Word: sheparded
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...need to learn that. We can have friendship with people we disagree with." Many of the kids have grown up in conservative homes where gays are rarely spoken of, especially not in exhortations to friendship, and now they sit stone-faced, motionless. Falwell laments the murders of Matthew Shepard, the gay Wyoming student, and Billy Jack Gaither, the gay man clubbed to death and burned in Alabama. Falwell makes clear that, to him, homosexuality is still a sin. But he says Christians must be more vigilant about observing both halves of "that cliche," as he calls it: "Love the sinner...
...Shepard was the gay college student from the University of Wyoming who was murdered a year ago this month in Laramie. After leaving a bar together, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson drove Shepard to a deserted field, beat him savagely, tied him to a wooden fence and left him exposed overnight. A cyclist who found the bloody body the next day mistook it for a scarecrow...
Falwell acknowledged that the Shepard murder was an important spur to last weekend's reconciliation. The stated purpose of the meeting was to tone down rhetoric that may lead to hate crimes against either gays or Christians. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Falwell told gay and lesbian delegates, "I will be vigilant in assuring that we do not make statements that can be construed as sanctioning hate or antagonism against homosexuals." Visitors said Falwell apologized for making hateful diatribes against gay people, and called on parents to love their children regardless of their sexual orientation...
...newfound emphasis on Christian love for gays stems from a need to appear moderate in moderate times. Faced with George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism," the religious right is on the defensive; its preoccupation with the sin of gayness seems increasingly extreme to ordinary people. This too is Matthew Shepard's legacy: in death, he served as vivid proof of the suffering that scars gay life in America. In this new climate, any evangelical might do well to lie low and preach tolerance. One good sign for Falwell: the Rev. Fred Phelps, the viciously homophobic Kansas preacher who picketed Shepard...
Back in Laramie, arguments began in Aaron McKinney's murder trial this week. McKinney's lawyers chose the familiar "homosexual panic" defense, portraying Shepard as a sexual predator who licked McKinney's ear and touched his genitals. Enraged and frightened, his lawyers said, McKinney responded with brutal violence, beating the slender college student over and over with the butt of a gun. In at a summit in Lynchburg, Jerry Falwell vowed to help keep such violence from ever occurring again. For Matthew Shepard, the minister's promise comes too late. But that promise--contradictory, halting, uncertain, well-intentioned and human...