The "Hate State" Myth

In Wyoming, there are a few bigots who don't like gays. In the media, there are a lot more bigots who don't like Wyoming.

Robert O. Blanchard from the May 1999 issue

(Page 2 of 4)

The "gays get what they deserve" quote caused a local uproar, thoroughly covered by reporter Edwards and discussed in letters to the editor. Witnesses to the NBC interview in Wild Willies dispute its interpretation of the bar patron's somewhat inarticulate and rambling comments. "Honestly," one witness, a bar employee, said, "the customer, although not eloquently stated, was taken out of context. His opinion was that in any state, any town...open gayness is a very touchy subject."

A co-manager of the bar even confronted O'Neil while he was still on assignment in Laramie. As reported in the Boomerang, O'Neil explained that not only had he not conducted the interview himself, he had not actually seen or heard the footage. Instead, he was "briefed" on it by his producers who had already transmitted the video segment to NBC's studio in Burbank, California, for editing. According to the co-manager's account, O'Neil admitted that he based his lead-in to the story on what he had been told at the briefing. Faced with a possible misinterpretation, the newsman allegedly became defensive. According to the co-manager, O'Neil "said `I won't waste my time trying to clean up this town's mess...for five years in a row hate crime legislation has been declined by the state. I don't think Wyoming deserves a positive picture.'" In an interview for this story, O'Neil did not deny making those statements, but explained that the controversial comment by the bar patron was selected over the other interviews because it was "higher quality" on technical grounds (i.e., had better sound, lighting, and the like) than the other interviews.

Media Trend-Spotting

Reporters' explicit linkage between the killing and the need for legislation immediately transformed Shepard's murder from a routine crime rarely reported beyond a particular community to an emblem of a national trend. The hate crime news formula turns a murder into a marker--and a market--for a broader, more important, and more dramatic issue that is typically cast in the most black-and-white moral terms possible. Hence, the day after Shepard's deathJames Brooke reported in The New York Times that it had "fanned outrage and debate" throughout the nation. "Gay leaders hope Mr. Shepard's death will galvanize Congress and state legislatures to pass hate-crime legislation to broaden existing laws," continued the piece, which included a supporting quote from Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based gay lobby organization. "There is incredible symbolism about being tied to a fence," said the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force's Rebecca Isaacs, referring to the details of Shepard's murder. "People have likened it to a scarecrow. But it sounded more like a crucifixion."

Brooke's front-page story included a reference to conservatives, "particularly Christian conservatives" who "generally oppose such [hate crime] laws, saying they extend to minorities special rights." Steven Schwalm of the right-wing Family Research Council said hate crimes laws have nothing to do with perpetrators of violent crime and "everything to do with silencing political opposition" and that such laws "would criminalize pro-family beliefs." Rigidly dualistic, the hate crime news formula simply does not accommodate less polarized or more moderate views, such as those from openly gay authors and activists such as Richard E. Sincere Jr., Paul Varnell, Jonathan Rauch, Andrew Sullivan, and others associated with the Independent Gay Forum, which advocates elimination of government-sponsored discrimination against gays while opposing "liberationist" political strategies rooted in identity politics. In the hate crime formula, you are on one side or the other of all the issues. There is no sense, for instance, that a person might be gay, oppose the Christian right, and criticize preferential legal treatment for homosexuals.

The media's methods both reflect and reinforce those of advocacy groups, who similarly cast certain crimes as broadly representative. Less than a month after Shepard's death, for instance, the NLGTF mailed at least two appeals for money drawing heavily on his memory. One appeal sought money for a group in Fort Collins, Colorado, that was promoting a city anti-discrimination measure that would include sexual orientation. A second mailing sought money for the NLGTF itself.

