From CNN at this hour:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Judy Shepard stood before a massive crowd at the Capitol on Sunday for a single, painful reason. "I'm here today because I lost my son to hate."

Not to misconduct, not to murderous assholes, and certainly not to a drug deal gone wrong. She blames an emotion.

>>>Not to misconduct, not to murderous assholes, and certainly not to a drug deal gone wrong. She blames an emotion.

Seriously, how perfect is this! Legislation to prosecute a mindset handed to officials who prosecute the law based on public sentiment that far too often is often over emotional, ignorant and/or flawed. Just super!

The canadian thing coupled with the hate crime legislation thing coupled with the MSM we have......it's the ultra liberal thought police dream come true.

I'm not sure why people seem to think that hate crime legislation punishes thought as if this were some new, draconian measure unheard of and must be opposed, least we wake up one day in (George Orwell's) 1984.

Laws punish thought, and always have. If I'm speeding down the street and I run someone over, what distinguishes murder from manslaughter? Did I know the guy? Did I hate him? From this, intent is inferred.

Now, change the scenario a bit. Assume the guy is black and as I bear down on him, I'm screaming, "Die! You goddamned NIGGER!"

Wouldn't this settle in your mind whether I was guilty of manslaughter or murder?

It makes hate crime legislation, which I am against, seem less like something unheard of and more like a logical progression. Our judicial system punishes thought, and always did. If it takes policing thought to determine whether I committed murder or manslaughter, I'm all for it.

However it's been determined that someone murdered me, you don't get to tack on five years to his life sentence (which I know seems like a logical absurdity) because we've learned he hates gays.

@Patrick: "Wouldn't this settle in your mind whether I was guilty of manslaughter or murder?"

It would make intent pretty clear -- whether it was an accidental or a deliberate act. However, it didn't take policing anybody's thought to do that. Your own mouth did that, as long as the way you drove was consistent with deliberately running someone over.

I think we're talking about something less clear-cut here, though, especially when somebody can become a crime victim merely by claiming to be one, and accuse you of a crime merely by choosing to take offense.

Crid writes: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Judy Shepard stood before a massive crowd at the Capitol on Sunday for a single, painful reason. "I'm here today because I lost my son to hate."

Not to misconduct, not to murderous assholes, and certainly not to a drug deal gone wrong. She blames an emotion.

Crid, what drug deal gone wrong? I read the link you provided, but it attributed their actions to heavy drug use, not because Matthew Shepard sold them some bad dope or something.

By the way, Price's comments provided by that Wikipedia entry were (I can't resist this) priceless.

Price, in her interview with Vargas, ultimately openly remarked, "I do not think it was a hate crime at all. I never did."[2] This statement contradicted Price's first interview with 20/20 in 1998, in which she said (of McKinney and Henderson's attack), "They just wanted to beat him bad enough to teach him a lesson, not to come on to straight people, and don’t be aggressive about it anymore.”

Of course. It's standard practice to beat someone to a terminal coma because he hits on you, and you're not the right orientation. Homophobia doesn't enter into that at all. I suppose it's unreasonable to expect a person to simply say, "No, thanks. Not interested," or even "Fuck off, you damned faggot!"

Apparently, a beating is in order.

That aside, I wish they would let Matthew Shepard rest in peace already. I get the fact that he's the definitive poster-boy for gay hate-crimes. He was an innocuous-looking, peaceful college student, who weighed all of a 105 pounds soaking wet, beset by two thugs at 180+ pounds each, but it was eleven years ago.

Completely, completely off topic here, but I was curious if Amy or anyone else had read "Girl Crazy" in the newest issue of Elle? I'm starting to think that if you can find a a sympathetic Internet chat board, you have a your very own syndrome.

URL is here:
http://www.elle.com/Life-Love/Society-Career-Power/Girl-Crazy-Women-Who-Suffer-from-Gender-Disappointment

Patrick,
I think you've at least partly supplied your own answer to your legitimate query about WHY Matthew Shepard's body won't stay quietly buried.

You wrote: Crid, what drug deal gone wrong? I read the link you provided, but it attributed their actions to heavy drug use, not because Matthew Shepard sold them some bad dope or something.

For various odd reasons, the notion that Matthew Shepard's killing wasn't really because he was gay still has juice.

It would be very foolish to try to stick any drug deal in with hate crime legislation, regardless of what was said.

This is giving ammo to the ones who want it passed.

Canada has regretted on amny levels Section 13 of the HR act. and I think you should call, write, protest to ensure that the US ends up with similar laws.

The problem with "hate crimes" is that whatever is the most recent 'fashionable minority group' they get to dictate what is hate.

The Canadian human rights act was of course not about 'rights' per se - at least not YOUR rights. It's about the right of the state to interlope on private personal business, opinion and public discourse with politically motivated thought and speech codes. This is a very soviet idea but the sovietization of Canadian administrative law needed a beach head somewhere. What better place to implement a soviet-styled thought and speech conformity enforcement commissariat than under the fluffy-bunny Orwellian moniker of 'human rights'.

Yes you're right the whole thing is very creepy if you give it any more than casual thought.

I do think this is one of those cases where a few extreme incidents are reported as some sort of growing trend-like the "Opt-Out Revolution" of wealthy, Ivy League-educated career women leaving their jobs to stay with their kids. The article profiled three or four women, while ignoring that statistically, there was never any such 'revolution.'

But I think it's indicative of a larger selfishness that seems particularly rampant among wealthy, educated post-feminist women. It's not really about the baby, it's about the woman's fantasy. Which is why they're dissatisfied with the kids they have (real people so often just don't cooperate!) and shuffle off husbands as soon as they don't feel fulfilled, loved, happy, what have you. I feel terrible for the children of these women, though.

I'm not sure why people seem to think that hate crime legislation punishes thought

The concern is that it criminalizes thought. It establishes conceptualization as the defining act of the crime. The examples you cite apply to sentencing, where intent amplifies the penalty for the underlying crime, which is defined independently - e.g. your example is a form of murder, the crime is murder, not contemplation of murder.

TW whines: 'Laws punish thought, and always have."

...Heh, maybe wrong thought and outlawed emotions are punished in the may active tyrannies which exist today but never in free constitutional democracies under rule of law.

