Andrew Sullivan backs the Matthew Shepard Truthers

When Andy called for a US-led invasion of Is rael, I knew he had gone off the deep end.

Wear fucking condoms, people!

Crucifixion and otherwise brutalizing a gay man to death is not something that meth explains "all of."

Sullivan shows his hand with

[quote] I can’t read the meth-addled minds of the foul murderers. I can detect bullshit from the gay rights establishment.

Suggesting that he doesn't know the motives of the murderers, despite their statements on the matter whatever their being addled by drugs, is disingenuous. Suggesting that the matter derives from gay-rights "bullshit" is reprehensible.

How about a comparable treatment of the Ferguson, Missouri, case, Mr. Sullivan? No, you don't dare. Why? Because as a drug-addled mess you can't read your own motives as clearly as we can. You are a homophobe self-immolator who attempts to project your own personal failings on gay people. No thanks. I don't classify you as my kith, kin, peer, or fellow.

What an asshole.

Q: How do you make Andrew Sullivan angry?

A: Ask him for a condom.

He's tough to look at. The skeeviness is like a cloud hovering around him.

Andrew should be the face of safe sex. "This is what you might become if you don't wrap up that stranger cock you're about to impale yourself on!"

What difference does it even make? This was ages ago, Shepard is firmly ensconced as a martyr, and some good came of the attention to hate crime legislation. Let it go. We have other things to focus on.

Milky loads for everyone!

And gay hater Duncan Roy jumped right on top of this story as well.

What Andrew cunningly forgets is that it was the killers who beat him and left him on fence and claimed that they did it because he made a pass at them.

They may not have "hated" him because he was gay, but that doesn't mean that they beat him up assuming they would get away with it because he deserved to be treated that was as a gay man.

Jimenez really seems to have worked off of shoddy sources.

It's disgusting that assholes like Jimenez and Sullivan, so-called journalists, will dig up and smear a dead kid's memory to advance their own careers. And I really have a hard time believing that this is anything besides that.

I read the Sullivan piece the OP posted, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Why not know the truth, even after all of these years?

And after all, if it is meth rather than homophobia (or a combination of the two) it doesn't make the death any less tragic.

Jimenez is still pissed off because Judy Shepherd wouldn't let him make a movie about her son.

He's carried that bitterness for years and is now getting back at her.

r12 But the Jimenez book that is the genesis of this story is unreliable and stems from questionable, careerist motives. The "truth" here is nothing but slanderous speculation with an agenda.

The Matthew Shepard murder is still too hot for the truth to come out. A gay man recently wrote a book on the subject exposing that Matt was not murdered because he was gay, but rather was murdered because he was a drug dealer and his murderers thought he had thousands of dollars on him as well as a gang load of meth. One of Matt's killers was bisexual and was one of his fuck buddies. That's not enough. The myth that Matt was murdered because he was gay is just too strong. It's going to take a new generation who is not so emotionally attached to the case before the truth becomes the accepted opinion.

R15 is Stephen Jimenez.

r15 No, it will take corroborated testimony by reliable witnesses. So far, you've got nothing.

"A gay man recently wrote a book on the subject exposing that Matt was not murdered because he was gay, but rather was murdered because he was a drug dealer and his murderers thought he had thousands of dollars on him as well as a gang load of meth."

Assuming for the moment that this is true, why did his murderers crucify him? Sounds a lot more like something that a couple of sickos would do to make a point about their hatred of gays than out of anger over not being able to steal money and drugs from him.

If true, it makes a huge difference: perhaps he wasn't murdered because he was gay at all. Could be drug deal gone sour . The truth is the truth despite our penchant for making everybody a martyr .

R16, No I am not.

Proof indicating that Matthew Shepard was not killed because he was gay:

1. His killers attacked three other drug dealers before attacking Matt. They attacked the drug dealers not because of their sexuality but because they wanted money and drugs.

2. Matthew Shepard was a drug dealer.

3. His killers thought Matt had circa 20 grand on him and a lot of meth.

4. One of Mat's killers was bisexual and was Matt's fuck buddy.

R18, He wasn't crucified. That was "fakelore" or just one of the many urban legends that arose after the murder. He was beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead.

Because unless you provide actual evidence to the contrary you are disregarding actual evidence solely to push your selfish agenda.

Sullivan carries a burning hatred of the gay left establishment all these years later thanks to the whole "milky loads" episode. I got into something of an email war about it with him. If there's some fragment of a story floating around -- no matter how far-fetched -- that will make the HRC and the gay left look bad, he'll attach himself to it and flog it within an inch of its life.

He doesn't give a shit about "the truth." He just hates leftie gays so much that he'll say or do or promote anything to make them look bad.

R22, Not true. There is no evidence indicating that Matt was killed because he was gay. It's all about perception. Matthew was gay. Matthew was also a drug dealer. What angle do you think the Mother is going to choose to believe? Which angle do you think she is going to go to the media with? That's your answer right there. The family is the one who pushed the notion of Matt being killed because he was gay. The police just went along with it. The real motive was the 20 grand and meth they thought Matt had on him.

r20 Please provide links or cite reliable sources when making such claims. Please provide links or cite reliable sources that show causation between certain assertions and the acts of violent killers.

