GLAAD’s Vision: Less Than 20/20

January 2005

Last month, ABC’s news magazine show “20/20” aired a story about the Matthew Shepard murder. Before the hour-long special was broadcast, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) issued media advisories blasting the show’s promotion as “sensationalistic” and warning of “red flags” in the show’s presumptive content. After the show aired, GLAAD urged gay people to “take action” against ABC, claiming that the network was “advancing an agenda of public ignorance” and engaging in “misguided historical revisionism.” And GLAAD continues to dedicate much of their homepage to ways viewers can “share our outrage” about the Shepard story.

What was in the “20/20” show that has so alarmed GLAAD?

Up until now, most of us have heard only one version of what happened the night of Shepard’s brutal murder: an innocent young man was targeted for death by lowlife thugs driven by anti-gay rage. That account has been used by GLAAD and countless gay groups to raise money and to campaign for so-called “hate crime” laws.

But that story is based on few sources and fewer well-established facts. With execution hanging over their heads, both Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, the men accused of Shepard’s murder, were extorted into plea bargains; thus, almost no evidence came out at trial. And both men, now serving life sentences, were– appallingly– ordered by the court never to discuss the case. That gag order has meant that poorly informed speculation has circulated as truth. Indeed, one of the most-produced plays in the United States, The Laramie Project, is based on suppositions about motivations and concocted personalities for Shepard and his killers– all presented as fact.

The “20/20” show suggests that the truth might be more complicated than the story we all “know.” Evidently, Shepard and his attackers were immersed in the crystal meth drug scene in Laramie, Wyoming, and may well have known each other. McKinney and Henderson, interviewed on camera for the first time since the murder, claim that money-for-drugs robbery was the motive for the attack and that the horrific brutality of the slaying stemmed from crystal meth-induced rage. And we learn that Shepard’s skull was not the only one McKinney cracked open that night. After leaving Shepard tied to a fence, McKinney and Henderson, disappointed with the 30 dollars in Shepard’s wallet, went to his apartment in order to rob it. In the parking lot, McKinney jumped Emiliano Morales and fractured his skull with the same pistol he’d beaten Shepard with. No one has ever alleged that Morales’s (unknown) sexuality had anything to do with the violence he suffered. Indeed, almost no one ever mentions Morales at all.

Throughout the “20/20” show, viewers are made aware of the depth of anti-gay malice that does exist. Who does not recoil in horror watching picketers demonstrate at Shepard’s funeral, their faces distorted with hatred, their signs proclaiming “God Hates Fags” and “Matthew Burns in Hell”? Nor does “20/20” absolve Shepard’s murderers of possible homophobic animus: McKinney seems deeply conflicted about his own sexuality, denying the homosexual encounters others allege they’ve had with him.

But GLAAD, and others, have invested in a myth of moral black and whites, so any suggestion that the facts might be– must be– more nuanced is threatening. That Shepard was not an angel, that his killers are not unspeakable monsters, disquiets only those committed to their own self-serving agenda.

The “20/20” special, by offering the first coherent, non-mythologized version of an undeniably grisly murder, honors Shepard by pursuing a more truthful account of his tragic death. And it reveals that GLAAD, if it is truly concerned about “public ignorance” and “misguided historical revisionism,” needs to first get its own house in order.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=FDEA454A-FD36-457F-8A534FA522A080EE>