Losing Matt Shepard Summary

A Cause

Beth Loffreda, an associate professor of English and the advisor of the Gay and Lesbian rights group at the University of Wyoming, stresses for change in her publication "Losing Matt Shepard: Life and Politics in the Aftermath of Anti-Gay Murder" (2000).
Her publication is a study of how the residents of Wyoming responded when Shepard, a young gay student at the university in Laramie, was brutally beaten, tied up to a fence, and left to die by the side of the road. Loffreda examines and documents the multifaceted problem caused by the media frenzy, fanatic religious groups, and the prejudices of Wyoming and the rest of the country.
Loffreda believes that the hysteria in Wyoming was ignited by a media that developed its own
A reporter mistakenly related the incident involving Matt Shepard to a crucifixion, seeing as how Shepard was pinned to the fence, "spread-eagled, splayed out" (312). This instigated a false perception that Matt Shepard had been "tied like a scarecrow." The news that Shepard had been tied up "something akin to a crucifixion" became the starting point for the reaction to follow (313). Many religious leaders and organizations used his death as an example to help their own causes (319). The mistaken belief that Shepard had been strung up on the fence "in a haunting image of the crucifixion" provided a rich, obvious source of symbolism. Religious leaders, journalists, and other individuals often would draw the comparison (327). This perception assisted in grabbing the emotional entrails of all who listened, and fanned itself until it burst into a gigantic firestorm of unsubstantiated exaggeration.
Yet, all the stories eventually turned out to be false rumors. Shepard was never "tied like a scarecrow". He was found lying "on his back, head propped against a fence, legs outstretched" (312). Even more amazingly inaccurate, both of Shepard's hands were "lashed behind him and tied barely four inches off the ground to a fencepost," in no relation to the figure taken by a crucifixion, the symbol that moved many religious leaders to impose their anti-gay beliefs
Other individuals around the country also reacted to this event by "stereotyping an entire community" if not the entire state of Wyoming (319). Loffreda argues that the image formed of Laramie by the foreign press was completely ignorant. In response to the article, "Hate: it's a common word in Wyoming", Jim, a local, insists that "nobody expects murder here--nobody." He cannot believe the lies that the media throws out. Wyoming is not "a place where you kill your neighbor," and they see each other as neighbors (317). The overall assumption of the citizens of Wyoming is that these kinds of things do not happen in small towns. Especially in Laramie, in which there is hardly a murder a year (316). "We really take care of each other here," said a woman (339). The people of Laramie seem completely dumbstruck by the incident. The population of Laramie became absorbed simply in trying to understand how something so brutal could have happened within a short walk of their daily lives (314).
The common belief among the gay and lesbian community was that "They said nothing like that happens in Wyoming because someone is gay, but we've always known someone would have to get killed or beaten before they finally listened"