Twenty-seven years after Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence, pistol-whipped, and left to die in a Laramie, Wyoming, field, the national wound of his death has been torn open anew by evil politicians who are willing to do anything to win.
It was a crime that shocked the world: The brutal killing, which shocked the conscience of a nation and ultimately spurred the passage of federal hate crime legislation, now serves as a dark mirror to a modern political movement that critics say is kindling the same embers of prejudice for electoral gain.
The 1998 murder was widely seen as a watershed, a horrific testament to the violent end of homophobia. It spurred a national reckoning, leading to plays, documentaries, and a federal law bearing Shepard’s name, signed by President Barack Obama in 2009.
The lesson, it seemed, was etched in stone: hate directed at any group is a poison to the whole of the nation.
But history, it turns out, is not a one-way road. On this anniversary, the cultural and political forces that coalesced after Shepard’s death are facing a powerful and organized backlash.
The MAGA political movement led by President Donald Trump has made the demonization of transgender Americans a central plank of its platform.
New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has drawn attention for his conservative stance on transgender issues, including pledges to roll back LGBTQ-inclusive education policies and a history of opposing transgender rights legislation.
Ciattarelli’s position has been criticized by civil rights and advocacy groups that see his effort to exploit unfounded parental fears as part of a political strategy that scapegoats LGBTQ+ individuals.
In rallies and in legislation, the rights of a vulnerable minority to exist in public life, to receive medically accepted care, and to simply be themselves have been framed not as a matter of human dignity, but as a threat.
This political strategy, which spreads fear about a community that constitutes a small fraction of the population, draws from the same well of intolerance that Shepard’s killers drank from, advocates say.
Trump targeted transgender and nonbinary people with a series of executive orders since he returned to office. In one executive order, he asserted, “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex.”
On Trump’s first day back in office, he issued a sweeping order that signaled a big change in how his administration would deal with transgender people and their rights.
“The Trump Administration is built on demonizing minority groups; reversing the civil rights gains of immigrants, people of color, women, and the LGBTQ movement will forever remain the hallmarks of their time in office,” said Harper Jean Tobin, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “That is why Congress must act now and secure the fate of nearly 15,000 transgender troops. We cannot let an incompetent administration guided by a petulant bigot stand as the mascot of our time. History is watching Congress and will judge them harshly for inaction.”
“When you have the nation’s commander-in-chief demonizing transgender people, it certainly sends a signal to all Americans,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director at Human Rights Campaign.
The Bureau of Prisons stopped reporting the number of transgender incarcerated people, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary students.
Researchers have found that less than one percent of adults identify as transgender and under two percent are intersex, or born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female.
The rhetoric may be more polished, the targets more specific, but the sadistic motive—to marginalize and incite fear for political power—bears a chilling resemblance.
The nation’s leading medical and psychological authorities have reached a clear consensus on the matter.
Every major professional association, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, affirms that gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based, and often life-saving for transgender individuals.
They state unequivocally that supporting a person’s gender identity is crucial to their mental health.
Yet, this expert consensus is being willfully ignored and misrepresented in the political arena.
Dozens of states have passed laws restricting or banning this care, effectively placing the government between patients, their parents, and their doctors.
The parallel is not lost on those who remember the aftermath of Shepard’s murder.
Then, the fight was to have violence against gay people recognized as a unique and particularly virulent form of hatred. Today, the fight is to prevent a new wave of state-sanctioned discrimination and misinformation from legitimizing a new wave of hate.
The argument that this is a matter of protecting children, a timeworn tactic for sowing panic about a minority group, rings hollow to those who see in it an echo of past bigotries. It is a political gambit, they argue, that sacrifices the safety and well-being of a few to win the votes of the many.
The story of Matthew Shepard was supposed to be a lesson learned. But today, as his memory is invoked by those who see the past repeating itself, it has become a warning.
The fence post in Laramie is a monument not only to a life cut short by hate, but to the fragility of a nation’s conscience, and to the peril of those who would seek power by tearing it down.