The Laramie Project, 10 years Later

I just went to it. And I thought it was interesting.

Matthew Shephard is certainly a martyr. He was brutally beaten and killed.

Something that interested me was the reaction of the people closest to Matthew when they heard his death being passed off as something other than it was (a hate crime): a drug deal, a robbery. And understandably so: these misleading claims take the whole focus of his death off of his martyrdom. The mere mention of a fact that contradicted any of the "accepted" story (the canon, if you will) was made to seem as a heresy of sorts.

Yes. I'm comparing their reverence for Shephard to that of Christians for Christ.

And yet, I feel like when people show the same reverence for Jesus, and his cause the Gospel, and strive to keep the truth of his name and history in its place, people mock them. People get so angry at the mere mention of the Bible. When we get angry at a documentary undermining some of the central tenets of our faith, we get angry. They are reducing Jesus to a simple teacher, or a radical, a normal man.

You'd think we'd be angrier. What if we had the same intensity for the integrity a man who gave his life for ours? Perhaps we have become calloused. I speak for myself.

And I suppose this goes both ways. I know there are Christians out there mocking the tragic story of Shephard, trying to mar the story or twist it, trying to lessen the impact his death has had on the GLBTQ community.

Its just a shame. We spend so much time throwing mud at the other side, both sides, that we can't learn from each other.