Wyoming Has No Hate-Crime Law (10/12/98 17:13 EDT)
Victim Cautious About Gay Lifestyle (10/12/98 18:10 EDT)
High-Profile Violence Against Gays (10/12/98 21:41 EDT)
Float Carried Figure Mocking Gays (10/13/98 04:54 EDT)
Law Denying Gays Protection Stands (10/13/98 14:51 EDT)
Charges Upgraded in Attack on Gay (10/13/98 14:53 EDT)
Charges Upgraded in Attack on Gay
OCTOBER 13, 14:53 EDT
By ROBERT W. BLACK Associated Press Writer
A basket of flowers hangs from the fence post where Shepard was beaten (AP/Ed Andrieski) |
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — The killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay University
of Wyoming student who was pistol-whipped and tied to a post, has inspired
outbursts of anti-gay hatred, including an anonymous e-mail applauding
the attack and an offensive parade float.
The movement toward hate crimes legislation following Shepard's slaying is the kind of political shift that will draw out those with strong anti-gay feelings, according to hate crimes experts and advocates for gay rights. |
Shepard, 21, died at a Fort Collins, Colo., hospital Monday after spending
several days in a coma. His skull was so badly fractured by the beating
that doctors said surgery was not an option.
| He was found last Wednesday after enduring near-freezing temperatures
for up to 18 hours, lashed to a split-rail post outside Laramie. He had
been pistol-whipped after being lured from a campus bar by two men who
told him they were gay, authorities said.
Police say robbery was the main motive for the attack, but Shepard apparently was chosen in part because he was gay. |
Henderson, left, and McKinney (AP/Ed Andrieski) |
While some hope Shepard's death will lead to stronger hate crimes laws, to others he is a symbol for an unwelcome way of life.
Fort Collins police were investigating a violently worded e-mail received Monday by at least two gay and lesbian groups. Police were trying to find the source of the e-mail, which applauded Shepard's killing and closed with the words: "I hope it happens more often.''
The e-mail was discovered Monday morning by Brenda Hervey, executive director of the Rainbow Chorus, a choir that combines gay and straight performers.
"My first thought was that somebody had been letting me know he (Shepard) had died early this morning,'' Hervey said. "Then when I clicked to open the message and began reading, I was just sickened.''
Members of the Lambda Community Center, a gay and lesbian support organization, received the same message.
Authorities in Fort Collins also were trying to find out how a scarecrow that mocked homosexuals appeared on a Colorado State University homecoming parade float Saturday while Shepard lay dying in a nearby hospital.
Wyoming officials were bracing for the arrival of members of a Topeka, Kan., church that regularly engages in anti-homosexual picketing; they are planning to demonstrate at Shepard's funeral Friday in Casper.
Gov. Jim Geringer said officials cannot stop the group from Westboro Baptist from coming to Casper, but he wants them to know their presence is not wanted.
"What we don't need is a bunch of wingnuts coming in,'' Geringer said.
Emiliano Morales III, right, and Jeremy Herrera, who say Henderson and McKinney attacked them (AP/Ed Andrieski) |
Meanwhile charges against Russell Arthur Henderson, 21, and Aaron James
McKinney, 22, were upgraded late Monday to first-degree murder, aggravated
robbery and kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily injury or terrorize
the victim. They were ordered held without bond.
The murder count carries a possible death sentence; prosecutors haven't said whether they will seek the death penalty. |
Victim Cautious About Gay Lifestyle
OCTOBER 12, 18:10 EDT
By E.N. SMITH Associated Press Writer
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — Slightly built, with features one friend described as feminine, Matthew Shepard worried how his homosexuality would be perceived as he headed to college in Wyoming.
Shepard, a Wyoming native who finished high school in Switzerland, died early Monday from injuries in a brutal beating being denounced as a hate crime. Two young men arrested in the attack now face murder charges.
“When he left Wyoming he had just started dealing with being gay. So he was very concerned about the attitudes when he first came back,'' said Walt Boulden, a graduate student at the University of Wyoming.
On campus, Shepard was careful about confiding in others about his homosexuality, unsure about the reception.
“He was not the kind of person who would walk around campus announcing he was gay to everybody,'' Boulden said. “If someone asked him if he were gay and if he felt that person was safe, then he was willing to talk with that person about being gay.''
Last Tuesday, according to police, he trusted the wrong people. Police said Shepard was lured from a campus hangout by two men who told him they were gay, and then was robbed, beaten and lashed to a split-rail fence.