The law punishes only actions. Once the action is proven to be unlawful the degree of punishment is determined by making the prosecutor PROVE there was intent (mens rea).

Hate is a normal reflexive emotion everyone has, if it is outlawed we will all be guilty of a state crime to some degree. The Concept of outlawing a common emotion is the realm of morbid utopianism.

TW didn't say "Laws punish thought, and always have." I did.

And while I don't mean that to suggest that you can be arrested for thinking, or even saying certain things. But intent is a huge part in determining the nature of a crime. In the examples I gave, it distinguishes a mere accident from murder.

What is intent but the thought behind the action? Ergo, laws punish thought.

"I'm not sure why people seem to think that hate crime legislation punishes thought"

There is another aspect to this. Not only can adding "hate crime" add years to a sentence, it is also possible to be prosecuted for the "hate" alone.

Suppose that someone considers all Elbonians to be idiots, and starts shouting this in public, puts up posters to that effect, etc. One might think this is free speech, but that would be incorrect. If the Elbonians claim to be terribly offended, in an increasing number of countries, this can be prosecuted as a crime.

If this is not already the case in the USA, bet that it soon will be. All it takes is a couple of enthusiastic prosecutors.

No Patrick. Back down from trying to defend your statement and analyze the semantics. You're blending several concepts that are actually distinct.

For instance, laws don't punish anything, sentences do.

crimes are distinct from charges.

And the nature of a crime is defined by acts, not intent.

Are we still worried about Orwell's Big Brother? I wasn't sure, what with people tweeting every single thought that wafts through their minds out there for everyone to read, or putting everything they do on Youtube. And, of course, crying when it comes back to bite them on the ass, "Those pictures were private!" Hee-hee, I love it.

As for hate crimes:

I wonder,if there's some form of comfort or satisfaction in hearing a criminal say "You're right, I admit it. I killed your kid because he was gay." Or black. Or drove a SUV instead of a Pious. Oops, Prius.

Tacking on an additional amount of time for a hate-crime conviction seems very empty and meaningless to me.

The concept of thought-crime brings another George Carlin routine to mind. "You had to wannahhh!" You had to want to feel Marylou up, think about feeling her up, plan to feel her up--anyway it amounted to seven sins in one feel.

One could think the concept of thought-crime was a Catholic thing. Is that a thought crime?

>>And the nature of a crime is defined by acts, not intent.

Max,
Not remotely trolling - but I don't see why Patrick's point about "intent" doesn't apply to defining the nature of a crime.

Even if you protest you had no intention of killing a person and that it was all a terrible accident, the prosecution may offer compelling evidence to prove intent. And thereby, surely, change the nature of the crime committed from unlawful killing to murder (to whatever varying degree)?

> For various odd reasons, the
> notion that Matthew Shepard's
> killing wasn't really because he
> was gay still has juice.

And some not-so-odd reasons. Americans know the odor of scam juice.

Know who I really like? Camille Paglia. She knows more, and has reason to care more, about homosexuality than I do.

Paglia #1—
___________

The atrocious beating death and exposure of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming (for which I, as a longtime proponent of capital punishment, of course demand the death penalty) demonstrates once again the dramatic differences between gay men and lesbians -- the point of your question.

Completely missing from the major media's avalanche of formulaic liberal outrage was any reference to the gay-male practice of cruising, which is constantly going on with indefatigable energy virtually everywhere in the industrialized world. Rock star George Michael's arrest in a Hollywood public toilet in April this year was quickly suppressed by the major media and given significant coverage in the United States only by the tabloids. Despite the recent turn by some gay male writers toward reexamination of gay hedonism, the issue remains unconfronted by gay organizations and their media supporters, who dismiss or deride Christian conservatives' claim that there is a negative "gay lifestyle."

Thanks partly to the flock of posturing Hollywood personalities who swooped in on the case, Shepard's death was immediately transmogrified into a moral parable of sweet, saintly gay boy set upon by bigoted thugs and crucified for his homosexuality. But the truth seems to be (from the scanty evidence thus far) that Shepard was attracted to his assailants because they were thugs. Does anyone really believe that Shepard, educated in Switzerland, thought those two, barely literate hoodlums were gay or that he left the bar with them for cozy tea and conversation?

It used to be called "rough trade" -- the dangerous, centuries-old practice of gay men picking up grimy, testosterone-packed straight or semi-straight toughs, sometimes moonlighting as hustlers. Before Stonewall, urban newspaper obituaries were coded for such typical scenarios as "the 49-year-old unmarried antiques dealer was found bound and gagged in his ransacked, lavishly furnished apartment." These grisly spectacles are unheard of in lesbianism, where incidents of assault and battery seem dully limited to actual lovers (women can't cut the apron strings, even when masquerading as S/M chains).

Gay activism, by tilting too much toward politics, has ended up obscuring basic psychology -- which novice gays like Shepard desperately need. Rainbow flags and upbeat slogans about "tolerance" are not going to help a frail, confused young man in dark encounters with sociopaths. Gay activism is as spiritually undeveloped and lacking in common sense about human nature as feminism was in the period of date-rape hysteria in the late 1980s and early 1990s (one of the long battles that my reform wing of feminism finally won in the U.S., though date-rape propaganda still seethes in backwater British feminism).

Hate-crimes legislation -- which I have consistently opposed as a fascist intrusion into constitutionally protected, dissident thought -- would not have protected Matthew Shepard, whose assailants were low-rent outlaws and whom the bombastic excesses of gay activism lulled into a false sense of security about the world. No law will ever fully protect gay men who pick up strangers.

Cruising isn't love; it's hunting -- where the stalker can suddenly become the prey. This game is sensationally exciting, but it comes with heavy risks, including death. As a lesbian with a male brain, I see the hypnotic allure of cruising and have indeed celebrated it as gay men's heroic act of defiance against (as D.H. Lawrence would put it) home and mother and everything in morality and custom that enslaves the sex impulse.

But let's get real. On the biological level, constant cruising illustrates Mother Nature's profound sex differences: Men do it, and women don't. On the psychological level, cruising shows that gay men are perpetually hungry for a masculinity that should reside confidently within them but clearly does not. What exactly was Matthew Shepard looking for when, after living in Europe and on the East Coast, he returned to his father's macho alma mater at the University of Wyoming? What symbolic family drama of reconciliation or profanation was at work? Until gay activism gets some psychological depth (available to us through great literature and art), it will have nothing persuasive to say about gay life.

