Matthew Shepard

I often talk about a moment for me.

I was a sophomore when Matthew Shepard was murdered.

It was a very distinct moment for me.

I remember just where I was at the time and what I was feeling and what I was thinking.

wow I didn't know about that

yeah yeah I didn't I didn't either so um there was an element there I'd never even heard of him I mean I've heard of Matthew Shepard who's one of the big kind of like you know stories of a gay man back in I think the 90s that got um brutally attacked and murdered by some other kid other men um but yeah so that was you know so

I found that quite fascinating.

I'm sorry, I'm hitting my wine glass there as it rings in the background.

No, no, no, no, no.

And I'm just thinking, you know, this show was on when Matthew Shepard was killed.

Like this show was on at some of the worst, most homophobic, horrible points in American history.

Right.

But I think that also makes you not look away from the violence that gay people, queer people face, not only in Jamaica at this particular time, but also elsewhere, too.

Like, I think a lot of people will feel resonances with like the kind of, you know, like Matthew Shepard, for example.

So there's lots of ways that this novel is specifically speaking to Jamaica at this time, but also is much broader.

Okay, well, excited to hear this interview.

For most of their run, it was the 1980s.

Seriously, though, between AIDS and gay bashings, you know, Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence and set on fire.

And before that, like gay bars were just raided and people were thrown in jail.

I mean, there has been some real honest shit that went down.

Obama had only endorsed state-by-state marriage equality at that point, but Clyburn said it needed to be nationally, federally protected.

So with the crucial support of Clyburn, the House of Representatives successfully passed the Equality Act, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.

Hate Crimes Prevention Act, successfully repealed Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed DOMA and repeals the Defense of Marriage Act, or excuse me, I already said that, but also requires federal and state governments to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages.

So this guy moves the

It was based on hard experience because violence against gay and lesbian people in that era was real, common and often deadly and frequently went unpunished or under-investigated because of who the victims were.

This was the decade of Matthew Shepard, tortured and left to die on a Wyoming fence in 1998.

It was an era when a gay or lesbian person had every reason to believe that the world contained people who would hurt them simply for existing, and institutions that wouldn't much care.

So when Julie and Lolly were found, the community did the arithmetic it had learned to do in blood.

the fear that gripped people in 1996, the instant, gut-level assumption that two murdered lesbians must have been hunted was built on a mountain of real cases.

Violence against gay and lesbian people in the late 20th century was widespread, and it was frequently lethal, and it was too often met with indifference from the very institutions meant to protect everyone equally.

Think of Matthew Shepard in 1998, a young gay man in Wyoming, beaten and tied to a fence and left to die in the cold, in a killing that finally forced America to confront anti-gay violence and helped drive the expansion of hate crime law years later.

Think of the broader Grimmer, Patton, researchers and advocates documented for decades gay and lesbian people assaulted and murdered at rates far above their share of the population and cases that went unsolved or barely investigated.