TIA

[quote] I can detect bullshit from the gay rights establishment.

Boy, he is still really [italic]angry[/italic] at other gay men for the 2001 "Milky Loads" scandal, isn't he? He will never get over it.

Andrew Sullivan-like gay men dominate this website. Or, would they even call themselves gay?

R24 There's no evidence except the testimony of the killers....

Not to overgeneralize or anything like that!

r15 r20 r22 Eats the warm shit of starving children's asses. I know it's true because people claim it is. My proof is that, well, it just makes sense! Doesn't it?

See how that works?

R29 = Andrew Sullivan asshole

You are disregarding the evidence from the killers themselves and providing no evidence for your own theory. Agenda not argument.

aids related dementia.

R25, Read the book at the below link. It's the result of a 13 year investigation of his murder.

I knew Matt. He didn't have a meth problem. He spent his time between Wyoming and Denver where I live, and I saw him often enough to know.

Sullivan makes perfectly reasonable arguments that there was much more to this story here. Calling him names does not change that.

I thought DL's agreed that Matt probably wasn't killed because he was gay, but it really didn't matter since it brought national attention to issues that face the gay community. I originally posted a story about this murder not being a result of homophobia and was taken aback that DL didn't thing it was terrible. I expected it too. I posted it out of anger, hating whatsherface reporting this a long time ago.

What did the perps admit to in court?

R20 all of that comes from convicted murders and confessed drug addicts. Why should anything that comes out their moths be believed by anyone?

r34 et al. I've read enough - several - reviews and dismissals of that book that I'd rather not waste my time. If you're going to use one rather suspect source to make up your mind about something, I'll stop arguing with you now.

I support the "homophobes" or "gay bashers" because straight guys are sooo hot.

Why is it trutherism? I haven't read the book yet but it strikes me that Jiminez's findings are purely journalistic, well reasoned, backed up by some who knew Shepard, including an ex of his who says he never believed it was a hate crime and that Shepard would want the truth to come out and that Jiminez is being wrongly condemned, and not based on a political anti hate crime agenda.

Jiminez is a gay man who started covering the story completely accepting the common wisdom that this was a homophobic hate crime. I don't know whether his conclusions are correct or not, but I'm far from convinced that they are incorrect.

And the fact that they might be correct clearly scares people who have a vested interest in perpetuating the narrative. That narrative may well be the result of a police investigation which assumed things that simply were incorrect.

"Not true. There is no evidence indicating that Matt was killed because he was gay. It's all about perception. Matthew was gay. Matthew was also a drug dealer. What angle do you think the Mother is going to choose to believe? Which angle do you think she is going to go to the media with? That's your answer right there. The family is the one who pushed the notion of Matt being killed because he was gay. The police just went along with it. The real motive was the 20 grand and meth they thought Matt had on him."

In part, I agree. In addition, the homophobia angle served both the prosecution and the defense. The prosecution by making the victim more sympathetic. The defense by protecting them from the meth motive and by making the appalling "gay panic" defense available to them.

In part, I disagree. Look, I don't know what happened here. But I'm more than willing to give Jiminez an open-minded reading. It seems that his conclusions are objective and not at all based on some politically objectionable agenda.

Justice should not only be concerned with the right kind of gay victims. If Matt Shepard was a meth addict and a prostitute, he also deserves justice. Let's be careful who we are stifling here by insisting and consider the political optics of insisting that the issues at trial really comport with the reality of the events.

.

R35, You obviously didn't know him well enough because the reason why the family moved to Wyoming was because of his drug problem. His family thought if they moved it would separate him from the bad elements he associated with. Problems is as soon as they moved he began to hook up with users and drug dealers again.

"Sullivan makes perfectly reasonable arguments..."

What are those arguments? He makes no arguments from evidence. He just states as facts his opinions.

[quote]Jiminez is a gay man who started covering the story

Jiminez was a hack film maker who saw an opportunity to exploit Shepperd and his family. When he was shot down by Judy he went on a vendetta culminating in the 20/20 piece.

This book is simply an extension of his vitriol at Judy Shepperd refusing to meet with him and the family's lawyer stating that he could not make a film about her son.

[quote]I can detect bullshit

Because you shovel so much of it, Milky Loads.

ThinkProgress is often a very good source. But when it comes to legal commentary, their analysis is often facile and single-mindedly polemical without any regard for the truth. Recently, they shat all over the Pennsylvania Atty General simply for doing her job in raising contributory negligence claims in a prison workers suit against the state for contributing to her being raped. Trying to expose Pennsylvania as victim blaming, ThinkProgress revealed it understood absolutely nothing about civil torts law, civil procedure and, in particular, standard pleadings, and nothing about the issue of negligence and contributory negligence in the context of this case - the parallels ThinkProgress drew to a woman's asking for it weren't just sophomoric, they were completely ignorant.

R44, The article is a joke. It's just an attack on a man who dared question the official story.

There is no evidence this was an actual hate crime. In fact, common sense is that it was motived by money and drugs. It was Matt's mom who pushed the perception that Matt was killed because he was gay. This would be a mother of a gay son's worst nightmare. However, to push this perception she and the family had to ignore Matt's history with drugs and that's what they did. They conveniently overlooked and didn't tell the media that their son was a drug dealer. Because they left out this information it was naturally for the world to believe the parents and everyone went along with their perception of the event.