Shepard, 21, was born prematurely in Casper and struggled to survive as an infant.
Shepard attended schools in Switzerland, on the East Coast and in Denver. He had traveled the world with parents employed by an oil company. He spoke English, German, Italian and was well versed in Arabic.
He attended Casper Junior College before transferring this fall to the Wyoming, his father's alma mater. Shepard was studying political science and told friends he hoped to land a job at a U.S. embassy someday.
“He's very small in stature and just unimposing in his personality, incredibly intelligent, insightful,'' Boulden said, adding that Shepard was “kind of feminine in his features.''
Shepard grew only to about 5-foot-2. He began acting in community theater when he was 5, starting a lifelong love of acting and the arts.
Sara Clement, whom he nicknamed “Clem,'' met Shepard in an acting class three years ago while they both were students at Catawba College in North Carolina.
“The first day I met him was in a class; and I ran into him again later that day at a restaurant,'' she said. “I sat down and we ate together. By the end of the mile-or-so walk home, I felt like I had known him all my life.''
It was about a month before Shepard confided to her that he was gay.
“I think he was afraid to tell me, afraid of my reaction, but it didn't really change anything it all,'' she said.
Clement, 20, called Shepard “Flash'' because he was a “classy, stylish and cultured.'' But she said he never thought he was any better than anybody else.
Clement, now a student at New England School of Photography in Boston, said Shepard told her he had a supportive network of friends, including membership in the campus' Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association. Yet, Shepard still felt lonely and out of place in Laramie.
“He definitely wished the world was more open to gays,'' Clement said. “But not just Laramie, or Wyoming, he wished there was more tolerance everywhere.''
High-Profile Violence Against Gays
OCTOBER 12, 21:41 EDT
By The Associated Press
— In September 1998, a 37-year-old man's skull was fractured after his head was slammed into the ground by two unknown assailants after he left a gay bar in northern Chicago.
The victim, whose name was not released at the request of his family, suffered massive brain trauma and slipped into a coma for several days. He remains in critical condition.
— In March 1998, 45-year-old Brian Wilmes was severely beaten after leaving a gay bar in San Francisco. His head struck the concrete and he lapsed into a coma. He died the next day. His attacker reportedly uttered anti-gay remarks at Wilmes before beating him.
— In March 1995, Scott Amedure, 32, was shot to death in his Michigan home by a heterosexual acquaintance, Jonathan Schmitz. The attacker was humiliated after the gay man revealed a secret crush on him during the taping of the Chicago-based syndicated talk show ``The Jenny Jones Show'' which never aired.
Schmitz was convicted of second-degree murder in 1996 but the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned the conviction earlier this year and ordered a new trial.
— In December 1995, Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill, a lesbian couple from Medford, Ore were shot to death execution style. The two women had worked to defeat a statewide measure to limit the rights of homosexuals. The killer later bragged that he murdered the two women because they were lesbians.
— In December 1993, Teena Brandon, a 21-year-old woman who often dressed as a man, was shot to death in her Nebraska home by John Lotter and Marvin Thomas Nissen. One week before the killing, the duo raped Brandon as punishment for convincing a group of friends she was a man.
Float Carried Figure Mocking Gays
OCTOBER 13, 04:54 EDT
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Colorado State University is investigating how a scarecrow that mocked homosexuals appeared on a homecoming parade float while a severely beaten gay man lay dying in a nearby hospital.
The scarecrow appeared on a float sponsored by Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and Alpha Chi Omega sorority in Saturday's parade.
Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student, died Monday in Poudre Valley Hospital from injuries he suffered last week when he was lured from a Laramie, Wyo., campus hangout, beaten and lashed to a fence. The bicyclists who found him at first mistook him for a scarecrow.
Nicholas Haws, homecoming chairman for Pi Kappa Alpha, said the scarecrow was supposed to be in the uniform of Tulsa University's Golden Hurricane, Colorado State's opponents in Saturday's football game.
He said someone vandalized the float Friday night, pinning a sign saying “I am Gay'' and an anti-gay epithet on the figure. He said the scarecrow was removed but someone placed it back on the float before Saturday's parade.
Nathan Stanley, president of the Fort Collins chapter of the fraternity, said the appearance of the scarecrow was inadvertent.
“The fraternity does not promote any kind of stuff like that,'' he said.
The sorority did not immediately comment.
University President Albert C. Yates said appropriate disciplinary action
will be taken once an investigation is complete.