Conservative Christianity is not the cause of gay problems. On the contrary, the present religious extremism about homosexuality is the direct result of the major media's 20-year-long liberal stranglehold on gay issues, which have been simplistically framed as a conflict between enlightened, humane tolerance and reactionary, redneck repression.

Paglia #2—
___________

[T]he trial of the second man charged with last year's murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming has been treated with blatant manipulation of the news by the liberal major media. As I wrote in my column immediately after that tragedy, the issue of exciting but dangerous gay-male cruising for stranger sex cannot be avoided in this case. But despite even the public warning by Shepard's mother that "Matt was not a saint," a censored and sanitized version of the fatal evening is being promulgated by newscasters in lockstep with gay activist groups.

It's now a simplistic melodrama of virtue versus villainy, as if Shepard -- who had a history of two known incidents that ended violently and who had just the prior week confessed to a fear of being killed -- had been ambushed and kidnapped from the bar because he was gay. Human nature is complex: Shepard, who had traveled abroad, was drawn to his assailants, I suspect, precisely because they were scuzzy punks whose look and manner fairly screamed trouble.

What happened to Matthew Shepard was brutal and barbaric, and as a supporter of capital punishment, I want his killers to fry. (One has already been sentenced to two consecutive life terms.) Both Alison and I have long been in favor of bringing torture back, which I argue would not fall under the rubric of "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited by the Eighth Amendment if it were a strict replication of the suffering that had been inflicted on the victim -- heinous in this muddled, boozy case but even more atrocious in cold-blooded, precisely planned serial rape-murders of the Ted Bundy kind.

But it does not help the cause of gay rights to pump the public discourse full of intelligence-insulting schmaltz over exceptional incidents. Hate crimes legislation -- that fascist exercise in thought control -- will never make cruising 100 percent safe, particularly not when "rough trade" is involved, a walk on the wild side with besmirched archangels whose zap of primal energy is one step from savagery. To erase the questing, provocative, limits-testing, and even irrational (because id-driven) element in gay-male cruising is a form of castration -- which the glorified nurses and pious hand-holders of the gay activist hierarchy know very well how to do.

[...]

There are serious flaws in the sanctimonious iconography that gay rights groups have been fixated on for the past half-dozen years. Is the small, frail, vulnerable Matthew Shepard (who had health problems from birth) really the ideal image of the gay man to be projected to the mass audience? And doesn't the constant parading of all-forgiving mothers -- whether it's Judy Shepard, Cher or Betty DeGeneres -- simply reinforce the impression that contemporary American homosexuality is a condition of whining juvenility aching for parental approval?

Max writes: And the nature of a crime is defined by acts, not intent.

Most of your stuff seems to be hooked on semantics, but I had to address this, because it's 100% wrong. I could spray someone with HIV infected blood and be charged with attempted murder. Never mind that HIV has a 0% chance of infecting someone in this manner. Intent determined the crime.

Crid, this will positively underwhelm you in shock value, but Camille Paglia isn't worth the bandwidth to vent her opinions.

She has a tendency to make her assertions sans evidence...sounds like someone I know. In fact she more or less admits this about herself in the very article you posted.

She writes: Thanks partly to the flock of posturing Hollywood personalities who swooped in on the case, Shepard's death was immediately transmogrified into a moral parable of sweet, saintly gay boy set upon by bigoted thugs and crucified for his homosexuality. But the truth seems to be (from the scanty evidence thus far) that Shepard was attracted to his assailants because they were thugs. Does anyone really believe that Shepard, educated in Switzerland, thought those two, barely literate hoodlums were gay or that he left the bar with them for cozy tea and conversation?

I know of no one that claimed that Matthew Shepard was "saintly," but that didn't stop Paglia to assert that he was regarded as a saint. In fact, to the best of my recollection, from the very beginning, Shepard went with this guys precisely because he was hoping for a good roll in the sack.

I find the sentence I bolded especially interesting. She has no trouble whatsoever asserting something is "truth" after admitting that the evidence is "scanty."

Can no one see the logical disconnect in this poor woman's brain? She has made an unproven assertion that goes against what I remember of this incident, combines it with "scanty" evidence (which she does not produce) and from this, she arrives at "truth."

How special.

Don't pout.

Paglia is great (though listening to her is exhausting)! I was always too much of a wuss to say (to anyone around here but my husband) that my main problem with Shepard's case was that he was happy and willing to go off with a couple of strangers.

If he had been robbed and roughed up, I would have chalked it up to experience with the same lack of sympathy I have for girls who go to frathouse parties and then scream rape.

Crid, Master of Projection writes: Don't pout.

In his customary manner, Crid feels the need to bring the argument to the person when anyone pokes holes in his thinking or in the thinking of those he admires. Crid, I hope that someday you learn to handle being proven wrong with better grace.

The fact remains that the woman arrived at an unfounded conclusion, and was brazen enough to admit it. And from there, she pontificates exhaustively.

For your amusement:

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/535278

Last year, 8 Somali immigrant women were fired from their jobs at a UPS sorting plant in Toronto, for violating safety rules. UPS was worried that they would break their necks if they kept climbing up & down ladders in the tents they insisted on wearing. They went to their mosque. Their mosque hauled UPS before the Human Rights Tribunal on charges of "islamophobia". A little investigation revealed that the mosque's website & sermons were chock-full of pure hatred towards "wicked women", infidels, Jews, Canadians in general, & anyone who wasn't a proper pious Muslim. No one thought of bringing the mosque before the HRC for spreading hatred.

Please keep in mind that the question of what is or is not "hate" will be decided based solely on the whims of unaccountable bureaucrats. If you dare to write in your blog that you believe marriage is meant to be between a man & a woman, you will be hauled in on charges of homophobia. But homosexuality is punishable by the death penalty in several Muslim countries, and there are imams in every western country preaching that all homosexuals should be executed. But none of them will ever be brought to court. On the contrary, if you protest anything they say, YOU will end up facing a Human Rights Commission on charges of islamophobia.

