Jason Fishel
Ms. Menough
SLCC
November 17, 2014
Matthew Shepard Rough Draft
The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman is a book about the events that led up to
Matthew Shepard’s murder committed by Aaron McKinney and the after effects of
the murder. This book takes a bias saying that the murder was a hate crime; Aaron
killed Matt because Matt was gay. The media has attempted to find answers to
why Matt was killed, but there is such wide spread of theories surrounding this
topic at hand that it’s difficult to find the absolute truth. Matthew Shepard's past is not certain; was his
death caused by hate, meth, Aaron McKinney’s insecurities or a combination of
them all? There is a lot of evidence we need to consider within The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman, ABC News 20/20 Report, and The Book of
Matt and in life there is usually more that one reason for something like
murder, so it has to be a mixture of them all.
One theory of why Matt was killed was because Aaron was involved
with meth. It is believed that Matt was beat to death by Aaron because he owed
Aaron money for meth and or wanted to rob Matt so that he could have money for
meth. “Aaron beat up someone else over drugs before beating Matt to death” (ABC News 20/20 Report). This could mean
that Aaron was involved in a drug ring, maybe he was just a meth addict, or
maybe it’s both. It’s believed that
during the time that Matt was tied up and beat to death by Aaron McKinney, Aaron
was in a meth-induced rage. “Yes, I knew
that Aaron didn’t kill him because he was gay, he killed him because he wanted
money for meth and he was probably going through withdrawal” (ABC News 20/20 Report).
But then again the bias from 20/20
is that the murder had nothing to do with Matt being gay, because it’s
believed that Aaron is bisexual. 20/20 sat down with people that knew Aaron well.
They knew him so well that one of the men they interviewed admitted to having a
three way with Aaron, and a woman admitted to Aaron asking her to have a three
way with him and another man. “Yes, I most definitely believe that Aaron was
bisexual” ABC News 20/20 Report. This
could mean that Aaron McKinney was insecure about his sexuality and decided to
take it out on someone who he may have saw himself in.
Many sources turn to Matt being
killed because he was gay, that not just the bias in the book The Laramie Project but it’s also the
bias in the HBO film adaptation of the book and The Book of Matt.
Larger societal influences and human
complexities played a role in the search of why Matthew Shepard was killed. For
example, there is no saying that the people who were interviewed about
Matthew’s death and the event that led up to it were telling the truth. For all
one knows, the whole book The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman could
be completely mythologized. It’s ok that Moisés Kaufman kept out some of the
evidence of why Matt was killed and kept a bias in the book. This brought attention
to the issues that people who are gay go through on a daily basis, a constant
fear of hate because of people like Aaron. Kaufman may have made Matthew into a
myth that really publicized this issue, but the story is still misleading for
someone looking for the whole story. If someone came from a cultural background
involving Christianity read The Laramie
Project by Moisés Kaufman, it may be easy for them to accept that Matt was
killed because he was gay because a part of a some Christian culture is that
being gay is a sin. I think
that Matt’s murder was out of hate, but I also believe that there was more than
just hate that caused Aaron to kill him.
