10/15/98 (date posted)

The Sunday Mirror, London at http://www.mirror.co.uk/

WELCOME TO THE VILE WEST, WHERE PEOPLE DON'T CARE IF GAYS ARE KILLED

FROM ANDY LINES, US EDITOR IN LARAMIE, WYOMING

Laramie in the 1860s was described as "a rough frontier settlement, known for saloon-bar brawls and unprovoked murders".

Nothing much has changed.

Matthew Shepard, 21, was battered, beaten, strung up on a fence outside town and left to die - just because he was gay.

Not that the hard-drinking, womanising "rednecks" in this Wild West town which has shamed America, seem to care about his death. It is 130 years since the Gold Rush and the clashes between trappers and the Sioux, but there's still plenty of booze, prejudice - and violence.

As I stood by the flowers gently laid by a remote fence on a ranch two miles out of town, it was almost impossible to comprehend how anyone could tie a man up and leave him to die in freezing temperatures.

Friends last night revealed that Matthew - just 5ft 2ins and 8st - had already been attacked twice in the past six months. He felt he was being victimised by locals because he was gay.

One lesbian woman and her partner were attacked by a masked man while walking through the town centre.

Others, frightened for their safety, say they are planning to move away from Laramie.

The police insist the main motive for Matthew's death was robbery. But politicians and gay action groups say it reflected the anti-gay feeling sweeping America.

On Saturday, just five miles from the hospital where the student lay on a life-support machine, a college parade featured a sick anti-gay message.

Matthew had been left so badly injured that when a cyclist went by his body he thought it was a scarecrow. In Fort Collins, students dressed a scarecrow on a float and pinned the message "I am a gay" and "Up your A**" on its clothes.

IN THE Fireside tavern, from where Matthew was lured to his death, people didn't seem to care that a local had died in one of the worst crimes in American history. Drinkers watched American football, played pool, joked, listened to the juke-box and poured large pitchers of Budweiser - at less than £1 a pint - down their necks.

The barmaid boasted about how she was drinking screwdriver cocktails in a nearby bar at 8am that day. There was no collection jar in Matthew's memory, no posters, and no one wore the yellow armbands people had been urged to wear to show their solidarity against the horrific murder.

These days, Laramie is a prospering town in a state which boasts about being "The Equality State". Wyoming was the first state to give women the vote and let them serve on juries. But that once-proud tag has a hollow ring to it now.

Laramie is widely regarded as the most liberal and tolerant town in Wyoming. God help the rest of them. Welcome to the heartland of America. Throughout Wyoming, there has been increasing hostility and violence to gay men and women.

Expert Jeffery Lockwood said: "Gay people are frequently assaulted with derision, intolerance, insult and hostility - if not guns and ropes."

Ignorance and violence festers in the working-class white communities. The men accused of murdering Matthew - Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22 - chose to drop out of school and take menial jobs. Henderson and his girlfriend Chastity Pasley, 20 live on a trailer site on the edge of town where stray dogs roam loose and litter is strewn around.

Neighbour and friend Heather Dunmire, 20, said: "They were quiet - I would never have expected them to do that. I never would expect another human to do that."

Chastity and McKinney's girlfriend Kristin Price, 18, have been charged as accessories - police said they helped dump bloody clothing and then lied for their boyfriends.

On the university campus, a friend of Chastity's, university union vice-president Stephanie Olson, 20, said: "How could this possibly happen here in Laramie? I had no idea Chastity was like this. She is intelligent, and I thought I knew her."

Gay activist Scott Michaels, 35, told how homosexuals faced constant threats and assaults. "Gay people have to have secret meetings, and there's a lot of violence," he said.

When I was 24, my head was smashed open with a baseball bat. And the police are the worst of the rednecks. They hate gay people.

"Church leaders and Republicans attack homosexuals, and that just fuels the ignorant rednecks to launch their attacks."

Throughout America "hate crimes" against homosexuals are increasing. The Southern Poverty Law Centre group, which monitors the crimes, says gays are six times more likely to be attacked than Hispanics or Jews and twice as likely as black African Americans.

President Clinton has called for a new national law to curb "hate" crimes. But efforts to get such a law in Wyoming have repeatedly failed over the years. Now local politicians have promised to look at the issue again.

Matthew's death has rocked America and sparked a wave of protest rallies. McKinney and Henderson are being kept in the jailhouse which once held Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and Calamity Jane.

America hopes that, in 100 years, whoever killed Matthew will be remembered as the perpetrators of one of the most evil crimes in her history. One which marked a historic change in how people treat one another.