The main problem with the truthers' story is their accusation of meth use. Meth was not a problem in middle America in the late 90s. They should have picked a different drug.

Half of Jimenez' sources were "anonymous" and much of the book was speculative.

The chauffeur claims he saw McKinney roughhousing with some guys, one of whome "may" have been Shepard.

[quote] I thought DL's agreed that Matt probably wasn't killed because he was gay, but it really didn't matter since it brought national attention to issues that face the gay community.

When did we decide that, R37?

R47, She has no right telling someone they can't make a film. She can chose not to participate but threats of lawsuits to shut down a film are done to cover up the truth, certain facts that they don't want the public to know. Matt's mom and family have kept much of the information concerning Matt from the public, while presenting him as a clean-cut, gay choir boy. They had to do this because the information of who Matt really was casts doubt n the motivation of his murder being homophobia.

This thread is a wet dream for the gay bashing supporters on datalounge.

They are in full-force right now.

[/quote] I’m arguing that meth can explain all of it, but may not be the only factor involved.

Well, that's AIDS-riddled, barebacking, meth-addled queen would certainly know all about that.

" a wet dream for the gay bashing supporters "

Yes, Andrew Sullivan and his pals are enjoying it all!

I read the Jimenez book when it came out. I didn't think what he suggested sounded that unreasonable, I was particularly taken by the illusions of one of the murderers fathers to their son dabbling in same sex. That said, I really don't think it matters after all of these years.

R51, WTF? Where you comatose during the 90s? Meth was huge in the 90s. Partly because new, cheap and fast methods of making it were invented. In the 1980s cooks had to use ephedrine to make meth. In the early 1990s cooks discovered a process of using pseudoephedrine to make meth, meaning that they could just go to Walmart or the local store to get what they needed to make meth.

Unfortunately I know all too well. I was addicted to meth for 3 years. Did it every single day. Got huge rocks of it. Beautiful. Best sex ever. Lost tons of weight, so much so that everyone thought I had AIDS. I would go days without eating. When I finally quit on my own, I slept for almost a week straight and gained over a 100 pounds within a couple months of quitting. It's bad. It's so beautiful it's evil. It will destroy your life.

Why is this crime so scrutinized? Why aren't all the other "hate crimes" investigated so thoroughly.

R59, This case was only exposed by accident when Jiminez moved down there and began working on his screenplay. He interviewed people and quickly realized that what they were telling him wasn't jiving with the official narrative spun by Matt's mother and family. That's when he had that "A-Ha!" reaction and realized it wasn't a murder motivated by homophobia and so he eventually dropped the screenplay and began writing a book instead.

[quote] fragment of a story floating around -- no matter how far-fetched -- that will make the HRC and the gay left look bad

Please don't call HRC the "gay left." It makes actual gay leftists angry.

HRC is a corporatized money pit, working to keep itself in business more than get anything done. They like to crow about their marriage win, but were the ones who sent Edie Windsor packing initially, telling her "it wasn't the right time." Fuck HRC--it's one of the times when Sullivan's broken clock tells perfect time (though we probably differ on reasons).

"He wasn't crucified. That was 'fakelore' or just one of the many urban legends that arose after the murder. He was beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead."

Okay, I apologize. Still seems to me that beating a man, tying him to a fence, and leaving him for dead indicates a hate crime more than a robbery gone awry.

"There is no evidence this was an actual hate crime. In fact, common sense is that it was motived by money and drugs."

No, common sense says otherwise. The killers themselves used the gay panic defense, before changing their minds to help homophobes and self-loathing gays smear Matthew.

I think the 'truthers' could be partially right, drug involvement could have been a factor/motive, but the crime is just so brutal and the defense was "he made sexual overtures and we freaked out cause like we're DUDES."

I do think there is a tendency for a lot of gay people to react intensely against the 'truther' claims without any willingness to look at what the investigative reporting actually found. I read through it, it does sound plausible. But the 'truthers' (some of them) go too far in saying that the motive was "_____" and NOT anti-gay hatred. Like it's either one or the other, and not a possible stacking of co-factors.

Why in the world would people assume Matthew was a dealer? How is it OK to brutalize a drug dealer? Dealers are our friends.

Andrew Sullivan can be counted on to stab us in the back whenever the political winds shift. He smells GOP victory in the air, so he is moving to the right because he is looking after his bank account, not us. It's as predictable as the return of the swallows to San Juan Capistrano.

Obviously, the revisionist view is a lie. If it weren't, the defense would have used it at trial. Shepard didn't have the money or connections to be dealing drugs in a town where he had few ties, coming from a town where he had few ties.

Mr. Sullivan is revered because he has a large vocabulary, but it is abundantly clear by now that he has no judgement, no ability to understand facts in context, and no knowledge of the country he has adopted of his own. The fact that he can say shit like this without even going to Fort Collins and Laramie and seeing what these areas are like...marks him out as a mere dilettante, a substantial as crepe paper in a heavy rain.