Most of your stuff seems to be hooked on semantics, but I had to address this, because it's 100% wrong. I could spray someone with HIV infected blood and be charged with attempted murder. Never mind that HIV has a 0% chance of infecting someone in this manner. Intent determined the crime.

Come on Patrick. Are you really do dense?

The crime is the transfer of blood with knowledge of contamination - e.g. during sex or via injection. I don't think that anyone's ever been prosecuted for attempted murder for spraying contaminated blood on someone. Only a few states even allow for this possibility. (see: http://www.lambdalegal.org/our-work/publications/general/state-criminal-statutes-hiv.html)

And in any case, this crime is predicated on the act of transfer w/ foreknowledge, not intent.

I'm not going to bother arguing with you any longer. You're either an idiot, or being deliberately obtuse.

Max writes: I'm not going to bother arguing with you any longer.

Thank you. I intend to hold you to that promise. Bye now.

>>What exactly was Matthew Shepard looking for when, after living in Europe and on the East Coast, he returned to his father's macho alma mater at the University of Wyoming?

Crid,

Could you and/or Paglia POSSIBLY pack more sleazy nudge-nudge, wink-wink innuendo into the information that Matthew Shepherd had once been "living in Europe"???

I see it is also apparently worth juxtaposing - sez Paglia -that this young man had specifically been "educated in Switzerland" before returning to Texas.

The implication is that Matthew Shepherd was frightening the thuggish locals with some especially effete European sexual depravity! Provocative erotic yodelling, perhaps?

But that's not the nastiest part.

You, Crid, suggest Paglia is to be trusted because Camille Paglia: "...knows more, and has reason to care more, about homosexuality than I do."

But Paglia immediately draws our attention to an important distinction:

"These grisly spectacles are unheard of in lesbianism".

So she has no reason to "care" for Matthew Shepherd any more than you!

Though I note Paglia also asserts that she personally is a "lesbian with a male brain".

Only an autopsy could prove this amazing fact. The sooner the better. Frankly.

Warning, Jody, Crid is now going to try to make the discussion about you personally, probably about some unsavory aspect of your childhood that didn't happen...on the subject of innuendo.

Finding fault with his statements is just so unforgivable to him.

> sleazy nudge-nudge, wink-wink
> innuendo

Fer shit's sake, child.... That you –even as a (properly! understandably!) twitchy & defensive European– could read that passage as an indictment of Continental mores is preposterous. Quite the opposite: For a youth of his background to travel and study as he did made him, at least for that part of his life, one of the most cosmopolitan and sophisticated Americans of his generation. This would almost certainly include his erotic awareness... Why would we doubt it?

> before returning to Texas.

You mean Wyoming. Golly, Jody, that was kind of how people in the United States confuse Sweden and Switzerland... Except that you love the United States of America enough to live here. You might be expected to recognize, and care about, the difference.

> So she has no reason to "care"
> for Matthew Shepherd any more
> than you!

I didn't say she cared for Matthew Sheperd, as I said she cares about homosexuality more than I do. She cares more about what it means to people and how its impact is conveyed through media.

> autopsy could prove this amazing
> fact. The sooner the better.

Well meeeee-yow! Paglia's always spoken highly of your work.

Besides....

> Frankly.

Aren't you always frank? We'd hate to think we've been reading less than your best all these years.
______________

Amazing, amazing the things that people choose first to comment on. Nobody's even said anything about the torture passage.

Hey finally a case I have some insider knowledge of. I graduated from the University of Wyoming. I know many people very familiar with the case, and I even know the prosecutor. I also am friends with a former prison guard who had contact with these two in prison. He said one of the convicted men was at least bi sexual if not out and out gay. There was a lot more going on than the national news wanted people to know. Because "hapless loving gay guy killed in red neck town by a couple of gay phobic thugs" reads so much better than the complicated fact pattern. In order not to get the death penalty, the defendants stipulated to a lot of things that were probably less than true. Laramie is actually a very friendly, deluded, ivory tower liberal town which votes overwhelmingly democratic. But of course, that "does not fit the narrative" Isabel

>>You mean Wyoming. Golly

God, that was an embarrassing blunder! Thanks.

>>She cares more about what it means to people and how its impact is conveyed through media.

Rot. Paglia's words make it clear that what she wants to convey is that these "grisly spectacles" don't occur in lesbian circles.

>>For a youth of his background to travel and study as he did made him, at least for that part of his life, one of the most cosmopolitan and sophisticated Americans of his generation. This would almost certainly include his erotic awareness... Why would we doubt it?

Because it's prurient speculation for which there's "scant evidence..."? Because you don't have a clue HOW his travels specifically affected his "erotic awareness"?

Y'know what I find "amazing, amazing", Crid?

That just yesterday you so tenderly wrote: "I think you need to make as many allowances as absolutely possible for that things that get said when people die."

And today you find it worth mocking Judy Shepard's choice of words about her son's hideous death.

You're the one here throwing mud in the graveyard.

Though I cringe that I put the graveyard in the wrong state.

From yesterday:

"Look, if you guys continue to be so broad-minded, we're never going to have any rewarding fisticuffs in here..."

Happy now?

luv yoo pp

> God, that was an embarrassing
> blunder! Thanks.

Naw, it's nothing. Don't worry about it... We're cool.

> what she wants to convey is that
> these "grisly spectacles" don't
> occur in lesbian circles.

Insight = ? That's not only what she wants to convey, is exactly what she does convey, and in about as many words. So far as I know, she's right, too. I've never heard of female barflies doing to another woman what those monsters did to Shepard.

I think Paglia cares about homosexuality a lot, and I think she cares about being a lesbian in ways that she doesn't care about being a gay man. For about the third time in seven days, I have zero idea what argument you're trying to make... All I know is that something simple has you stumbling badly. Ancient African proverb: Look where you tripped, not where you fell.

> you don't have a clue HOW his
> travels specifically affected
> his "erotic awareness"?

Absolutely true. We might surmise they didn't do enough for it, mightn't we? Or are you arguing that no good comes from exotic education? I'm with Paglia on this.

> today you find it worth mocking
> Judy Shepard's choice of
> words

Goddamn right I do. Goddamn right I do... Though for the record, I didn't mock her. Merely quoting her precisely was enough to confuse you about that, which is instructive.

