: What does non-acceptance mean? If acceptance is interpreted to mean approval, then I don’t care about it. There are bigots in this world whose approval holds no charms for me. But when non-acceptance means not accepting someone’s right to live, we have a serious problem.

If the two murderers who so brutally beat Mr. Shepard and left him to die – if they had been in a school system in which people had taught that gay men and lesbians were human beings with a right to live, maybe this would not have happened. Maybe teaching people to accept differences, not in the sense of becoming their advocates or supporters, but in refraining from this sort of assault, would be a good thing. Ad so we will return to this. I hope we will, in the piece of legislation that’s about to wrap up this session, adopt the hate crimes statute, and I hope we will no longer see in this House efforts to harass and penalize educators who understand the importance of trying to remove from young people’s attitudes the kind of hatefulness that led to this murder.

The Republican Congressional leadership of Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich refused to allow an appropriate amendment to the Hate Crimes law into this bill, so it died for the year. Ten years later, Federal law continues to provide hate crime protections on the basis of race, religion, and national origin, but not sexual orientation.

Also ten years ago today, vigils were held around the country and the giant rainbow flag in San Francisco’s Castro district was lowered to half staff. And Fred Phelps, of the Westboro Baptist Church, announced that his clan would be protesting at the funeral.

See also:
(Oct 16) Today In History: Rest In Peace
(Oct 13) Today In History: “Something In the Culture”
(Oct 12) Today In History: Matthew Wayne Shepard (Dec 1, 1976 – Oct 12, 1998)
(Oct 11) Today In History: The Vigil
(Oct 10) Today In History: Armbands and Scarecrows
(Oct 9) Also Today In History: Details Emerge
(Oct 9) Today In History: “We Just Wanted To Spend Time With Him”
(Oct 8) Today in History: Two Men Arrested
(Oct 7) Also Today In History: Another Assault In Laramie
(Oct 7) Today In History: “Baby, I’m So Sorry This Happened”
(Oct 6) Today In History: Before Matthew Shepard

Today In History: Matthew Wayne Shepard (Dec 1, 1976 — Oct 12, 1998)

Ten years ago today, on October 12, 1998, Poudre Valley Hospital’s CEO Rulon Stacey released this medical update during a hastily called press conference at 4:30 a.m.:

At 12 midnight on Monday, October 12, Matthew Shepard’s blood pressure began to drop. We immediately notified his family who were already at the hospital.

At 12:53 a.m. Matthew Shepard died, his family was at his bedside.

Summary:
Matthew arrived at 9:15 p.m. Wednesday, October 7, in critical condition.

Matthew remained in critical condition during his entire stay at Poudre Valley Hospital. During his stay, efforts to improve his condition proved to no avail.

Matthew died while on full life support measures.

Funeral arrangements are pending, and we will announce those arrangements on our website as soon as they are available at www.pvhs.org, under the PVHS NEWS toolbar. Please do not call the hospital for this information; we will post the information on this web site as soon as we find out.

The family did release the following statement, “We would like to thank the hospital for their kindness, professionalism, sympathy, and respect for the needs of our family under this stressful time. We will always be grateful for their concern for Matthew.”

The family again asked me to express their sincere gratitude to the entire world for the overwhelming response for their son. During the last 24 hours we have received nearly 2000 e-mails from every continent, and, our Website has received thousands of hits on Saturday and Sunday. We will continue to forward to the family any e-mail we receive…

The family was grateful they did not have to make a decision regarding whether or not to continue life support for their son. Like a good son, he was caring to the end and removed guilt or stress from the family.

He came into the world premature and left the world premature.

Matthew’s mother said, “Go home, give your kids a hug and don’t let a day go by without telling them you love them.”

Matthew’s family is so grateful that his last words to them were, “I love you.” This was said when the family went to Saudi Arabia where they work for an oil company.

