As the movie went on, so did my tears. But they changed. What could have gone so wrong in a society to make a man protest at a funeral? What could have gone so wrong in this society to make the defense of "he hit on me" a possibility?
I've questioned myself more than I can remember over the last months. I've tried to understand why this is something I am so passionate about. I can't rationalize this. To me, equal rights means equal rights. No exceptions, no exclusions. Last Wednesday I was on the morons.org site. It had a link to a story about Fred Phelps.
I was 13 or 14 at the time of Matthew's murder, and was thus wrapped up entirely in myself, so I don't remember much about it. I certainly didn't remember the actions of Fred Phelps. Click here for more information.
I linked to information about him and I was shocked. I have always been raised with the idea that my God was a God of love. I thought (in my denial that such callousness exists) that perhaps his quotes had been taken out of context. So I linked to his site out of sheer morbid curiosity.
Typing the name of his site into my browser made me want to be sick; I don't use that f-word. A few minutes in his site caused a ten minute trip to the bathroom, and I haven't been the same since. I've been more sensitive to subtle forms of discrimination. I've been touchy. I walked out of a class. I still don't understand.
And then this movie. The hardest scene for me to take was the one in which Phelps was at the funeral with his church, wielding posters saying that Matthew was in hell, all kinds of hateful things including said f-word. What could have gone so wrong in a society to make a man protest at a funeral?
This state of mind was such that I couldn't hate him. I felt pity. Genuine sadness.
My heart broke. And then came the angels. Some of Shepard's friends came out in angel costumes, to help blot out the horrible image of hatred going on behind them. The tears flowed. I screamed at God, alone in my empty house, demanding to know why that level of evil existed. I didn't get an answer, but my resolve stregthened a little more.
When they started talking about the trials, and they got around to the defense, someone said they were glad it wasn't just being portrayed as a robbery. I was, too. Then I heard that they were saying the young man was enraged because he had been hit on by a gay man. What could have gone so wrong in this society to make the defense of "he hit on me" a possibility? I started crying some more.
I don't know what the moral of this post is. I don't know what we're supposed to do. But I can't shake the feeling that we're supposed to do something. We can't just sit around while people stew in this kind of mentality. I've always been about the live and let live thing. Is that enough? Is it enough to say that it doesn't affect you? What if it's not?