'Sbeen eleven years. I wasn't especially moved by his death. I didn't go to his funeral, I had no intimacy with his family, so I wasn't going to say something goofy at the services in any case.

Except that more than a decade later, his mother has brought the services to me, and to my nation's capital, and to the earliest headlines of a slutty little news page I like to browse. (I didn't even have to follow the link to find that quotation.)

This isn't about a clumsy moment in a shared feeling of loss. I didn't know this guy any better than I knew anyone else who died in 1998, i.e., well enough to say "That poor sap...."

But now this woman wants to offer this aging grief as license to counsel me about the nature of evil feelings.

NO. FUCK THAT.

I know nothing about her at all, or of the father of her son. All I know is that the judgment of their boy was cloudy indeed.

Well, thanks for your thoughts, Mama Shepard, but I think his death was about other things. If you don't want to look those things in the eye, I won't insist, but stay out of my way, OK?

> Though I cringe that I put the
> graveyard in the wrong state.

Seriously, Jody, let it go. You'll do better next time, we're sure of it.

Release the hounds!

(For the record, pp is my father's nickname. For Poopdeck Pappy.)

Aha, so we are doing the twist today, Crid!
Goodie, I know the steps.

You say: "Though for the record, I didn't mock her. Merely quoting her precisely was enough to confuse you about that, which is instructive."

For the record, you quoted her, then mocked her.

You used a ten-word quote; then you mocked those ten words for precisely what she didn't say at all.

Then you crowed at your own cleverness.
Which took YOU a total of 20 words, twice as many as Judy Shepard's original quote!

You say: "I know nothing about her at all, or of the father of her son. All I know is that the judgment of their boy was cloudy indeed."

No one is pretending you know anything about this. Least of all you.

But here are you claiming that you "know" their judgment of their son is "cloudy".

How so?

Since you just admitted you're a Know Nothing?

As you say, it's been over a decade.

Time enough to let your queasy interest in Matthew Shepard's so-called erotic education slink away, I would have thought?

>>Absolutely true. We might surmise they didn't do enough for it, mightn't we? Or are you arguing that no good comes from e[r]otic education? I'm with Paglia on this.

You love this silly trick in debate, doncha?

I must try it. Here goes - "or are you saying your lack of ballet lessons explains the way you are today, Crid?"

The brutality and ugliness of Shepard's murder is beyond question, just as Pier Paolo Pasolini's was. What IS - apparently - in question is the truth, inasmuch as one particular identity-group effectively demands the excision-at-gunpoint of actual real-world context through which events may be understood. Frankly, it's too much to ask..

It's a strange and ongoing part of our political times that someone who wishes to merely assert the truth - "just the facts, ma'am" - in the context of certain hot-button issues is turned into a straw-man soaked in accelerant. It's important that we have courageous people like Paglia - even if the word "courage" is merely an after-the-fact description of honesty -- who understand that it is through facts -- details, the truth - that we come to understand how the real world works. For a reason I haven't figured out yet, the people who don't cede *any* ground to the demands of particular, time-bound political narratives tend overwhelmingly to be women. Maybe the lack of fist-culture when they're growing up makes them feel safer to tell unpleasant truths, or maybe they're freed up to some extent by their opinions as women don't make them as dangerous to others. I'm not sure, but I think that if a prominent male public figure wrote Paglia's column verbatim, he'd certainly be under a lot more attack than she typically is.

Again - to be clear - Shepard was an undeserving victim of two thugs, and girls who go to frathouse parties to get passed-out drunk don't deserve to be raped, and the frat-boys who rape them should go to jail. The issue that Paglia and some of the commenters here address is this constantly asserted "right" to rewrite narratives in the interests of constructing a fairy-tale around identity-group victims. If I - as, say, a gay Asian man - bitch-slap a woman in a restaurant for no reason, and then hubby beats me to death with a chair, I certainly don't deserve to die. But if an after-the-fact narrative, insisted-upon under penalty of victim group excoriation, has me reading the bible and smiling beatifically at elderly patrons when a man approached me out of the blue and beat me to death, no one is being done a favor, and no sound lesson, other than that of sanctification by victimhood, is being learned.

Jody.

Your sentences.

They're getting short.

Like you're being squeezed.

But there's been no mockery. I quoted Mama Shepard from the CNN story precisely. (I was worried that I'd only pulled the earlier quote from the front page squib line, where I first took offense, and that might have been condensed, after all. But nope, I quoted the real deal.) There's been no misrepresentation: She really said that shit. I want it clearly understood that I think her rhetoric is stupid. Mission accomplished?

> No one is pretending you know
> anything about this. Least of
> all you.

Geez, I thought everyone agreed that he went off to spend time with guys he shouldn't have gone off with. No?

> You love this silly trick in
> debate, doncha?

WHAT FUCKING TRICK, Jody?

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU CRID?

You say you didn't mock her words, after you said TWICE that "goddamit - I did!"

>>Geez, I thought everyone agreed that he went off to spend time with guys he shouldn't have gone off with. No?

Sure, he should NOT have accepted a lift home with those guys, as it turned out. Sure. I TOTALLY AGREE.

But why do YOU suspect you know better that what Matthew Shepard really wanted was a rough trade thrill that night?

Where is your evidence for THAT being his motivation to "spend time with the guys," rather than a lift?

So far, all you have is your opinion that the lad must have picked up some sort of erotic education in Europe.

Or have I missed something?

I thought the reference to Europe education (erotic or not) being an example that Shepard wasn't a naive school boy/saint.

The point is, the media likes to play up the victim angle or the evildoer angle to sell copy and or push agendas. Thus its very wise to take these cases with a huge grain of salt today.

We saw that with the Duke Lacrosse case. IIRC, one of the 3 player charged had gotten in a fight in a club/bar with a gay dude who claimed it was gay hate by the player that started the fight. He said, he said.

Another example relevent to the HRC in Canada was the comedian who heckled back at a lesbian couple at a stand up comedy club. They started it (they were drunk and making out in public) and the comedian rolled with it. The HRC took up the lesbian's claim it was gay bashing, The only thing the comedian did physically was knock off a pair of sunglasses when they gals came up to him afterwards IIRC.

