Death in American
These three names, Mathew Shepherd, Teena Brandon, and
Gwen Araujo, have become nearly synonymous with gay/transgender hate crimes. I
have a very strong opinion on gay rights. On hate crimes in general.
Matthew
Shepherd
 |
| From Wikipedia |
Matthew
was, as we all know, an openly gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming.
He was born December 1, 1976 and died on October 12, 1998
He had been attending the University
of Wyoming there as a
political science major. He went into a bar and a couple of local boys (Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson)
went up to him. They started chatting and
it was decided that they would give him a ride home. Instead they took him to a
very remote area where they tied him to a fence; beat him and left him to die.
I wasn’t there when this happened;
obviously, I never knew Matthew Shepherd and I will never get a chance to meet him.
Would I like him if I met him? I don’t know, but I know that if I didn’t like
him, it wouldn’t be because he was gay.
You may ask yourself why he became so
special to the media. You may ask why the world cared about what happened to
him. It’s because this was a hate crime. Mr. Shepherd was targeted because he
was who he was: a gay college student in Wyoming.
I know that there are people that probably don’t think that this was a hate
crime, but it was. Why else would two boys (I just can’t call them men) would
do something like this? Robbery? That’s what they claimed. Did he come on to
them? That’s what they claimed.
There are only three people who know
what truly happened. Aaron McKinney and
Russell Henderson and Matthew Shepherd and he can’t speak for himself
and I doubt that Aaron McKinney or Russell Henderson will ever tell the
truth. If they do it will be on their deathbeds.
Maybe I’m stupid or something; because
I just don’t understand how one person, let alone two people could do that do
someone else. I don’t understand. I don’t get how that happens. It makes no
sense to me, not at all.
I don’t always get along with my
friends or family, or even strangers, but I don’t want to beat them, humiliate them,
torture them, and leave them for dead. I may want to smack them once in awhile,
but that’s it.
I ask you, readers, do any of you
think of these things? Do any of you think of Matthew Shepherd? Do you think of
what he might be like if he was alive today? If Aaron and Russell had never
gotten taken him from that bar?
Would he engaged? A parent? Would
Matthew be excited to be planning his wedding to the man of his dreams and have
it recognized? What would he think of a black President? Do you think he would
have voted for Obama? Would he have been horrified about 9/11?
These are just a few of the things I wonder
about. It’s what got me thinking of writing this story here. It’s a blog, but
it will go into my magazine as well. I think it should be out there. Someone
needs to keep the light shed on this.
Gwen Araujo
 |
| from Newark Patch |
Gwen
was born Edward Arajuo and was called Eddie from the time he was a baby. She
was born February 24, 1985 and died October 3, 2002.
Gwen, as her friends and family called her, was pre-operative male to female transgender.
She
was
just seventeen years old when Michael Magidson, Jaron Nabors, José Merél, and
Paul Merél decided that she had lied about who she was and took it upon
themselves to beat and strangle her to death. From most accounts she had
entered into a sexual relationship with one of the boys and he didn’t take too
kindly to having sex with a man.
What I don’t get is
why one of the men didn’t report it and get a better deal? Why let it get as
far as it did? Did they mean for her to die? What would cause someone to do
this?
I believe that the men that did that
to Gwen should have been sentenced to death. That the hate crime status should
have been put to this murder, because that’s what it was. Plain and simple: a
hate crime. From what I read, the girlfriend to one of the men, forced Gwen
into the bathroom then announced it to the men. They then began to severely
beat the seventeen year old to death.
I guess her lying there bleeding wasn’t
enough or that they just wanted to make sure the job was done, because they
drug her out to the garage and strangled her. Then to just dispose of her in a
shallow grave, why? What did that prove? It didn’t make them big, bad he-men; beating
someone when there was only one of them and three of the others.
I think it was a great injustice. Gwen
deserved closure and justice, her family deserved closure.
I can’t imagine that her family was
overly thrilled when the first realized that Eddie wanted to be a girl. I hope,
and from what I’ve read they have, that they came around before it was too late
to tell her how they felt about her. I bet it was especially hard on her mother
and siblings.
Again, why would someone do something
like this? I just don’t get it. So she lied about being a boy, to her, she wasn’t
lying. Gwen was planning on fixing what was wrong, if only they had waited. If
only she had done it sooner.
Our country is supposed to be free,
but its not. There are people in this country who cannot be who they are for
fear that something like this will happen to them.
Her life was turned into a Lifetime
original movie titled Gwen Arajuo: A Girl
Like Me.
Brandon Teena
Brandon Teena was born Teena Renae Brandon in December 12, 1972 and died December 31, 1993 from a
gunshot wound.
 |
| from google |
Not long before Brandon was murdered, he was raped. Two of
the men that he hung out with were convicted felons and they didn’t like that
he had lied to them. They had found out he was born a woman and took advantage.
From all I could read, Brandon’s
girlfriend, Lana, told him to report the crime. The police then lost the rape
kit. I’m betting because they didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand
that even though Brandon
didn’t identify with being a woman he could still be raped. All’s it takes is
the word NO!
Unlike Gwen Arajuo, whose mother had
her name legally changes posthumously, Brandon
wasn’t so lucky. His mother did not want her daughter to be a man. Even in
death, his mother wouldn’t let him have that. Brandon’s
headstone reads Teena R. Brandon B. December 12, 1972 D. December 31,
1993. Sister, daughter, friend.
What kind of mother does that? Did
Gwen’s mother love her more than Brandon’s
mother loved him? Did she just not care?
As for the freaks that killed him, one
got life in prison while the other got the death sentence. Both were involved
in the rape and subsequent murder. Yet because one of them rolled on the other,
he got a reduced sentence. I’m sorry, but if you’ve got balls enough to murder
someone then you have enough balls to take it like a man and die like one.
I shake my head whenever I read what
happened to this poor young man. He was born a woman and trapped. While Brandon had yet to start
taking the hormones to begin his transformation, he was a man. From what I read,
anyone who knew him knew that.
I read that the killer saw Brandon twitching after
he’d been shot and took a knife to him just to make sure he was dead.
Hate crime before hate crime was even
a thought.
His life was the inspiration for the movie
Boys Don't Cry.