R63, The killers were on trial. They plead innocent. They were not going to admit the true motive. The homophobia angle was used by the defense as a ploy to reach the jury, that's all. One of the killers was Matt's fuck buddy.

Crypto-Conservatives (and assholes) like Andrew Sullivan can ALWAYS read minds!

r67, that "evidence" is based on the killers' claims, why do you assume they aren't lying?

If Matt was a drug-dealing hooker, you'd think the fucking DEFENSE would have brought that up to smear him.

R69, No. Defense knows not to put down the victim or do anything that is perceived as such as it will turn the jury against them. They plead innocent. They cold not admit the motive and were using any ploy they thought possible to be found INNOCENT. They couldn't admit the motive because doing so would be the same as admitting guilt.

[quote]Defense knows not to put down the victim or do anything that is perceived as such as it will turn the jury against them.

The same defense that used the "gay panic" defense R70? You're clearly an imbecile.

Cryptosporidium Conservatives, r68.

[quote]She can chose not to participate but threats of lawsuits to shut down a film are done to cover up the truth

R53 is either Jiminez or knows him. The above quote is proof of that fact.

So we are not to believe that this was a hate crime because there was no evidence but we are supposed to believe that this was about drugs even though there is no evidence because it fits common sense (e.g. it is something we are more comfortable believing).

I thought of that r72, but I was (momentarily) too much of a lady to type it!

Ha!

], that "evidence" is based on the killers' claims, why do you assume they aren't lying?

"If Matt was a drug-dealing hooker, you'd think the fucking DEFENSE would have brought that up to smear him."

First of all, it's not at all clear that the defense would have been allowed to bring that up. Secondly, bringing it up would have opened the door to one of the murderers also being a hooker.

This is a complicated case. I don't know what happened. But it seems very feasible to me that it was not a gay hate crime and that positioning it as such was advantageous to both the prosecution and the defense.

Finally, not everything criminal defendants confess to is true. Sometimes criminal defendants confess to crimes they are not guilty of (the Central Park case is the most famous example). Sometimes, criminal defendants confess to false things because it presents a defense, even a pathetically bad one, which in fact might have happened in this case.

The point here is this. Jimenez may be on to something or he may not be. But one thing appears clear. His motive is to present the facts as he is persuaded by them, not to smear Matt Shepard or to blame him for his murder but to cover a story.

Finally, whether Shepard was killed for being gay or killed in a meth-based robbery, he was brutally murdered. He is a real victim here whether he was a meth addicted prostituted or a victim of homophobic homicide or both.

I don't agree with everything Sullivan said here. But I do agree that Jimenez is being unfairly smeared. Dispute his conclusions if you want, but don't label him as anything other than a journalist giving an interpretation of facts. And if you disagree with his interpretation, come up with something more convincing than that it's merely inconsistent with the evidence at trial. Of course it is. But that doesn't mean the trial evidence including the defense was completely based in truth and Jimenez's sources - who include Matt Shepard's ex btw - are liars.

It would be really too much to ask for this debate to be conducted with respect and intelligence; it's way too loaded and people polemicize everything.

"The 'truthers' (some of them) go too far in saying that the motive was '_____' and NOT anti-gay hatred."

Exactly. For that matter, even if the murder was all about drugs and money and had nothing whatsoever to do with homophobia (which is unlikely), the fact that THE KILLERS USED HOMOPHOBIA AS THEIR DEFENSE AT TRIAL would arguably make the murder a hate crime retroactively.

Does anyone disagree with this reasoning? It makes perfect sense to me, and I firmly believe what I wrote, even if the letter of the law makes no provision for a retroactive hate crime.

No, it was a hate crime as it happened.

The killers could have easily portrayed Shepard as a meth dealer. There is nothing which would have stopped them from "being allowed" to - there certainly was no victim's rights privacy crap in Wyoming back then.

Only someone who is unfamiliar with Wyoming could make these kinds of claims. It makes me wonder if Jimenez actually went there or just used the phone for his "research."

R76 Jimenez is clearly a fraud.

It's not just a question of the defense. If the facts were anything like it was described, the Laramie Project would have heard rumours from people in town. They didn't.

r70, you know nothing about the legal system, defense lawyers always try to smear the victim.

r76, must be Jimenez. You don't want him to be smeared, but it's okay to smear Shepherd based on the words of murderers? Okay.

What's missing here is a real portrait of Matthew Shepard. Jimenez and Sullivan concentrate on this or that witness but they are utterly unable to give a plausible characterization of a kid who moved around a lot and had NO repeat NO local ties, which is pretty much the single most important factor in being able to move drugs.

"The killers could have easily portrayed Shepard as a meth dealer."

If I understand correctly, the argument is that the killers lied and used gay panic as a defense because they actually thought that would make them more sympathetic to the jury than if they said it was all about drugs and robbery.

I'm not saying I believe for a second that it was really all about drugs and robbery and had nothing to do with homophobia, but I do think that's the argument.

"wasn't jiving"

jiBing

"There is no evidence this was an actual hate crime."

Yes there is. The testimony of the attackers. Why do you people not get this?

R82 they couldn't have portrayed him as a predatory gay AND a meth dealer. They didn't because the possibility never occurred to them at the time.