OCTOBER 12, 17:13 EDT
By ROBIN McDOWELL Associated Press Writer
Twenty-one states have hate-crime laws that cover offenses based on sexual orientation, but not Wyoming, where a 21-year-old gay student was beaten to death.
Efforts to pass a hate-crime law in Wyoming have failed repeatedly because critics have said it would give homosexuals and others special rights.
But the beating of Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who died early Monday, has galvanized many in Wyoming and elsewhere about the need for such legislation.
“I’m in favor of anything that can improve our local law enforcement efforts,’’ Gov. Jim Geringer said Monday. “If our system is inadequate, let’s talk about it ...(but) let’s make sure there is an equality of justice.’’
The current federal hate-crimes law only protects people from crimes motivated by race, color, religion or national origin, not sexual orientation.
Marv Johnson of the American Civil Liberties Union in Wyoming said past hate-crime bills regarding attacks on homosexuals were defeated because of language about sexual orientation.
“We have legislators in the past who have essentially equated gays with bulls that don’t mate and therefore are useless and should be sent to the packing plant,’’ he said. “That is the kind of attitude that you see in Wyoming which leads to this behavior. People don’t understand that gays are as human as anybody else.’’
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala., which tracks violence against blacks, gays and others, said attacks against gays tend be more severe than offenses against other groups.
According to his group’s records, 21 men and women were slain in the United States in 1996 because of their sexual orientation.
Brian Levin, director of Stockton State College’s Center on Hate and Extremism in Pomona, N.J., said that like those charged in the attack on Shepard, most of the offenders are 22 or younger, and most are male.
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin have hate-crime laws covering offenses based on sexual orientation, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
Law Denying Gays Protection Stands
OCTOBER 13, 14:51 EDT
By RICHARD CARELLI Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court allowed Cincinnati to deny homosexuals specific protection from discrimination Tuesday, an order likely to create confusion over government policies on gay rights.
The action came just two years after the justices struck down as unconstitutional a similar measure in Colorado. Unlike the 1996 ruling, Tuesday’s action set no national precedent but caused outrage just the same.
“The Supreme Court has given up. That’s horrible,’’ said Alphonse Gerhardstein, who represented opponents to the Cincinnati city charter amendment. The voter-approved measure bans policies or ordinances that give homosexuals claims for legal protection from discrimination — in housing, employment or otherwise — based on their sexual orientation. It also bars “any claim of minority or protected status, quota preference or other preferential treatment.’’
In rejecting a challenge to that amendment, Gerhardstein said, the highest court has let Cincinnati “remain as the only community in America where discrimination against gay people is institutionalized in the city charter.’’
What real-world impact, if any, the amended city charter will have is hotly contested. Most cities and states offer no protection against bias based on sexual orientation.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Cincinnati’s amended charter provision, ruling that it “merely removed municipally enacted special protection from gays and lesbians.’’ Tuesday’s order left that ruling intact. But three justices, in an unusual step, played down the order’s significance.
Writing for the three, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “The confusion over the proper construction of the city charter counsels against granting (review).’’ He was joined by Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The court’s six other members wrote nothing, offering no insights into their votes.
Phil Burress, who led the move to put the city charter amendment on the 1993 ballot, claimed victory: “What it tells me is that the only thing Colorado did wrong was go statewide rather than city by city.’’
But Matt Coles of the American Civil Liberties Union disagreed, saying, “This action doesn’t undermine (the 1996 ruling) a whit.’’
And Suzanne B. Goldberg of the gay-rights Lamba Legal Defense and Education Fund said, “This is clearly not the end of the battle for equal rights in Cincinnati.’’
Gay-rights advocates won a dramatic victory two years ago when the Supreme Court threw out a Colorado state constitutional amendment that forbade state and local laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination. The amendment unlawfully singled out gays and sought to “make them unequal to everyone else,’’ the court ruled then.
In Cincinnati, gay-rights advocates succeeded in 1994 in barring enforcement of the city charter measure, but the appeals court lifted a trial judge’s injunction.
The Supreme Court had been urged to reverse the appeals court ruling because, they were told, it “will encourage targeting of gay people and other groups for unconstitutional harm.’’
In other matters Tuesday, the court:
—Rejected the appeal of a man who has been on Florida’s death row for 23 years. Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissented, saying long delays in executing condemned killers might amount to unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.
—Agreed to use a California case to decide whether federal law overrides a state’s rules limiting the deadlines confronting people who make disability-insurance claims.
—Heard arguments over who — the Federal Communications Commission or
individual states — will get to regulate the opening of the $110 billion
local phone market to long-distance companies and other competitors. A
decision is expected by July.