You say you didn't mock her words, after you said TWICE that "goddamit - I did!"

No, he says twice that goddamit, he does find her words worth mocking, but not that he actually mocks them.

> after you said TWICE that
> "goddamit - I did!"

No, go back and look it up. (Use your computer "mouse.") I said I COULD have, and might well have if the breeze had been going the other way this morning. Why are you obsessed with this?

Listen, if she's mocked or merely discredited, WUT-EVAR. She's wrong, if only for saying silly things as if they were profound and instructive. The fact that something inexcusable happened to her doesn't doesn't mean we need accord special interest to her pouty insights about misconduct.

(Hey, wasn't that your theme a couple weeks ago, too? And how did that work out? Can we imagine any kind of compensation to Mama Shepard for coming down to DC to speak? Not that I know of any... Her silliness was the sort of thing that comes to people unbidden. But I'm learning to recognize the orthogonal power of your fascinations, Jody.... You're like a divining rod, only bent.)

> But why do YOU suspect you know
> better that what Matthew Shepard
> really wanted was a rough trade
> thrill that night?

Better than who? Or "that" what? You're absolutely right, he might have had all the interpersonal sexual judgment of a second grader. Again, I didn't know him, and even now don't care enough to study his life carefully. We know that this was a guy who in youth was able to move safely through deeply foreign cultures. It seems wildly improbable to me that he was a sexual naïf... But if he was, then you'll still have to explain what happened. I've known plenty of people, children and growing teens and others, who were not very sophisticated about sex. But they were able to keep themselves out of positions where their sexual identity would cause them to be overpowered.

So, like, what happened, Jody? Little guy wanted a ride home, got strung up?

> So far, all you have is your
> opinion that the lad must have
> picked up some sort of erotic
> education in Europe.

More than that, but if only that, I'd still have felt free to comment as I have.

> Or have I missed something?

Y'know, a truly gifted practitioner of the Snot Arts would take an opportunity like this to beat you like barnyard animal. But I got nuthin'.
___________________________

I'm starting to think many commenters here have weird ideas about what it would mean to walk a mile in someone's shoes... As if any experience –be it mundane or distinctive– instantly insulates one from the judgment of the surrounding culture. It's like a freaky twist on the Golden Rule somehow, with a dripping liquid of Reality TV on top, as the special sauce.

>>Can we imagine any kind of compensation to Mama Shepard for coming down to DC to speak? Not that I know of any...

Yes "we" can imagine an emotional compensation for the mother of Matthew Shepard marking the anniversary of his death by talking publicly. You mean you can't?

>>We know that this was a guy who in youth was able to move safely through deeply foreign cultures.

These "deeply foreign cultures" would include the young man's alma mater The American School in Switzerland where he finished high school, would they?

>>I've known plenty of people, children and growing teens and others, who were not very sophisticated about sex. But they were able to keep themselves out of positions where their sexual identity would cause them to be overpowered.

I count my own occasionally unsophisticated sons - aged 19 & 21 - among those so far safely self-protective.

But I hope I never come across as a callous git about a young man who died horribly because his judgment one night was wanting.

Speaking of anguished moms, Dylan Klebold's mother has written an essay.

And Maurice Sendak tells scared parents to go to hell! Now there's free speech.

> his judgment one night was
> wanting.

As much concession as our present disagreement could ever require. (He was lost to monsters, after all.) But if you ever want to talk about why, I'm pretty sure that would be good for a few more rounds. It would be fun for you! You know much more about this feller's life than I do:

> the young man's alma mater The
> American School in Switzerland

You make it sound like the Casper of the Alps, with a McDonald's, 'n all the comforts of home!

> Yes "we" can imagine an emotional
> compensation

OK, just checking. After all that talk about the emotions of the Polanski victim, it turned out her compensation was not so much about the interiors of life.

> I hope I never come across as a
> callous git

And I hope never to be thought of as a mechanized tear-valve, a weeping machine for distant figures whose lives (and deaths) might otherwise offer instruction.

Turns out you it's close enough to walk to after class! Bike ride, worst case.

>>After all that talk about the emotions of the Polanski victim, it turned out her compensation was not so much about the interiors of life.

Sez YOU and your hyena heart, Crid.

Yes. Sez me. We're trading beliefs here, right?

>>We're trading beliefs here, right?

Yup, the ones that reveal our interior lives.

Never cluck, even if you're a hen.

>>Never cluck, even if you're a hen.

Is that why you crow the whole time?

Meeee-yow AGAIN.

Jody, WHAT DO YOU WANT? What the woman said was foolish.

It's stupid to speak as you have, implying that this could happen to anyone. It doesn't happen to just anyone. The guy's behavior was an important, if small, component of the event. (Perhaps a trivial component: Anybody wants to make that case, go ahead.) Other people, even people who aren't clever, are able to protect themselves as he did not. Isn't that worth acknowledging?

How important is it to you to shoot your lower lip and breathlessly describe the world as an indefensibly capricious place? What thrill do you receive? What points do you score?

Mama Shepard's chatter about "hate" has precisely zero utility. This rhetoric is not soulful, it's just shallow. It's not spiritual, it's just inane. Hate is in our hearts for a reason: Bad people earn it.

One weaknesses of feminine nature is obsession with communicating feelings. In short order, this can become far more pornographic than anything that ever happened in the Playboy mansion. Communicating pain can become so fulfilling that you forget to put a stop to it.

>>One weaknesses of feminine nature is obsession with communicating feelings.

And I've observed it's in your nature to make a meal of any moral decay the rest of us might have missed, Crid.

There ARE certain, unusually salacious stories, that bring out your yappy inner hyena.

Stories that are often - and this is interesting - no longer fresh, but have been dug up again years later.

You typically rummage through the carcass looking for the victim's soft putrid parts.

You tell us to keep our distance from them - because they're not like us!

That's the hyena weltanschauung

Paglia has a similar scavenger world view. She lifts her snout after thoroughly sniffing Shepard's corpse to declare - as you quoted in this thread with approval: "The atrocious beating death and exposure of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming... demonstrates once again the dramatic differences between gay men and lesbians...."

Then you slink - in hyena mode - behind Paglia: To freely paraphrase you: "This lad's death demonstrates once again the dramatic differences between the sexually unsophisticated young folk I know and cherish - and thrill seekers who have been schooled in the erotic fleshpots of Europe."