The Laramie Project interviewed how many people in this town? And ALL of them covered up Matthew Shepard's supposed dealing? Does not pass the sniff test.

r20 did Matt's killers kill the other two guys they attacked?

No.

If we were to learn that James Byrd had burned his killers in a drug deal gone wrong before they tied him to their truck and dragged him until his head and limbs were detached, would that make his murder any less horrifying?

Matthew Shepard was bullied in North Carolina and raped in Morocco. He was the kind of person people believed they could push around. The characterization of him as a narcotics kingpin is even more laughable than would-be gay rapist.

[quote]You obviously didn't know him well enough because the reason why the family moved to Wyoming was because of his drug problem. His family thought if they moved it would separate him from the bad elements he associated with. Problems is as soon as they moved he began to hook up with users and drug dealers again.

I know what I saw when I spent time with him.

"Problem is as soon as they moved he began to hook up with users and drug dealers again."

Where is your evidence of this?

r91, that's according to a friend of his, Ms. LaBrie, whom Jimenez interviewed.

So hearsay, r92.

Know how to sell books? Controversy. Know how to create controversy? Write a book that contradicts, without any real concrete evidence and based mostly on the reports of unreliable or "anonymous" sources, the accepted conventional wisdom on a highly emotional and politicized crime.

R51, I spent 1991 in West Hollywood. I can tell you that crystal meth was VERY popular.

Guys I worked with at The Hamburger Hamlet were using it to party & stay up for the whole weekend.

It was also bizarre to me that gay guys I knew at the time told me that an after hours club in Silver Lake did a "crucifixion" on Saturday night.

There was so much meth use around me at that time ( & I'm someone who never tried it),that when I returned to Provincetown in '92 I was startled to find it hadn't arrived yet. "Yet" being the operative word. Starting around 1996 it was everywhere.

The devastation & misery "Tina" caused in Provincetown & in the "community" at large continues today. Obviously.

Who is Ms. LaBrie and why does Jimenez take her for an intimate?

R87, They didn't know they were going to kill Matt. The goal was to just beat him up a bit and rob him but they thought he had 20 grand on him. So I'm sure when they realized that he didn't have the money on him they tied him to the fence and beat him up even more to try to get him to tell them where the money was. After he went unconscious they just scrammed. Matt did not die at the scene. He was in a coma for a while before dying.

Problems with the new revisionist motive:

I have yet to see anyone on meth, particularly gay, get violent.

The killers used the gay panic defense. Only when they got convicted and faced lifetime in prison did they suddenly tell a completely different story--one that wasn't brought up AT ALL during the trial.

The killers tied him to a fence and left him to die--nothing of the sort was done to the others they supposedly attacked. There is hatred involved when you tie someone to a fence and just leave him.

In 2004 the convicted killers told the media that the real motivation was money. They were going to rob him. One of the killers said Matt began to touch his leg in a sexual way and he started beating him. However, he added that it doesn't matter because they were going to beat him anyway to get his money.

Also, it seems that just days before Matt's death, he confided in a driver that he had HIV and was suicidal. Sad.

Andrew Sullivan is vile homophobic scum. As are his acolytes. He is self-destructive, self-loathing and sucks Republican dick--figuratively though I'm sure literally as well.

I think we seriously need to make some kind of public more to disown the bastard and label him a traitor.

Those agreeing with Andrew Sullivan are also vile and the very types who would try to brainwash others into believing the Holocaust never happened.

Andrew Sullivan should never be considered important. It's unfortunate that - even with the OP alerting us to Sullivan's latest - there remains anyone here at Datalounge.com who is willing to refer to him.

Then again, there are people who still have not learned from their mistakes with following Maureen Dowd. So, there are people who will never learn.

[quote]Finally, not everything criminal defendants confess to is true.

Like accusing their murder victim of being a drug dealer?

R100 That is the same way (most) progressive black folks feel about Larry Elder, Clarence Thomas and now Bill Cosby. Every group has oddball "traitors." You just roll your eyes and deal.

Of course shit stain Sullivan heaps his ample weight on this story. How else is to remain to appear relevant? Just because that fat ass believes everybody else's life is as lurid and pathetic as his he joins in the slander of someone who can't defend himself. Disgusting.

The weird thing about this whole situation is that the gay PC police froth at the mouth when the POSSIBILITY of the Matthew Shepard murder not being what it was sold to be is brought up.

Trying to get to the truth of the situation means that they're a "truther" or that they're "crazy" or dealing with "unreliable sources."

The protection of this story is about a lot of things, mostly Judy Shepard's paycheck and speaking fees, the $$ rolling into the Matthew Shepard foundation, and the gay community's deification of their white, blonde posterchild for gay bashing.

So Matthew Shepard probably had a meth problem, was dealing it, and his murder may not have been 100% a hate crime. Big deal. I just don't see the reasoning behind making him a saint and shouting down any smidgen of proof that he may not have been.

How'd he get a green card? Can't we ship him back to the UK?

[quote]I just don't see the reasoning behind making him a saint and shouting down any smidgen of proof that he may not have been.

To what end?

How is the world made a better place by claiming he was a drug dealer and was murdered by a fuck buddy?

In all seriousness, it's possible that Sullivan is suffering from HIV-related dementia.

