By Christopher Geidner

October 15, 2000

Two years ago this week, Matthew Shepard died after being left in a chilly Wyoming field. As the country first heard the name that soon would become etched in our national vocabulary, I was seeing my greatest fears played out.

As the story unfolded and the reality became clear, my life as a young gay man living in northeast Ohio quickly felt as fragile as Matthew's. I read every article about the murder that I could find, needing to know more about this boy -- openly gay, nearly my age and living in the Midwest -- with whom I felt an intangible bond even though we had never met. We were so similar in so many unimportant ways -- in the ways that led Matthew's killers to destroy him.

The day Matthew died, I thought about going to Wyoming. I didn't know why I wanted to go or what I would do there, but it was where I wanted to be. Instead, I traveled to Washington, D.C. that Wednesday to attend a vigil at the Capitol with the hope that I could regain some of the power that Matthew's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, had taken from me when they murdered Matthew.

Last Wednesday, that power was taken from me again, this time at the hands of a far less obvious pair. As I sat watching Al Gore and George W. Bush debate, I heard Bush say that he was a "tolerant" man. We learned, however, that his tolerance does not extend to either employment non-discrimination or hate crimes prevention laws that include sexual orientation.

I also heard Matthew's name invoked, as it so often is, when Gore urged the Texas governor to support hate crimes prevention laws. Matthew Shepard, Gore said, "was crucified on a split-rail fence by bigots." Not five minutes later, the vice president betrayed that memory when he chimed in agreement with Bush's "strong" feeling "that marriage should be between a man and a woman."

Discrimination, both men fail to understand, is a term that envelops more than the vicious anti-gay murders of the past years. It also is the denial of legal marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples and the continuing argument that equal rights for those of all sexual orientations are somehow "special rights."

The presidential candidates, however, are not alone in denying basic equal rights to gay and lesbian Americans. Both the House and Senate voted for the quick passage of the national Hate Crimes Prevention Act, yet the Republican leadership dropped the bill from a larger piece of legislation without explanation.

Republican Gov. Bob Taft has a proven record of turning back the clock on equality. Last year, he reversed a decade-old executive order -- left intact throughout Sen. Voinovich's eight years as governor -- that prohibited discrimination based solely on sexual orientation in state employment.

These actions and the stark exclusions to equality endorsed by our presidential candidates bring up emotions in all of us -- whether those be of love, pride, superiority, fear or hatred. Those emotions create our reality, a reality which was far too damning of lesbian and gay lives to let Matthew Shepard live.

As the elections approach and as we remember Matthew Shepard's death, let us also honor his life by creating a world in which he could have lived that life to its fullest.

Please feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] with your comments about my opinion.