See also:
(Oct 16) Today In History: Rest In Peace
(Oct 13) Today In History: “Something In the Culture”
(Oct 12) Today In History: Matthew Wayne Shepard (Dec 1, 1976 – Oct 12, 1998)
(Oct 11) Today In History: The Vigil
(Oct 10) Today In History: Armbands and Scarecrows
(Oct 9) Also Today In History: Details Emerge
(Oct 9) Today In History: “We Just Wanted To Spend Time With Him”
(Oct 8) Today in History: Two Men Arrested
(Oct 7) Also Today In History: Another Assault In Laramie
(Oct 7) Today In History: “Baby, I’m So Sorry This Happened”
(Oct 6) Today In History: Before Matthew Shepard

Today In History: The Vigil

Ten years ago today, Matthew Shepard lay quietly in the surgical-neuro intensive care unit of Poudre Valley Hospital in Ft. Collins, Colorado, surrounded by his family. This was his fifth day since that awful night. Despite his comatose state, doctors recommended that his family remain there and surround him with things that would be familiar to him in case he had any lingering awareness.

We don’t know much about the scene in the hospital that day. Matthew’s parents, Dennis and Judy, haven’t talked about it publicly. Whenever they’ve spoken publicly since then, they’ve always remained focused on Matthew’s life, not his suffering.

But we do know that ten years ago today they spent every minute that they could at his bedside, surrounding him with as many familiar things as possible. Beyond that, we can only imagine the scene.

But we can imagine that, among the many thoughts that must have raced through his family’s minds, they must have reflected on the many events in his life that they shared with him, the good times and the bad.

They must have thought about their son growing up in Casper. Kids do grow up so quickly, and Matt was no exception. And yet to them, Matt still must have seemed like such a little boy. He was born prematurely, and he struggled to survive as an infant. He was always small for his age — at 21, he still only stood five feet, two inches tall. He started wearing braces at the age of thirteen, and he still had braces as he lay there in that hospital bed.

It must have been very hard to see him laying there quietly like that, a son that was know more for his boundless energy. He wasn’t a star athlete while growing up, but he did played soccer. And in the Cowboy State Summer Games which were held every year in Wyoming, he ran the five-kilometer race and swam the 50-meter freestyle. He entered the swim meet at the last minute knowing that he would likely finish last, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying. He finished last.

His friends described him as walking with a characteristic bounce, and his playful energy every room he entered. He just seemed to exude a certain kind of energy, the sort of confidence that comes from acting in in community college plays in Casper at the tender age of twelve. When he was a high school junior, he and his family moved to Saudi Arabia where Dennis worked as a construction safety engineer. Matt spend the summer there, and then he went off to boarding school in Switzerland. There he discovered a facility with languages, quickly learning German and Italian.

And yet, he wasn’t always so confident. His parents knew there was always something different about him. His mother says that she knew her son was gay since he was eight. She saw him struggling with himself as he negotiated the tricky minefields of relationships with school friends and neighbors while trying to keep his secret to himself. And she saw him struggle as he tried to figure himself out. But she didn’t try to bring up “the subject” with Matt, opting instead to wait until Matt was ready within himself.

Matt didn’t come out to her until he was eighteen, and even then he couldn’t do it face to face. He came out during a middle-of-the-night phone call. Her response? “What took you so long?”

Matt was more hesitant to come out to his father, and that reluctance had placed a strain between them. Matt had built up this worst-case scenario in his mind that his father would reject him. After all, he had been Matt’s soccer coach, and they had taken many hunting, camping, and fishing trips together along with Matt’s grandfather. You know, the guy stuff that Matt loved doing with his father and grandfather. But more to the point, he didn’t want to disappoint them or risk their rejection.

So when Matt finally decided to have “the conversation” with his father, he took a deep breath and nervously told his dad that he was gay. And then he just waited for Dennis’s reaction. To Matt’s immense relief, his father just said. “Yeah? OK, but what’s the point of this conversation?”

And with that, they went back to just doing guy stuff again.

But of course, that confirmation did lead to a sense of loss with his parents — no bride-and-groom wedding, daughter-in-law, grandchildren — those things. But they quickly got over it. They still loved him.

And besides, that loss was nothing like the one they were facing now.

As Matt lay there, it was probably easy to think of him as an angel. But he was still only human. He had his foibles. His mother would later recall that he smoked too much — including a little weed from time to time — he drank too much sometimes, and he didn’t study enough.

