I, like everyone else, have read and/or seen a production of the Laramie Project. For those of you who have not, I say really! The story is a sad one. In October, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a student a University of Wyoming, in Laramie, Wyomming, was driven from a bar, robbed, brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die. The issue in this case is that Shepard was gay, and his murder was labeled as a hate crime.
In 2000, Stephen Jimenz, an openly gay author, went to Laramie to do research for a screenplay and television movie he wanted to do on Matthew Shepard. “The Book of Matt”, according to Jimenz, was not the story he intended to write. Instead of Shepard being the victim, he claims that Shepard was a crystal meth dealer and addicted user. He also claims that the man that beat Shepard, Aaron McKinney, was his drug dealer and sometimes sex partner. In his book Jimenz claims that McKinney was strung out on methamphetamines and did not beat Shepard to a pulp for being gay but rather to settle a drug score.
The question remains, why all these years later does and should the truth come out? Shepard was brutally beaten and died. Whether it because he was a drug dealer does not negate the tragedy of it all.
Good came out of bad. A voice for gay rights was the result of Shepard’s death. Nothing good would have come from his death if it had been portrayed as a drug fueled killing. Jimenz may be right on the money, or in it to make money, but no good will come from his book, whether completely accurate or not.
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