What Matthew Shepard Means to Me.

By: Phillip Gordon

Matthew Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998)

Very late on the night of October 6, 1998, a 21-year-old student at the University of Wyoming entered a bar in Laramie. Two men in the bar clocked him as gay and lured him out to their car. They drove him to the outskirts of town, pistol-whipped him, and tied him to a fencepost. The cold early October temperature on the high plains of eastern Wyoming dipped below freezing that night. The pistol-whipping had fractured his skull. By the time he was found the next morning, he had lost consciousness, though the police officer who was first on the scene would later recount that she could make out the tracks of tears down his bloodstained face. 

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness. He died on the morning of October 12 in a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he had been air-lifted due to the severity of his condition. In the days between his assault and his death, his story became a national story about the dangers that LGBTQ+ people face in rural spaces, but the focus on his murder reiterated queer fears even in urban settings: that we are not welcome and our existence is tenuous. It would take eleven years for Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Byrd was a black man who was brutally murdered in Jasper, Texas in 1998 in a race-based killing). Shepard’s name and legacy came to define the experience of a generation of queer people, myself included. Now, on the day that marks 25 years since his passing, we pause to remember him. 

My memory of those days in early October 1998 are complicated by a coincidence of timing that took me a few years even to realize. In 1998, I was sixteen and in the fall semester of my junior year of high school in Jackson, TN. I had a cross country meet on the night of October 7—I kept a running journal marking my times, distances, and workouts. That meet stands out for other reasons, though. Shortly after the meet, I got home and called my best friend who had come to watch me run because I just had to confess something to her: I had a massive crush on one of my teammates and I was tired of trying to hide it. I told her I was gay. It was the first time I had ever said those words to someone else out loud. She responded, “Oh, I know.” We laughed, then talked about hot guys for a while. It was a great night.

In 1998, teenagers didn’t carry around cell phones. Our internet at home was dial-up. I missed the nightly news because of the meet. I had no idea that earlier that day, Matthew Shepard had been found tied to a fencepost a thousand miles away in Wyoming. Over the next few days, as updates appeared in the local newspaper and on the news, I watched in horror and sadness. Scared that my interests in the story would out me to others—why would anyone care so much about a gay kid in Wyoming?—I worked hard to hide how much I was following the story. I certainly didn’t talk about it with anyone else. 

Somehow, the two things became separate in my mind for many years: I came out of the closet on October 7, 1998, after a cross country meet. My best friend offered me love and support (and not a small amount of humor—apparently everyone else could tell I had a crush on that teammate and I hadn’t kept my secret very secret after all). Over the remainder of the month, I came out to my other close friends. By the time I was a freshman in college, I’d come out to my family. My academic interest in LGBTQ+ literatures, cultures, and identities stems from my coming out and finding support that has enabled me to become the person I am today.

Also on October 7, 1998, a 21-year-old college student was found tied to a fencepost. Sometime in the lost hours of the night before, he had lost consciousness from wounds sustained when two men beat him for being gay, to teach him a lesson as they’d say in court where they were later convicted of his murder. In his last moments of consciousness, he was weeping. He was cold and alone. 

To me, Shepard’s legacy is a call-to-service and a call-to-action. When I think about his death, I think about the fear that LGBTQ+ kids feel about being out and known in their communities and the importance of providing with them role models and narratives of LGBTQ+ lives that give them a sense of a future beyond the challenges we face. I also think about the necessary work to preserve our visible presence in academic, professional, and social settings. We should all be able to find love and support for living as our authentic selves. A world in which our lives feel constantly in jeopardy is untenable and should be a relic of a past we are leaving behind, not reasserting with book bans and bathroom bills that signal to queer people that we are valued less. 

Every year in early October, I think about Matthew and I think about my own coming out. This strange coincidence of timing reminds me of the value and beauty of LGBTQ+ lives.