The New Gay Struggle

THE WYOMING LYNCHING IS ENRAGING, BUT IT HIDES A DEEPER TRUTH. GAY LIFE, AND GAY POLITICS, HAS CHANGED

What people mean when they say Matthew Shepard's murder was a lynching is that he was killed to make a point. When he was 21 years old, the world's arguments reached him with deadly force and printed their worst conclusions across him. So he was stretched along a Wyoming fence not just as a dying young man but as a signpost. "When push comes to shove," it says, "this is what we have in mind for gays."

Three days after Shepard died, a crowd of around 5,000 gathered in the night on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, in a...

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