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Remembering Matthew Shepard: A Review of October
Mourning and Some Thoughts on Marriage Equality
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2012-12-09 20:01:48
Several years ago, the Albany High School Drama Club chose to perform The Laramie Project as their fall play. For those
not familiar with the play, it explores the final days in the life of Matthew Shepard, the 21-year-old gay college student
murdered by two other 21-year-old men in Laramie, Wyoming in October 1998 because of his sexual orientation. While the
spring musical regularly sells out, the fall play rarely comes close to filling the auditorium. The Laramie Project was the
exception, with tickets selling out at the speed of the ever-popular musicals and thoughtful discussions attended by students,
faculty, parents, and community members following each performance. I was never prouder of my city and its high school
than at that time. [caption id="attachment_3976" align="alignleft" width="415" caption="Cover of October Mourning by
OCTOBER MOURNING
Leslea Newman"] [/caption] Those who have seen or read
The Laramie Project will find much that is familiar in Lesléa Newman’s verse novel October Mourning: A Song for
Matthew Shepard, published this fall by Candlewick, But while the play is based on interviews with Laramie residents and
testimony during the murder trial of Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, Newman’s novel gives voice to the inanimate
objects—such as the fencepost to which the battered young man was tied for 18 hours (“I held him all night long / He was
heavy as a broken heart”)—and the creatures who may have witnessed his lonely suffering—deer, birds, and small animals.
While Newman also includes fictionalized musings of Shepard himself, as well as the bartender who was the last person
who saw him, the two murderers, their girlfriends, and Shepard’s parents and friends, the non-human witnesses are perhaps
the most powerful. They testify eloquently to the young man’s loneliness and suffering, and they express bewilderment at
the peculiar cruelty of the human animal. Equally powerful is Newman’s own story. A prominent LGBTQ rights activist and
the author of the ground-breaking picture book Heather Has Two Mommies, published in 1989, she was slated to speak as
part of the University of Wyoming’s Gay Pride Week in mid-October, 1998. She arrived in Laramie just hours after
Shepard’s death. She recounts her decision to go ahead with her speech and the reaction she received from the university’s
embattled LGBTQ community, now further shaken by the horrific murder of one of their own. Much has changed since
1998 in terms of LGBTQ rights in the United States. Last month’s election saw the approval of same-sex marriage in three
states—Maine, Maryland and Washington—and the defeat in Minnesota of an amendment to the state constitution that
would define marriage as between one man and one woman. With a newly elected Democratic majority in Minnesota’s state
House and Senate, as well as a governor who supports marriage equality, that state may soon join Connecticut, the District
of Columbia, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington in performing
same-sex weddings. Next year, the United States Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the Defense of
Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8; the overturning of one or both of these will allow broader recognition of same-
sex marriages. Changes in the United States mirror worldwide trends, as Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Belgium,
Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and some jurisdictions of Brazil and Mexico
currently perform and recognize same-sex marriages. As we look back on Matthew Shepard’s life, we see a courageous
young man whose openness and sacrifice helped to pave the way for LGBTQ persons to enjoy the same rights as everyone
else. Author Newman has also played an important role as a pioneer who took major risks to come out publicly in the 1970s,
to write and seek a mainstream publisher for Heather Has Two Mommies, and to speak out for peace and understanding
following the violence in Laramie. [caption id="attachment_3978" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Wedding
Front, lego creation by Lyn Miller-Lachmann, "Years from now, children will look upon same-sex marriage as no different
from opposite-sex marriage and they will wonder what all the fuss was about.""]
[/caption] Years from now, our
children will look on these struggles and wonder what all the fuss was about, just as young people today read books about
LGBTQ characters and wonder what the fuss over Heather Has Two Mommies was about. But it’s important to remember
that people once struggled and died for the rights that we now take for granted.
