As soon as news of the attack spread, Laramie responded speedily and uniformly with an outpouring of revulsion and profound shock. The two suspects, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, were caught thanks to the vigilance of the public and now face life imprisonment, if not the death penalty.There have been vigils, prayer groups, "teach-ins" on the campus green to preach tolerance, and more besides. "A greater misfortune is, indeed, harder to imagine." Superficially, at least, that assessment could not be more wrong. "The kind who shout `you f****ing faggot!' and let you know exactly where you stand."Shepard's murder has galvanised gay and civil rights groups across the country who have seized on it as a shocking symbol of rampant intolerance towards homosexuals.
Candle-lit vigils have been held in more than a dozen cities from Los Angeles to Washington, and politicians right up to President Bill Clinton have called for new federal legislation to define hate crimes as a specifically punishable offence.The particular anguish the attack has caused in Laramie has been compounded by one haunting question: did this murder come out of the blue, or was it somehow inevitable in such a place? Certainly, the national television networks have been quick to depict Laramie as a hick town in a remote western state crawling with gun- toting right-wing Christian fundamentalists."My condolences to all of you who must live in that part of the country," one university professor from Alabama wrote to a Wyoming newspaper. "When I saw the two young men on television being arraigned, I recognised them as exactly the types who drive past me in their pick-ups when I'm out biking," recounted a recently arrived lesbian writer from Boston, identifying herself only as Liz. "She was visibly scared, and stayed on edge until her presentation was done," said Jenn Palmer, chair of a university gay and lesbian group that organised the event.She was not the only one to react that way. As a precaution, her event was attended by a plain- clothes police officer. The whole campus was in ferment, and despite a massive show of solidarity for Shepard and the rapid arrest of his assailants there were widespread fears in the gay community of other attacks. Instead, she walked straight into the most brutal murder case to hit the American gay community in years.
On the morning of her appearance last Monday, a 21-year-old political science student called Matt Shepard died in a nearby hospital after lying in a coma for five days. He had been bludgeoned around the head with the butt of a revolver, tied to a fence miles away from town and left for dead by two men who apparently resented him making a pass at them in a Laramie bar. This was little short of a gay lynching, and, indeed, the lone cyclist who happened to notice Shepard's unconscious form mistook him, at first, for a scarecrow.Newman was terrified. WHEN LESLEA Newman, author of the controversial children's book Heather Has Two Mommies, was invited to be the keynote speaker for Gay Awareness Week at the University of Wyoming, she thought she was in for a pleasant time in a civilised small western college town. Israel threatens to retaliate.The knowledge that this is still ahead is a powerful incentive to both sides to deal; but there is still a sense that brinkmanship is the order of the day, and that agreement may take until Monday at the least.. If it is not achieved, the Palestinians feel they have little option but to take a unilateral move to statehood. Palestinians want the third redeployment to go-ahead, but Israel is said to be offering only 1 per cent of the territory - far too little for Palestine to accept.The Final Status talks are supposed to be complete by next May, but so little headway has been made in the last two years that this now looks very difficult. The toughest area so far is security for both sides.Palestinians also want to talk about a further redeployment of Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank.