Students perform play based on hate crime (A PC gay hate crime).

Students perform play based on hate crime By NAOMI L. JENKINS Bucks County Courier Times

Middletown - Matthew Shepard, 21, had been a University of Wyoming student for only a few months when he was the victim of a hate crime in 1998.

Few in the town of Laramie knew him as well as his former roommate and good friend Romaine Patterson. The two previously lived together in Denver.

She talked publicly about Shepard, who was gay, for three minutes at a vigil the day after he died - five days after the attack.

"Once I got up and spoke about Matthew, my life was changed because the national media had my name, and my phone rang constantly after that," Patterson told drama students at George School in Middletown.

She told the students that if she started crying before the crowd of 5,000 strangers at the vigil, she knew she wouldn't stop, so she fought back the tears.

The George School students have studied and rehearsed for four months for their play, "The Laramie Project,'' based on the murder. The drama recounts Shepard's brutal slaying at the hands of Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson on the outskirts of Laramie, a cattle town in Wyoming.

The two men are serving life sentences for the crime. They met Shepard, who stood just 5 feet, 2 inches tall, in a Laramie bar, pretended to be gay and then lured him to their pickup truck. They drove to a secluded area where they pistol-whipped, burned and robbed him. Shepard was found 18 hours later, tied to a fence and left for dead.

Like a documentary, the play recounts the crime. The actors portray Laramie residents who give their opinions of the attack.

Directed by acting teacher Nelson Camp, students will perform "The Laramie Project" at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the George School's Walton Center.

"I'm honored to be able to play her because I think she's a very, very important person in the play, very courageous, very brave," Debbie said.

"I don't think enough people stand up and talk about an issue like this," Debbie said. "Hopefully they will realize how serious hate crimes are because it's not just somebody else's problem. It affects all of us."

Another student, Alley Mazzullo, 16, said the play is funny at times but poignant and educational.

She portrays a pastor's wife who doesn't condone homosexuality but is horrified by Shepard's murder.

"I think I've learned that even though people are not accepting [of others], they still value life," Alley said. "I want the audience to see there's a ton of different people out there. You can't just discriminate against one group because there are different types of people within that group."

"It's been a powerful experience already," said Carolyn Belle Lyday, a religion teacher and adviser for the school's gay and lesbian club. "It helps people be honest about how they really feel."

Patterson, who lives in Brooklyn, worked for various gay and lesbian activist groups before founding an organization called Angel Action, which holds peaceful demonstrations. She travels the nation giving speeches and is a satellite radio talk show co-host for a 24-hour gay talk channel. Her show is called "Derek and Romaine."

"I love it. I talk to a lot of straight people every day on satellite radio. That is a form of activism that's very new to me," Patterson said.

She told kids she didn't set out to be an activist, she just wanted to do what was right.

"When you hear something that doesn't sit right with you, say something. That's what activism is. You don't have to scream or yell," Patterson said.

Patterson wished she'd have done more of that during her teen years that were especially difficult.

She came "out of the closet" at age 13 in her tiny home town of Ranchester, Wyoming, which has about 670 residents.

"A lot of people I'd known all my life suddenly didn't want to be my friend anymore," she said. "By the time I was 16, I had two bleeding ulcers and I had dropped from 140 pounds to 103. It was so stressful."

Patterson said she wished that instead of ignoring that student, she would have turned and said, " 'That hurts my feelings. You're making me feel bad.' Sometimes people do these things and they don't think about how it feels."

Incidentally I think that it's just as possible that Mathew Sheppard's attackers did it because he was gay AND because they wanted the money, why does it only have to be about one thing?