Other gay groups, in places such as Los Angeles and Michigan, followed suit. Like the mainstream national media, they implicitly linked the murder both to a lack of hate crime laws and to a Neanderthal Wyoming culture. "Your donation becomes our tool, our weapon," one appeal read, "against ignorance and intolerance, the forces which killed Matthew Shepard." In an interview with The Advocate, the nation's biggest gay publication, Dianne Hardy-Garcia of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas approved of these efforts, particularly if the money is earmarked for the passage of hate crime legislation. She said there is "nothing more basic" than the need to pass hate crime bills. "We need to be frank with the [gay] community that we need more resources."

At least one aspect of the gay community's "outrage and debate" failed to interest the national media: The same Advocate story that quoted Hardy-Garcia cited a number of activists, most speaking anonymously, who condemned the use of Shepard's name so soon after his death. Some did go on the record: Terri Ford, a member of a Los Angeles-based political action group formed in reaction to Shepard's murder, said the NLGTF money raising efforts were "disgusting." A spokesperson for the NLGTF defended the fund raising efforts by saying, "We have often used tragedy to teach, and we will continue to do so."

A Socially Constructed Epidemic

The lessons that the NLGTF, along with other advocacy groups and national media sources, want the Shepard case to teach are clearly drawn: There is an "epidemic" of anti-gay crime in America, particularly in unsophisticated backwaters such as Wyoming; hate crime legislation is the only remedy; opponents of such laws are themselves allied with the forces of darkness.

Those are, at best, debatable notions; at worst, clear misrepresentations. In Hate Crimes: Criminal Law & Identity Politics (1998), legal scholars James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter analyze what they call the "social construction of a national hate crimes epidemic." Contrary to media and advocacy-group pronouncements, Jacobs and Potter found no substantiation of a hate crime "epidemic" against gays or any other group, "despite a consensus to the contrary among journalists, politicians, and academics." Their own analysis concluded that "in contemporary American society there is less prejudice-motivated violence against minority groups than in many earlier periods of American history." Violence against minorities "is not new and is not on the rise." They point to other "epidemics inflated by those committed to mobilizing public reaction," such as child kidnapping, drunk driving, and homelessness. The "uncritical acceptance" of the "socially constructed epidemic" is potentially damaging, argue Jacobs and Potter. "This pessimistic and alarmist portrayal of a fractured warring community is likely to exacerbate societal divisions and contribute to a self-fulfilling prophesy. It distorts the discourse about crime in America, turning a social problem that used to unite Americans into one that divides us."

While one would expect this relatively good news to be heralded as evidence of social gains and a greater tolerance for alternative lifestyles, the authors uncovered a very different dynamic at work. Lack of evidence hardly deters promoters of hate crime legislation. Indeed, even when the NLGTF's own 1993 survey reflected a 14 percent decrease in hate crimes against gays and lesbians from previous surveys in six major cities, a spokesperson announced, "All the anecdotal evidence tells us this is still an out-of-control problem." Using the survey as her supporting evidence, an NLGTF representative told a congressional committee that "anti-gay violence clearly remains at epidemic proportions." Another NLGTF spokesperson characterized the study as proving that the gay community was "under siege--fighting an epidemic of violence."

Jacobs and Potter contend that in a political environment dominated by identity politics, advocacy groups seek "to call attention to their members' victimization, subordinate status, and need for special governmental assistance...[They] have good reasons for claiming that we are in the throes of an epidemic...[Such] demands [require] attention, remedial actions, resources, and reparations. The...media also have an incentive....Crime sells; so does racism, sexism, and homophobia. Garden variety crime has become mundane. The law and order drama has to be revitalized if it is to command attention."

Given these forces, the "epidemic" theory has been widely accepted, even with no solid evidence or, indeed, evidence to the contrary. The formula is designed so that it can only be verified, never refuted. Such predispositions made it almost inevitable that the murder of Matthew Shepard--who was, by all accounts, singled out partly because of his sexual orientation--would be discussed in terms of the "hate crime epidemic" and the "urgent" need for hate crime laws. (That Shepard died just as pre-planned National Coming Out Day activities were beginning provided another ready news hook.)

Political Placebos

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