And now there was something else to worry about. Just after Matt was admitted to the hospital, they conducted an HIV test as part of a standard battery of tests. Matt came up positive. He had been tested every six months for the past three years, ever since he was sexually assaulted in Morocco, but those tests always came up negative. Was this a delayed reaction? Or, more likely, was this a very recent infection? In any event, it’s probable that Matt himself didn’t even know.

There was always things to worry about with Matt. Despite his small size, he was very quick to stick up for himself and others, and he didn’t always care who the offender was. If he saw something that he knew was wrong, he couldn’t let it go by. What’s more, he really did seem somewhat naive about his belief in the innate goodness in people. And that, coupled with his size, had scared both of his parents. It made him vulnerable in Morocco, and it made him vulnerable wherever he saw an injustice.

We don’t know where Matt’s family’s thoughts ran as they sat with him ten years ago today in that surgical-neuro intensive care unit, with the ventilator, the temperature, hearbeat and blood preasure monitors, and all the other equipment around his bed. It’s virtually impossible for anyone else to put themselves in their shoes.

But we do know that ten years ago today outside that intensive care room, the nurses were distributing an over-abundance of flowers to patients throughout the hospital, and hospital staff were busy fielding phone calls and emails from around the world.

And we know that ten years ago today in Laramie, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin, members of the LGBT Association gathered to observe the tenth National Coming Out Day to kick off a week of activities for Gay Awareness Week. The gathering took on special meaning ten years ago today, not just because of the somber reality of Matt’s beating that week, but also because Matt was missing from among them. He had helped to plan some of those events.

And we know that ten years ago today, Bill McKinney, father of Aaron McKinney, one of Matt’s attackers, told Reuters that while there was no excuse for what his son was accused of doing, the attack didn’t deserve national attention. McKinney was also quoted as saying, “Had this been a heterosexual these two boys decided to take out and rob, this never would have made the national news.”

And we know that back in Fort Collins ten years ago, Poudre Valley Hospital put out one more medical update. It read:

As of 3 p.m. today, Matthew Shepard continues to remain in critical condition with severe head injuries.

As of today, the hospital will no longer offer medical updates on a scheduled basis as we have for the last three days to accommodate the media. We ask that you use our phone-in line and our web site to keep track of Matthew’s medical condition.

If Matthew’s medical condition changes, we will issue a new medical update and, depending on the significance of the change, we will immediately contact as many members of the media as is practically possible.

Ten years ago today, as crowds continued to gather outside the hospital to keep vigil, Matthew Shepard lay quietly in the surgical-neuro intensive care unit, surrounded by his family and the things he loved. This was his fifth day since that awful night, and it would be his last full day with his family.

See also:
(Oct 16) Today In History: Rest In Peace
(Oct 13) Today In History: “Something In the Culture”
(Oct 12) Today In History: Matthew Wayne Shepard (Dec 1, 1976 – Oct 12, 1998)
(Oct 11) Today In History: The Vigil
(Oct 10) Today In History: Armbands and Scarecrows
(Oct 9) Also Today In History: Details Emerge
(Oct 9) Today In History: “We Just Wanted To Spend Time With Him”
(Oct 8) Today in History: Two Men Arrested
(Oct 7) Also Today In History: Another Assault In Laramie
(Oct 7) Today In History: “Baby, I’m So Sorry This Happened”
(Oct 6) Today In History: Before Matthew Shepard

White Supremacist Sentenced In Gay Man’s Murder

White supremacist Darrell Lynn Madden was sentenced to four life terms in Oklahoma City yesterday for kidnapping and killing a gay man as an initiation into the United Aryan Brotherhood.

According to prosecutors, Madden and and another man, Bradley Qualls, killed Steven Domer as an initiation into the white supremacist group. Madden then killed Qualls ten days later in order to keep him from talking about the crime.

Steven Domer was last seen on October 26, 2007, near a car wash. A witness saw Steven talking to two men who matched the description of Madden and Qualls. Steven’s burned car was found the next day near Madden’s home and his body was found a little more than a week later in a ravine. Police question Madden’s roommate, who said he heard Madden and another man describing a fight with someone who “wouldn’t even fight back.”

Madden did not face a hate crime charge because sexual orientation is not covered under Oklahoma law.