An excerpt from "New Details Emerge in Matthew Shepard Murder"

"Former Laramie Police Detective Ben Fritzen, one of the lead investigators in the case, also believed robbery was the primary motive. "Matthew Shepard's sexual preference or sexual orientation certainly wasn't the motive in the homicide," he said.
"If it wasn't Shepard, they would have found another easy target. What it came down to really is drugs and money and two punks that were out looking for it," Fritzen said.
Asked directly whether he targeted and attacked Shepard because he was gay, McKinney told Vargas, "No. I did not. … I would say it wasn't a hate crime. All I wanted to do was beat him up and rob him."
But if the attackers were just trying to rob someone to get a drug fix, why did they beat Shepard so savagely?
Rerucha attributes McKinney's rage and his savage beating of Shepard to his drug abuse. "The methamphetamine just fueled to this point where there was no control. It was a horrible, horrible, horrible murder. It was a murder that was once again driven by drugs," Rerucha said.
Dr. Rick Rawson, a professor at UCLA who has studied the link between methamphetamine and violence, tells "20/20" the drug can trigger episodes of violent behavior.
"In the first weeks after you've stopped using it, the kinds of triggers that can set off an episode are completely unpredictable. It can be: you say a word with the wrong inflection, you touch someone on the shoulder. It's completely unpredictable as to what will set somebody off" Rawson said.
"If Aaron McKinney had not become involved with methamphetamine, Matthew Shepard would be alive today," Rerucha said..."

The reality is that we don't know and no amount of so called "evidence" from the man who killed that poor boy is going to convince me either way.

Will testimony from one of the lead investigators in the case convince you? As was pointed out in reply 45 above:

"Former Laramie Police Detective Ben Fritzen, one of the lead investigators in the case, also believed robbery was the primary motive. "Matthew Shepard's sexual preference or sexual orientation certainly wasn't the motive in the homicide," he said.
"If it wasn't Shepard, they would have found another easy target. What it came down to really is drugs and money and two punks that were out looking for it," Fritzen said..."

Just because some political lobby dehumanises someone by making them into a martyr doesn't mean you have to let them.

Precisely. That is why it's important to expose THE LIE OF LARAMIE for what it is - it's 'hate crime' propaganda being spoonfed to the public. This play is proof of that. Don't expect us to remain silent while they spread their propaganda.

Mathew Sheppard, whatever else he was, was a human being and he did not deserve to die, especially not in the way that he did.

I fully agree with you. He was brutally murdered and his killers deserved to be brought to justice. Noone deserves to die the way he did.

I think that's what we should be focusing on here.

Tell that to to homosexual groups who are using his death to further their agenda.

And please spare us your accusations of 'hate' and of being 'homophobes':

An excerpt from "If all else fails, silence them! Homosexuals seek 'thought crime'legislation"

"Homosexual activists cannot win the theological debate, nor will medical science, biology, history or common sense support their deadly, tragic and changeable behavior. So they are reduced to accusing their opponents of "hatred" and silencing those brave enough to speak about the consequences of sexual anarchy on children, the family and society...
The only way homosexual activists can persuade America to validate and enforce their agenda is to suppress the truth about homosexuality. The Rev. Earle Fox, who himself was silenced at the Episcopal ceremony at which openly homosexual bishop Gene Robinson was consecrated, put it this way in a recent letter to the Washington Times:
Honest science and godly love are at one with each other. The aim of homosexual-rights advocates has nothing to do with honest love – it is the public justification and total acceptance of homosexual behavior. If possible, they will coerce this acceptance by so-called hate-crime laws.
But they have sold the public a pig in a poke because they (very understandably) do not want the public to see what it is buying. There has never been a candid, mutually respectful public discussion of the real issue – homosexual behavior – because homosexual advocates cannot afford to discuss such self-destructive behavior in public, and conservatives are almost universally too prudish to do so ...
When that discussion finally happens, as it will, the jig will be up for public acceptance of homosexuality.

So it makes sense for "gay" activists to press for muzzling speakers who might give America a glimpse of what their agenda is really all about..."

An excerpt from "Who’s the Deviant?"

"... This May in Chicago, further evidence of this troubling trend revealed itself at an APA conference workshop: "Is Homophobia a Mental Illness?"—as indeed the use of the term to describe those who disapprove of homosexuality implies. The politicized tenor of the session revealed itself from the outset, when two of the four male panelists kissed each other on the lips immediately prior to the presentations—exhibiting a provocative attitude toward appropriate professional behavior, if nothing else. To the extent one could glean a definition of homophobia from the confused panelists—as a scientific or theoretical discussion, the session didn't rise above the high school level—it seemed to be simply this: to oppose the agenda of homosexual-rights activism, or even to disapprove of homosexual acts means that one is mentally ill..."

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