And, you add for good measure, - "oh yeah -his mom stinks too".

You did the same with the Polanski story.
You looked for the maggots in the injured party (since the villainy of the perp was indisputable).

Then you run away laughing. (Though I understand the "laughing hyena" bit is a myth.)

To be generous, there's some accuracy in what you wrote about the differences between us: And I hope never to be thought of as a mechanized tear-valve, a weeping machine for distant figures whose lives (and deaths) might otherwise offer instruction.

You got me. I feel great pity because of the FACTS of this young stranger's short life.

> She lifts her snout after thoroughly
> sniffing Shepard's corpse

Right. You wanna believe people are protected by magic, or luck or some other unpredictable force. You wanna get all solemn, whisper something about hate, and let that be it. So let's not think about it too much: It's easier just to treat victims as sainted than to think of monsters as something we can be protected from.

It wasn't a dramatic difference (excuse me, a "dramatic difference") that protected other people from what happened to Shepard. But neither was it a random event. (Or a random event.) There are things to learn from it if we're not compelled to be all churchy and stuffed up.

> And, you add for good measure

Never, ever use quotation marks unless you're quoting directly. And you aren't. His mother may or may not "stink": I only said she was "wrong".

> the maggots in the injured party

Your imagery's getting a little goth-freaky, there, Jody.

> I feel great pity because of the
> FACTS of this young stranger's
> short life.

Having felt things, your work is done, right? You got what you wanted.

Until monsters like the ones convicted in Wyoming are cast from our planet, I want all people, including our youngest, most naïve gays, to protect themselves.

You aren't helping.

>>Until monsters like the ones convicted in Wyoming are cast from our planet, I want all people, including our youngest, most naïve gays, to protect themselves. You aren't helping.

Crid,
I disagree.

My approach is more helpful than yours.

You have made aspects of this horrible story about facts not in evidence - i.e. Matthew's assumed taste for rough trade which must, therefore, at least have played a part in putting him in the path of those monsters that night.

That's not helpful at all.

Of the many, many shards of wisdom you hope young men will pick up before it's too late, one that is key is the knowledge that they are not invincible.

You do your best to make sure they develop sound instincts on this score, because you learn that sometimes they will only seem to "get" such lessons after the emergency room visit.

I am sure my emotional response to Matthew Shepard's death has not diminished my pragmatic response one jot.

> You have made aspects of this
> horrible story about facts not in
> evidence - i.e. Matthew's assumed
> taste for rough trade

Well, that was Cammy, not me. But I do think he should have known better.

And you never got back to us this point:

Why didn't he know better?

I mean.. What is your "pragmatic response"?

>>Well, that was Cammy, not me.

I know, Crid.

If you are now, rather late in the day, scrupulously noting as a tiny point of order that you didn't agree with every syllable of Paglia's that you looked up and quoted here, I acknowledge your point (with prejudice, however).

>>Why didn't he know better?

I don't know.

His mother had said her non-saintly son was sometimes deaf to her advice too.

I think it's a question most people ask of themselves at times, invariably in hindsight, and often with embarrassed disbelief. I know it's a question I have on many, many occasions also put to my own kids about their own choices.

>>I mean.. What is your "pragmatic response"?

Right now - because I am totally fed up with this conversation (I don't blame you entirely), it's to get on with clearing my desk and packing my bags for a first trip to Chicago ("in the state of Illinois" - I've memorized that bit!)

Too much info, I expect, but I'm bored with my comments (yeah, yeah...no need to add anything!)

> I acknowledge your point (with
> prejudice, however)

Of course, "with prejudice". That you'd describe this as "a tiny point of order" is ludicrous. There's no human being, none who ever lived, with whom I agree in all respects. But in this thread you've ascribed meanings –even quotations– to me that aren't appropriate. If you now feel crowded by my fastidiousness, it's because you ought to.

> I don't know.

THEN WHY ARE YOU HARSHING PEOPLE FOR ENTIRELY REASONABLE SPECULATION? Why must the meaning of the event conclude with his mother sputtering about "hate" in our nation's capital?

I'LL TELL YOU WHY he didn't know better, Jody. Because he wasn't your son. Both of those guys will, I'm quite certain & pleased, make it through the next three years without suffering a fate like Shepard's. When they do, it will not be that they were merely lucky. They were taught sensible boundaries, as you've made clear.

THEN WHY ARE YOU HARSHING PEOPLE FOR ENTIRELY REASONABLE SPECULATION?

Because I don't agree your speculation is reasonable, Crid.

You have used Paglia's opinions as the source of your speculation; this is evident from one of your opening salvos: "Americans know the odor of scam juice."

How do you draw conclusions from what amounts to speculation? Paglia admits her evidence is scant, then presumes to tell us what is "truth" from it.

Hardly seems like a fair thing to do when someone's memory is involved. In fact, since Shepard is dead and can't defend himself, seems rather chickenshit if you ask me.

>>How do you draw conclusions from what amounts to speculation? Paglia admits her evidence is scant, then presumes to tell us what is "truth" from it.

Exactly, Patrick.

I meant to acknowledge your other (equally succinct)comment way upthread which first pointed out this effrontery by Paglia.

I've just reread all the Paglia quotes Crid gave us, (almost 1,200 words in total) She is obsessed with one issue above all: the sometimes grisly violence erupting from gay male cruising for rough sex. And cruising for rough thrills with strangers, she avers, is what drew Matthew Shepard to those men that night.

The rest of her opinions are window dressing for this single unsupported "truth".

It's vile.

Dance, you two... Dance the night away!

If I remember correctly, one of the news items that circulated locally here in Wyoming after Matthew Shepard's murder was that a few months before, Matthew Shepard had gotten so sexually aggressive towards a straight bartender in Jackson Hole, that the bartender had actually punched him. I think Paglia was privy to this news item and based part of her assumptions about what Matthew Shepard may have been doing that night on this previous incident. Isabel

No, Isabel We MUST NOT speculate!

We can only feel...

...Feel compassion, mostly, and solemn solidarity with a grieving mother who wants to blame his death on "hate".

