Am I the only one that could not read through the article about the murder of Matthew Shepard? Literally, I sat in a cafe reading this thing and was scolding my computer screen. People looked at me weird and my barista even came over and asked me if I was all right. Knowing my barista kind of well because I am a regular customer, I thought I would share with him what I was reading. This conversation ended up lasting for an hour and a half.
In this hour and a half, I came to find out that my barista was gay and that he was extremely uncomfortable serving my party the first time we came into the cafe because we were all Christians there having a Bible study get-together. After I became a regular customer became more comfortable with me and then this conversation also opened up huge doors for us and led to the contents of this blog post.
You see, I'm a Christian, yes. Do I hate homosexuals? No. Do I want to see them discriminated against? Definitely not. The murder of Matthew Shepard absolutely disgusts me and it disgusted my barista as well. The hate that can be found in our culture is upsetting to say the least. While I do not believe that McKinney and Henderson were not psychopaths (the medical term), I still think that this crime wouldn't be possible for someone else to commit if they had enough hatred in themselves against someone else. Knowing that this sort of crime still occurs in our world scares me. My barista is one of the nicest people I know with one of the kindest and purest hearts. He is always so welcoming to everyone. To think that he could have been Matthew Shepard and that could have happened to him if he was there really puts the entire situation into perspective for me.
In the article it talks about how Shepard was a non-threatening person-- someone who you could trust to "look after your grandmother if you were out of town..." (489). How could someone with this sort of reputation honestly be a target for a brutal murder and then made a mockery of by students while he was in a coma? That might have been the most sickening part of the article for me. Students at a Colorado university were seriously mocking the attack and mocking Shepard while he was still clinging for his life. Talk about indecency.
While my barista and I discussed this murder further we began to talk about why he was intimidated by a big group of Christians. He said that even though he has met Christians that accept him, there is always that small voice in the back of his head telling him that he will never be accepted by that community and even though that shouldn't bother him, it does. He doesn't want our judgment and he feels there is no hope for a day where he won't feel judged by the religious community. This absolutely broke my heart. He related this back to the article and by saying that he wonders if McKinney and Henderson claimed a religion and if they did, did they feel justified in their convictions? He said that he could see a Christian saying "God told them to kill him because he was a sinner." All that I could say to him was that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that he has felt that condemnation and judgment from Christians. We're not perfect, but that doesn't excuse that the religious community has treated him in such a way that has led to him thinking in that way. I'm sorry.
I really don't know the point of this blog post other than to rant about my incredible uncomfortableness with what happened back in 1998 and about my conversation with my barista. As a human being, I feel like this world would be a whole heck of a lot better if we were able to stop thinking about ourselves for a minute. I believe that McKinney and Henderson ultimately acted out of fear and out of their own selfish desires for the world to remain in their own perfect image. They wanted to protect their own "status quo." When our world learns to be about everyone else and not about ourselves, our problem might have a winning chance to start on the road to being solved. When we learn to take others' interests into account and not our own positions, we might finally understand that we don't own the universe and we can't take someone out of the world to make it what we want it to be.
This is me talking to myself too. I'm sure I'm not the most selfless person out there and I'm not trying to make myself out to be, but I'm trying to own my mistakes and learn to love people more fully and selflessly than ever before.
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