R107, Because it's the truth. Otherwise you are building a fantasy based on lies. As was pointed out, the family of Matthew Shepard has benefited greatly from this lie.

There are outright cases of gay men being beaten and killed because they were gay. These cases aren't vague or controversial.

Milky Load's AIDS-riddled brain is turning to mush.

R105 makes the most sense of anyone in this thread. I completely agree.

[quote]Because it's the truth.

Are you sure? You believe the first story of his murder was a lie even though everyone involved says it's the truth.

You believe this new story is true, even though the author has had a tough time proving his story is true.

[quote]Otherwise you are building a fantasy based on lies.

Clearly you want to believe what you want, facts be damned.

[quote]As was pointed out, the family of Matthew Shepard has benefited greatly from this lie.

Pointed out by you. But you chose to ignore the fact that all money made from this murder has benefited charitable causes.

While this author benefits himself by selling this pap as truth. Clearly he's a whore, darling.

[quote]There are outright cases of gay men being beaten and killed because they were gay. These cases aren't vague or controversial.

I'm sorry, I just had to chuckle at that.

If that were true, California wouldn't have had to pass a law banning the gay panic defense.

r109 But you can't say it's the truth because there is no proof. All you're doing is supporting the conjecture of someone with an unclear and likely unsavory agenda.

If there were a clear version of the "truth" available there wouldn't be all this pointless debate at the expense of a dead kid's reputation.

Posters, like R108 and R110, who do not engage the points Sullivan makes and instead smear him with AIDS dementia are the lowest of the low. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

No, it's Sullivan who should be ashamed. There was a tremendous number of people reporting on this story when it happened. We know more about the Matthew Shepard murder than about anything but perhaps the disappearance of JonBenet Ramsey. Sullivan is taking the "John Mark Karr" option without reviewing the facts.

And that's not true R113. There was no "agenda" to impose or distort facts about the Matthew Shepard case.

What proof do we have that Jimenez is gay? Back in the 90s you would never get someone claiming to be gay who wasn't, the stigma was such that it was unthinkable. But today, didn't we just see this with Ben Hobson? Maybe Mr. Jimenez is a fake.

So smearing all people with HIV is a fair rhetorical device, R115?

Of course Sullivan should be ashamed of his position on this. But we win by attacking his logic and his points, NOT by smearing all people with HIV.

This dude again? Geez. The dude has been dead forever.

[quote]There was no "agenda" to impose or distort facts about the Matthew Shepard case.

Not even the craven attempt to sell books?

And yet,here you are R118.

The HIV bigots on this board are disgusting. Engage Sullivan on the merits or don't engage him, your choice. But to slur HIV+ people - there but for the grace of god go any of us over the course of a lifetime - is repulsive. and coming from fellow gay folks us the lowest of the low.

Methodologically, you can't just call a hundred people who say they knew the victim and chat. I think of my own life and I am quite sure if you called a hundred people who volunteered they knew me, most of them would be enemies and would tell you made up stories 100% fictional about me.

I had an ex-roommate who died. I sent a check in his memory and his lover called to find out the scoop, not having heard of me. We chatted and I found out that a guy the deceased had rejected had insinuated himself into the lover's life, pretending to have been boyfriends with the deceased. Everybody has an agenda. That's why context, and the physical location and era of Fort Collins and Laramie are so important to the story.

And what was the context? In the week before the Shepard murder, the head of the LGBT group on campus was physically assaulted by a young man calling him a faggot. He was able to return blows. Shepard was seen in public with the group the day he was killed. But there was a big difference between him and the leader of the group, in that Shepard was tiny, only 5 foot 2.

And while Shepard was in the hospital there, a frat in Ft. Collins put an antigay float in their homecoming parade; and Ft. Collins voted down a gay non-discrimination ordinance.

A previous LGBTA faculty advisor had been murdered five years earlier in Denver, a case that was never solved.

Henderson and McKinney also fought with two Hispanics that night. It was "minority bashing" night. Native Americans said they were afraid to walk alone through the University of Wyoming campus in general.

This discussion makes me very sad. He was just a kid, brutally treated and left to die.

R126, They were drug dealers. The pair were targeting drug dealers. Matt was also a drug dealer. This is an inconvenient fact of the hole homophobia angle. So the pair targeted drug dealers because they wanted to steal their money and drugs but for some reason they attacked Matt simply because he was gay. Right.

R124: Exactly what you wrote. The killers used the gay panic defense because they thought it would make them more sympathetic. You proved Jimenez's point.

No matter what the motive, Shepard was murdered. The motive only matters to those, like the Foundation, who stand to make money from keeping it a gay bashing.

Can the shitheads who agree with Sullivan please leave the site? This is disgusting and unfathomably stupid, arguments based on bullshit.

Dementia is a well-established result of AIDS. Pointing that out isn't bashing people with the disease. And it does a great deal to explain Andy's logic these days.

I remember thinking that aspects of the Matthew story seemed odd when it happened. Before screaming and yelling maybe I will try reading the book.

R54 writes,

[bold]This thread is a wet dream for the gay bashing supporters on datalounge.

They are in full-force right now.[/bold]

You're right, R54.