Even if, over the course of some long discussion, you feel a twinging consideration that there may have been some responsibility on his part, or just a wispy suspicion that he might better have protected himself, you must instantly shake your head and hold your breath until those thoughts leave you.

You must not ever, ever try to apply any insights about patterns in human nature to your understanding of this matter. Because you weren't there, were you? So you'll never know. Or guess. Anything. About anything ever and ever. Don't be a bigoted jerk!

M'kay? Rules are rules. Now, drink your kool-aid and move forward.

>>You must not ever, ever try to apply any insights about patterns in human nature to your understanding of this matter.

That's rich, Crid.

You informed us from the start that your big insight about this case was "Americans know the odor of scam juice."

And you've spent the thread digging for rotten scraps that ONLY support your understanding of this matter.

Oh, by the way, Max. If you're still reading, intent determines the crime. I emailed a lawyer friend of mine, and he came back with this rather thorough reply on the subject.

His reply to me follows. I changed nothing.

The question is complicated because the sources for this would be the various state laws defining "intnet" and "attempts." But let's take Texas for example, because I happen to have my dog eared copy of the Texas Penal Code in the bookshelf behind me from law school.

The TPC Section 6.03 defines an "intentional" act as one with a "conscious objective or desire to engage in the conduct or cause the result."

So as you can see the definition focuses on the "desire" of the accused to cause the given result. Now murder still requires that you actually cause the death of another, but the issue here is not murder, but rather "attempted murder." That gets us to the definition of "intended."

Per Section 15.01 of the TPC an attempted offense (for anythiing) is: "CRIMINAL ATTEMPT. (a) A person commits an offense if, with specific intent to commit an offense, he does an act amounting to more than mere preparation that tends but fails to effect the commission of the offense intended."

As you can see the definition of "criminal attempt" amounts to trying to do it and failing. The reason for failing is not all that relevant.

This gets us to the issue of "mistake of fact" as a defense where one mistakenly believes they can kill another, and acts to do so, but in reallity they cannot. Quote: "Sec. 8.02. MISTAKE OF FACT. (a) It is a defense to prosecution that the actor through mistake formed a reasonable belief about a matter of fact if his mistaken belief negated the kind of culpability required for commission of the offense."

Thus, the mistake of fact must be one that eliminates the mental culpability, or intent to kill (or however intent is defined for the particular offense), in order to be a defense. So let's take two different scenarios.

Keith, believing a gun is loaded, picks it up and points it at Patrick and pulls the trigger. Keith is guilty of attempted murder because he intentionally pointed the gun at Patrick and pulled the trigger with a conscious desire to kill Patrick. The mistake of fact that the gun was not loaded is not a defense because it does not negate or refute the mental culpability with which Keith acted.

Believing that a gun is not loaded, and just desiring to scare Patrick, Keith points the gun at Patrick and pulls the trigger. Keith is not guilty of attempted murder solely because Keith's mental state was different. Keith acted not with a desire to kill Patrick, but just to scare him. Note: Keith may still be guilty of assault because he did intentionally put Patrick in reasonable fear of severe bodily harm.

Supporse Keith's belief that the gun was not loaded was a mistake in fact and when Keith pulls the trigger he is shocked when the gun discharges and kills Partick. Keith is still not guilty of murder or attempted murder because Keith did not act with the required intent to kill Patrick. In this case the mistake of fact does effect the mental culpability of Keith. However, Keith is likely guilty of reckless homicide because he acted with the lesser mental culpability of recklessness.

Patrick,
That explanation actually makes sense - and it also seems fair.

Somewhat offtopic: I remember a case I covered (as a court reporter in the UK), when an angry husband had severed his wife's boyfriend's finger - the husband had trapped the guy's hand in his car's side window - then driven away very fast.

The court had to decide whether the husband had acted with reckless disregard for inflicting grievous injury on the boyfriend by the act of trapping his hand in the first place.

The husband's lawyer offered the fact that his client had thoughtfully popped the finger back through the boyfriend's letter box later that day - as evidence that the husband had not intended that outcome.

No dice.

(I was a rookie reporter at the time & I thought it would be a good idea to get quotes from all parties - husband, wife & boyfriend on the steps outside court - after the verdict. That was a terrible decision!)

It's settled, then... Per the topic of the post, Jody and Patrick will lead us to a new Canadian splendor of hate crime law and jurisprudence.

Ducky!

Crid whines: It's settled, then... Per the topic of the post, Jody and Patrick will lead us to a new Canadian splendor of hate crime law and jurisprudence.

Considering I've already stated that I'm against hate crime legislation, because I believe the existing laws on the books are adequate to cover abuses of our fellow man, without suggesting that crimes against minority victims are somehow more egregious than those of us ordinary folk, I would not relish this assignment.

My only point in posting the above was to counter the claim that Max had made about how actions, not intent, determine the crime. When I maintained that intent does determine the crime, he screamed that I was either "obtuse or an idiot." So, I emailed a friend of mine, a lawyer, to address the question.

My post was not in any way, shape or form intended to justify any hate crime legislation. Only to prove a specific point by way of expert opinion.

So, you can stop kicking and screaming and pick yourself up off the floor now.

Patrick,
Bingo!

You guys are trying to shave the fuzz off a peach with a ball-peen hammer. It's adorable.

Crid writes: You guys are trying to shave the fuzz off a peach with a ball-peen hammer. It's adorable.

"Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing...his reasons are as two grains of wheat hidden in two bushels of chaff; you shall search all day ere you find them; and when you have them they are not worth the search."-- Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare.

>>You guys are trying to shave the fuzz off a peach with a ball-peen hammer. It's adorable.

Sounds like the title of one of those self-help books, Crid.

"Don't Shave the Fuzz Off A Peach With a Ball-Peen Hammer And 1,001 Other Fruity Tips For Taking the Pith Out of Your Life!"...

Guess I've gotten under your skin.

Crid pouts: Guess I've gotten under your skin.

Yes, Crid. You did. That's right. (pat, pat) Ooh! We're just so flustered and annoyed right now, we could just spit!

You...you...you...you IRRITANT, you!

Crid pouts: Guess I've gotten under your skin.

Yes, Crid. You did. That's right. (pat, pat) Ooh! We're just so flustered and annoyed right now, we could just spit!

You...you...you...you IRRITANT, you!