Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 2002
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 63-64.
Abstract
The book is about illusion and reality. It attempts, through interviews and rational analysis, to describe "Laramie in the October of Matt's death-the rush of protests and memorials, the arraignments of the killers, the arrival of the media, and the stunning transformation of Matthew into martyr, fueled by a surreal mixture of heartfelt identification, opportunistic politicking, and factual error."
It is also an attempt to describe the state of Wyoming, which exists in the national mind (when it exists at all) as a cowboy state. Check the Wyoming license plate with its cowboy on a bucking bronco. But the reality is that Wyoming is a "rural, poor and conservative state." Its natural resources, especially its low-sulphur burning coal, are exploited by corporations for their own gain. Its citizens refer to it as "a Third World country." It experiences itself "as a colony controlled by outside financial interests." It is a state dependent on tourist money but resentful of tourists, a place where men work in mines and ranchers and farmers hate miners. It is a state" 'run by people who have a great deal invested in making sure nothing changes. And that includes civil rights.'" (This according to Stephanie, born and raised in Wyoming, a member of the University of Wyoming's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Association.) It is a place which found itself in October 1998 at the center of America's "politics of sexuality-perhaps the most divisive issue in America's 'culture wars'" and marginally equipped to handle the exposure.
What did I learn from this book? That Matthew Shepard was not crucified on that buck fence. He was found slumped at the bottom of it. Forget the scarecrow image. The fence itself was not out on the windswept Plains but on the edge of town near a housing development. "The college dorms [rise] in the middle of your view." Matt was not burned by his killers though he was tortured. I learned also that what at the time seemed to be the most horrifying detail was true. On "Matt's brutally disfigured face ... the only spots not covered in blood were the tracks cleansed by his tears." I learned that "Matt had undergone regular HIV testing after being gang-raped during a trip to Morocco. The results of the tests had always been negative." I cannot remember now where I first read that Matthew Shepard had AIDS. But he did not have AIDS.
What's the truth? Whom can I trust?
Toward the end of her book, Beth Loffreda uses interview material with Rob Debree, a sergeant in the Sheriffs office, the "person in Laramie who perhaps can see those things most clearly." I believed what Rob Debree said. It took me several days to get around to asking myself, "Why trust this 'proudly professional, toughly built, Wyoming cop.'" In my experience it's not been members of the police force who give unbiased accounts of incidents involving gay men. Yet I did trust him. Beth Loffreda gives us his report of everything that happened that night, and, to me, it is convincing.
Rob Debree:
"There's no doubt in my mind that this was a planned thing because [Matt] was gay. Matt was what I would consider to be identifiable as gay in his outward appearance and obviously he was a good target for these guys.
Comments
Copyright 2002 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln