2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 112,563
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The lie was this....that Mathew Shepard was murdered because he was gay. That was a lie, the facts about the actual case show it was a lie....
The book that revealed that lie has a new edition coming out...
But it wasn’t true. The story, as you will read in these pages, is far darker, murkier and revealing than a classic hate crime.
Re-reading this book years later, it seems to me that the murder had absolutely nothing to do with homophobia.
It involved rather what was then a growing scourge of crystal meth use among both the rural poor and the gay male community at the turn of the century — and the murder of a young gay man in rural Wyoming was a classic case of where the two meth populations met and overlapped….
For gay men in 1998, meth was a far, far greater danger than redneck strangers. And it still is. But we decided to focus on what was acceptable to speak about, rather than what was staring us, more embarrassingly, in the face….
So we now have the body of Matthew Shepard interred, like a martyr to homophobia, at the National Cathedral in Washington DC. And you begin to understand how saints are indeed made: by legend, and by orthodoxy. What Jimenez has done is to peer behind this facade and tell us the awful, messy, tragic, human truth. It seems to me we can honor the memory of Matthew Shepard by refusing to lie about him anymore. And this book is a start.
I reached out to Jimenez for comment and an update. Here is what he provided.
There are new interviews and videos at: www.facebook.com/bookofmatt
The conclusive new chapter I wrote, “Ghosts of Laramie,” examines the long-term consequences of the corrosive meth epidemic that began to flourish around the time of Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder. Since The Book of Matt was first published, key sources have died from drug-related causes. A couple were still in their thirties. What is absolutely certain now is that the Shepard tragedy was a convergence of two devastating crises: a meth epidemic in rural America and a parallel crisis in the gay community. So what did we lose by hiding those truths at the time?
The new chapter also delves into another murder related to Shepard’s — the rape and killing of Cindy Dixon. Dixon was the mother of Russell Henderson, one of the men convicted in the Shepard case. She was killed while her son was awaiting trial — by another meth dealer with ties to Shepard’s killer Aaron McKinney.
With the passage of time, more people have become receptive to the complexities surrounding Matthew Shepard’s murder. But there are still those who cling to the divisive, politically correct mythology manufactured by the media and special interests.
The only real way to honor Shepard’s memory is to tell the truth about his life and the tangled circumstances that led to his death. Anything less is a fable at best — and at worst a form of propaganda.
I don’t claim any independent research on Shepard’s death. But it’s a sad sign of the times that research puncturing formative political narratives results not in debate on the merits, but personal attacks on the author.
legalinsurrection.com
The book that revealed that lie has a new edition coming out...
But it wasn’t true. The story, as you will read in these pages, is far darker, murkier and revealing than a classic hate crime.
Re-reading this book years later, it seems to me that the murder had absolutely nothing to do with homophobia.
It involved rather what was then a growing scourge of crystal meth use among both the rural poor and the gay male community at the turn of the century — and the murder of a young gay man in rural Wyoming was a classic case of where the two meth populations met and overlapped….
For gay men in 1998, meth was a far, far greater danger than redneck strangers. And it still is. But we decided to focus on what was acceptable to speak about, rather than what was staring us, more embarrassingly, in the face….
So we now have the body of Matthew Shepard interred, like a martyr to homophobia, at the National Cathedral in Washington DC. And you begin to understand how saints are indeed made: by legend, and by orthodoxy. What Jimenez has done is to peer behind this facade and tell us the awful, messy, tragic, human truth. It seems to me we can honor the memory of Matthew Shepard by refusing to lie about him anymore. And this book is a start.
I reached out to Jimenez for comment and an update. Here is what he provided.
There are new interviews and videos at: www.facebook.com/bookofmatt
The conclusive new chapter I wrote, “Ghosts of Laramie,” examines the long-term consequences of the corrosive meth epidemic that began to flourish around the time of Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder. Since The Book of Matt was first published, key sources have died from drug-related causes. A couple were still in their thirties. What is absolutely certain now is that the Shepard tragedy was a convergence of two devastating crises: a meth epidemic in rural America and a parallel crisis in the gay community. So what did we lose by hiding those truths at the time?
The new chapter also delves into another murder related to Shepard’s — the rape and killing of Cindy Dixon. Dixon was the mother of Russell Henderson, one of the men convicted in the Shepard case. She was killed while her son was awaiting trial — by another meth dealer with ties to Shepard’s killer Aaron McKinney.
With the passage of time, more people have become receptive to the complexities surrounding Matthew Shepard’s murder. But there are still those who cling to the divisive, politically correct mythology manufactured by the media and special interests.
The only real way to honor Shepard’s memory is to tell the truth about his life and the tangled circumstances that led to his death. Anything less is a fable at best — and at worst a form of propaganda.
I don’t claim any independent research on Shepard’s death. But it’s a sad sign of the times that research puncturing formative political narratives results not in debate on the merits, but personal attacks on the author.
New Edition of 'The Book of Matt' – Questioning the Matthew Shepard anti-gay hate crime narrative
Stephen Jimenez's 2013 book punctured a formative political narrative resulting in personal attacks on the author. His new edition brings the research forward to the present, and shows why the truth matters.
legalinsurrection.com