Here is the lead gay-basher: R15, R20, R21, R24, R34, R45, R50, R53, R58, R60, R67, R70, R97, R99, R109, R128. (More to come, perhaps.)

Will the people accusing Sullivan of having AIDS kindly STFU! Matt Shepard was HIV positive.

I've never heard of this nobody, and after reading OP's post about him, I'm glad I never have.

Um,R98, saying you've never heard of anyone "especially gay people" getting violent on meth is bizarre!

The very first thing I thought of was the guy in Miami who chewed the face off the guy he was having sex with!

Some of the most horrific violence has been perpetrated by people in meth-induced psychosis!!!

I find it incredible that anyone paying attention to the news wouldn't know this.

[quote]The very first thing I thought of was the guy in Miami who chewed the face off the guy he was having sex with!

You mean the naked black guy on the homeless guy, or something else?

R136, The Miami zombie guy was high on pot, not meth.

It's true that gay bashers are out in force on this thread. But it is also true that Sullivan is, let's face it, one of them.

He was not, R138. Pot does not affect people that way, Mrs. Reagan.

R138? Are you for real?

R141, Yes. The media kept reporting he was high on bath salts but when the autopsy was released it revealed the only thing he had in his system was THC.

I looked at the Jimenez book. I was disappointed to see it on sale in a gay bookstore. I didn't want to buy it so I didn't read but I glanced through it, and it was worse than I feared. It is truly a gay-bashing book.

He says at one point that the real Matt had been lost in the shuffle but he doesn't give a portrait of Matt either, just a series of disjointed, non-coherent attacks based on what a gay basher said of him (and I don't mean Henderson or McKinney here, but a previous one Shepard had accused of raping him. The guy's story made literally no sense - it was clearly a lie because if Shepard behaved as advertised, they wouldn't have taken him to the lake in the first place - but Jimenez reported it as though it were self-evident that Shepard was an aggressive predator and compulsive liar, putting great stress on the fact that when his parents left him behind to go to Saudi Arabia that Shepard was treated for "depression" and "other" psychological problems, with great stress on the other, as though it could be inferred he was an antisocial psycho.

Jimenez makes no good connections for his wild theory that McKinney and Shepard were lovers, suggesting that they must have known each other because he was able to establish that both had gone to the Fireplace Lounge (remember Matt had only been back in Wyoming a few months so it was unlikely he knew everyone, despite his family ties to Cody, Wyoming).

Nor does Jimenez have good evidence for histrionic claims that Matt was sent to uni in Wyoming because of his problems with drugs as a last ditch effort (clearly the Shepards were a dysfunctional family, but it is certainly not clear that they were stupid).

Nor does he have any credible evidence that Matthew Shepard was involved with any way with methamphetamine competition, although he does establish that McKinney's cousin gave McKinney meth that day and that McKinney was a meth dealer.

As a portrait of Shepard, it is outrageous. If Shepard really behaved as the one gay basher claimed, then an obvious conclusion would be that Shepard was suicidal, and yet that would that would likely have been noticed by everyone. But even that would portray Matt in too favorable a light for Jimenez, who is insistent that Matthew Shepard was an evil, aggressive and violent man. Disgusting filth.

If you want to read a better book on the subject, and one that effectively demolishes Sullivan's old tired anti-hate crime arguments, read Beth Loffreda's "Losing Matt Shepard." She was the straight woman faculty advisor to the Wyoming LGBTA group at the time and she gives the real context for what went down and for what gay life in Wyoming was really like the 90s.

R143, Shut the fuck up you lying sack of shit. You could not possible get all that from a mere flipping through the book. Either actually read it or shut the fuck up.

Looks like Jimenez has returned at R144.

I looked at Loffreda's book and am reminded that McKinney bragged about killing the fag in prison and offered the other inmates to sign autographs because he was proud of what he'd done. That he thought it would put him at the top of the prison food chain. That the fence was down a long dirt road that could only be gotten to with careful intentional driving. This was no meth-fueled rage and everybody said McKinney was not high that night.

In short, all of Jimenez's claims had already been disposed of in her book.

Indeed they should have taken blood from the bartender. Maybe he did rape Matt and that's where Matt got HIV.

R144. You're the one who seems conflicted about what you've done.

Mean & pissed-off too.

I enjoyed your post R143.

YOU can fuck-right-off R144. Writing an unconscionable piece of shit book is what it is. But you'll never stop people from defending the memory of a boy who was tortured & tied to a fence in the freezing cold night & left alone to die.

R148, You're a fucking idiot. Nobody is saying that Matt was murdered. It's just that he wasn't murdered for being gay.

You can tell something of the environment just from the scale of things. The LGBTA group on campus used to get 10, at most 20 people to meetings. There was exactly 1 out person on the faculty at U. Wyoming. The statewide gay rights group had a mailing list of 175 people. After the Shepard thing made everybody more aware, the mailing list soared to about 230 people, then fell back down. People in Wyoming back then were isolated and SCARED. One lesbian who recommended gay health issues be dealt with was told by the school board there were no gays in Laramie.

Today we all did what conservatives do every day - changed the clock back.

