Honor the Dead, Fight for the Living

I WAS A COLLEGE student in a Southern town—newly out, wrestling with what this meant for my Christian faith, and dealing with daily homophobia on my campus—when I heard that a young man in Wyoming, close to my age, had been brutally murdered for being gay. His name was Matthew Shepard.

The details were horrific. He’d been fiercely beaten, tied to a fence, and left there in the cold for 18 hours. I pictured the scene over and over in my mind, unable to shake it. I couldn’t stop looking at the photos of him in happier times, wondering if we would have been friends—or if it could happen to me. His murder, though far away, made me feel lonelier and more afraid to be myself than I already was.

In October, 20 years after Matthew Shepard was murdered, his remains were laid to rest at the Washington National Cathedral. For many LGBTQ+ people, the interment brought some sense of closure.

Shepard’s death and the horrific murder of James Byrd Jr. are often linked because of Obama-era hate crime legislation named for both. Byrd was an African-American man killed for his race the same year Shepard was killed for his orientation. Byrd was beaten by white supremacists in Texas who urinated on him, tied his ankles to the back of a truck, and dragged him—still alive—for miles.

I intended to write about the cultural impact of their deaths, but one day after Shepard’s interment, another tragedy: A man with four semi-automatic weapons opened fire in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 people. Once again, the motive was apparently hate—this time, anti-Semitic. Once again, the impact created ripples of fear far beyond the victims and their families.

It is vital that we pay attention to these stories. But when they come day after day, I confess, I grow weary with the weight of them. I want to look away. Not because I don’t care, but because I care so much and feel so powerless.

Psychologists call this “learned helplessness,” and it can be toxic. We come to believe that there is no hope, so we stop trying to change things.

Here’s my message: Don’t give in. Change may be slow, but it is possible. Some of it may come through political and legal change, but some of it must come through cultural change. And that is exactly why we must pay attention to these stories, especially when they are about people different from us.

When we are overwhelmed, we gravitate to caring about the stories that impact us personally. I think about the murder of Matthew Shepard or the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando—where I live—more often than I think about James Byrd’s murder or other hate crimes, because these affect my own sense of safety as a gay man.

But I need to fight that instinct. I have privilege and power as a white man. Some who would not listen to others may listen to me when I address dangerous dehumanization. And every dent we make in our cultural prejudices is a blow against the kind of culture that incubates extremists.

To honor the dead is important. But even more important is to use our lives to care for those who are impacted by these tragedies—to hear their pain, give them our shoulder, and use our privilege, wherever we have it, to stand up to prejudice wherever we encounter it.

Don’t lose hope. This is what we are called for.