R150. I taught at Kearney State (rural Nebraska) in the mid80s, and was one of three openly gay male faculty members. I went to my office one night and found AIDS scrawled on my office door in black magic marker. It turned out it was one of my colleagues, an ex-cop from Colorado. We both left--I to a job in Ithaca, NY (where I now live), he, fired, for fucking a dean's daughter.

It was a scary place--and only a few hundred miles east of Laramie.

It is perfectly possible to believe Matthew Shepard may have been a meth dealer and that he was not killed for being gay, and still hate (and have even experienced!) homophobia, and still think it was a horrible crime that he was murdered.

Gay identity and the importance of gay rights are not so precarious that they hang alone on the narrative of Shepard-as-martyr.

I concur, R153.

Meanwhile, there is some evidence that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in an effort to score Maui Wowie.

Bruno Hauptman was looking for Lindbergh's stash of French Absinthe and only took the baby when he couldn't find what he was looking for.

Laramie native here, and I was living in Laramie at the time of the murder. R150s observation is pretty accurate. And I took a class from Beth Loffreda - wonderful woman, brilliant and a great friend to the Wyoming LBGT community.

Matt was poz?

At the time, I was upset by the amount of coverage Shepard's death received compared to the murders and hate crimes committed against men of color.

Never thought in 2014 this would STILL be a top story.

Matthew was no saint but he didn't deserve to die the way he did. And homophobia was one of the factor why they murdered him.

Why do the victims always get victimized? It's really a sickness here in the USA.

R160, Nobody's victimizing Matt. Matt was murdered. His killers are paying for what they did. It's just that the murder was not motivated out of homophobia.

Also, Matt was HIV positive but was still trying to hit on guys and get laid. Do you really think he's telling people his status? Do you think he was using protection? I personally don't think he was on both counts.

Now, hear me out. One of his killers was his fuck buddy. What if he found out that Matt was HIV positive and Matt didn't tell him? How do you think he would react?

Like I said, the victim is still being victimized.

Unfortunately, in America, victims HAVE to be deified in order for their deaths to matter. Disregard the fact that Matthew Shepard wasn't traipsing down the sidewalk carrying a bible in one hand and a lollipop in the other...his extracurricular activities and health were seen as unpalatable to the jackals who gleefully used him as a fundraising tool.

I don't know...it's good that his death made fighting homophobia a cause du jour and let to federal hate crime legislation, but I'm not sure why he has to remain an unblemished boy scout in order for people to care about his death. He was flawed and acknowledging that fact doesn't detract from the fact that he didn't deserve to be beaten and left for dead by a couple of disgusting excuses for human beings.

R160/162 apparently has no idea what the word "victimized" means.

You feel that people in America are "victimizing" Matt Shepard? Is that what you mean? Or did you mean that he and other victims are deified in America, which is how R163 phrased it? Do you really not know the difference between "victimized" and "deified?" If so, you're an idiot.

Your continuing to vilify the victim reveals your agenda. He's dead, thanks to people like you. R164.

R165, unless you typed the wrong response number, you seem to have some serious reading comprehension problems. I was NOT "vilifying" Matt Shepard, I was going after R160/162 for not knowing the difference between "victimizing" and "deifying." Do you also not know the difference?

He was flawed but he wasn't a drug kingpin or a sex maniac.

He was victimized by a Mormon loser who thought that killing a fag (who probably weighed half what McKinney did) made him a big man, a hero, a Macho Man.

Given that there was already a book by an insider, Loffreda, which was far better than anything published on this topic by Jimenez and Sullivan, it all has the look of mining the name for dollars in the same way that Hollywood runs endless superhero sequels to squeeze every last dime out of the public which is interested in such things.

[quote]He's dead, thanks to people like you.

He's dead because of his actual murderers who are in jail, you histrionic asshole.

Go soak your head.

Never heard of Andrew Sullivan before. Looked at his pic on Wikipedia. First thought was that he looks like a serial killer and likely lives in Florida! Damn, he's scary. I'd guess he got turned down by a lot of guys as cute as Matthew, so he's getting his revenge by implying it was his own fault that he was brutally murdered by some psychopaths. Sullivan looks like the type that would go to a murder victim's grave, vandalize the headstone, and do some really vile things on the grave.

Those loads are milky this time of night.

Wow. When you don't know a whole lot about a subject (me, this one,) and read the arguments, just wow. One side makes arguments, the other types every filthy word that exists in attack.

I imagine a lot of people reading this (me, for instance,) had no idea Matthew Shepard was a drug dealer.

Except that he wasn't.

Keep milking dat load.

R174, He was. It was the reason why his family moved.

No it isn't R176 and by the way, his family was not with him in Laramie.

There's nothing wrong with Andrew Sullivan that a well-tossed brick can't cure.

R173 there's no proof he was a dealer. The Laramie cops have already said it's not true.

Sylvia the drag queen started Stonewall.

It's not some secret that Matthew Shepard was a tweaker/meth dealer, male prostitute, sexually abused boys as a teenager, and a total mess. He also knew his killers as they would all use meth together. Matt was murdered not because of being gay, but because of meth and the way his killers thought he had lots of money on him.

Ask anyone in Laramie about this and you will hear the truth, this even includes people who actually really knew him.

You dug up a four-year-old thread to post that? Didn't we already have this same discussion about Shepard on another old thread earlier today? Was that you as well?