Last Updated on November 16, 2024 by Kittredge Cherry

Matthew Shepard is a modern gay martyr whose unusually cruel murder in October 1998 got international attention and inspired laws against anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. He was a 21-year-old openly gay student at the University of Wyoming at the time.

[Update: The Washington National Cathedral’s annual worship service for Matthew Shepard will be at 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 2, 2024.]

Shepard (1976-1998) was brutally attacked near Laramie, Wyoming, on Oct. 6-7, 1998 by two men who later claimed that they were driven temporarily insane by “gay panic” due to Shepard’s alleged sexual advances. Shepard never regained consciousness and died six days later on Oct. 12 from severe head injuries.

Matthew Shepard (Wikipedia)

He has moved more people more deeply than almost any other modern LGBTQ hate-crime victim.  His story has an ineffable appeal that is based partly on the extreme brutality of his murder, the tragedy of a promising young life cut short, his boyish blond looks, and his lasting impact on the law.  A common sentiment in the aftermath was: “That could have been me!”

On the night of Oct. 6, two men abducted Shepard and drove him to a remote rural area on the outskirts of Laramie.  They lashed him to a split-rail fence, robbed, pistol-whipped and tortured him and left him for dead in the near-freezing night.  He was discovered 18 hours later, still tied to the fence, by a bicyclist who at first mistook him for a scarecrow.  The police officer who found Shepard reported that he was covered with blood — except for the white streaks left on his face by the trails of his nearly frozen tears.

U.S. President Obama signed “The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” into law on Oct. 28, 2009. It broadens the federal hate-crimes law to cover violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

For many, Shepard became a gay saint by popular acclaim. His memorialization as a martyr also has institutional support from the church. Shepard is under consideration for sainthood in the Episcopal church, with Oct. 12 as his feast day. “It is just and fitting that our Episcopalian brother in Christ, Matthew Shepard, be added to our Sanctoral Calendar as we wrestle with the past and ongoing spiritual trauma inflicted on members of the LGBTQIA+ community,” stated the resolution, which was referred to a committee at the Episcopal general convention in July 2022.

Washington National Cathedral honored Shepard in a worship service Nov. 30, 2023.  The 2023 video and 2023 service leaflet are available online. The service included a prayer by Q Spirit founder Kittredge Cherry and homily by Anne Kitch, a Shepard family relative who preached at Matthew’s funeral in 1998.

On the other hand, some question whether Shepard deserves such an enormous reputation as a gay martyr. They wonder how much of his popularity comes from his youthful white male beauty. They raise troubling questions about what ends are being served by the mythology that has grown up around him.

Matthew Shepard’s short life made an impact

Matthew Wayne Shepard was born Dec. 1, 1976, in the oil boomtown of Casper, Wyoming.  His birthday happens to fall on World AIDS Day and he was HIV-positive, so churches sometimes commemorate both occasions together.

During high school he moved with his family to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, when his father took a job in oil safety engineering for Saudi Aramco. He graduated from the American School in Switzerland. His fatal attack was not Shepard’s first experience with violence.  He was raped, beaten and robbed by locals during a high-school trip to Morocco.  Some say that he was especially vulnerable because he was only 5 feet 2 inches tall, weighing 105 pounds at his death.  After briefly attending a couple of other colleges, he enrolled as a freshman political science major at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, minoring in languages.

Shepard’s story is told in images like this from the illustrated book “Heavenly Homos, Etc.: Queer Icons from LGBTQ Life, Religion, and History” by Jan Haen, a Dutch artist and Roman Catholic priest.

Shepard was a member and acolyte (altar boy) at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in his hometown of Casper, Wyoming. At the University of Wyoming, he was an active member of his campus Canterbury Club, an Episcopal student ministry. His funeral was held at his hometown church — and picketed by members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church with hostile signs such as “Matt in hell” and “No fags in heaven.”  They also mounted anti-gay demonstrations at the trials of his killers.  During one of the trials, a group of Shepard’s friends wore gigantic wings like angels to block the protestors.  Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were convicted of first-degree murder and each received two consecutive life sentences for the crime.

Since then Shepard has become a cultural icon, inspiring dozens and dozens of paintings, films, plays, songs and other artistic works — with more still being created every year. The fence, dismantled and rebuilt about 50 yards away, has become a pilgrimage site. The Matthew Shepard Foundation seeks to replace hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance.

Matthew Shepard in visual art

“Here’s to the queer saints that have paved the way, so that we might live openly without fear. In honor of Pride, I illustrated an icon of Matthew Shepard, a true saint in my eyes,” wrote Andrew Freshour when he released his new icon in 2019.  It appears at the top of this post.  Freshour is a New Hampshire artist and gay Episcopalian.  He earned as BFA in illustration from the New Hampshire Institute of Art in 2013.

Shepard’s martyrdom gives him the aura of a Christ figure. His torturous death evokes the Good Shepherd who was crucified.  Based on the police report, William Hart McNichols created a striking icon of Shepard red with blood except for his white tears. McNichols dedicated his icon “The Passion of Matthew Shepard” to the 1,470 gay and lesbian youth of commit suicide in the U.S. each year, and to the countless others who are injured or murdered. He was asked to make this icon by Maryknoll Magazine for an issue on contemporary Passion artwork. He said that he wanted to represent Shepard in the exact position of the “Extreme Humility” icon of Christ.

“The Passion of Matthew Shepard” by William Hart McNichols

McNichols is a New Mexico artist and Catholic priest who has been rebuked by church leaders for making icons of saints not approved by the church, including one of Matthew Shepard. McNichols’ own moving spiritual journey and two of his icons are included in the book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More by Kittredge Cherry. His Matthew Shepard icon appears in his book “Christ All Merciful,” which he co-authored with Megan McKenna.

Shepard has a gold halo inscribed with the initials “LGBTQ” in an icon commissioned by the Apostolic Sacramental Church for his canonization Mass on Oct. 12, 2022.  It appears at the top of this post and the cover of the Mass booklet. He raises his right hand in a traditional gesture of blessing.  The event was hosted in Pasadena, California, by Trinity Lutheran Church and organized by the Chapel of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

Matthew Shepard icon commissioned by the Apostolic Sacramental Church. Presented on Q Spirit with permission from the bishop.

Matthew Shepard has a halo with a rainbow rim in an icon was created in 2017 by queer Lutheran artist and then-seminarian Katy Miles-Wallace as part of a “Queer Saints” series. The series presents traditional saints with queer qualities and heroes of the LGBTQ community.

“Matthew Shepard” by Keats Miles-Wallace of Queerly Christian

The icons are rooted in queer theology and in Miles-Wallace’s eclectic faith journey that began at a Baptist church in Texas and led to study at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. She drew many of them on the altar of a seminary chapel. For more info, see the Q Spirit article “New icons of Queer Saints created by artist Katy Miles-Wallace.” Her icons are available as prints, jewelry and more at the Queerly Christian Zazzle and Etsy shops.

A sweet portrait of Shepard with a faint rainbow halo was done by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his spouse were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

“Saint Sebastian and Matt Shepard Juxtaposed” by JR Leveroni

“Saint Sebastian and Matt Shepard Juxtaposed” by JR Leveroni is a painting that makes an important connection between a gay Christian martyr from history and the gay victims of hate crimes today. Leveroni is an emerging visual artist living in South Florida. Painting in a Cubist style, he matches Shepard’s death with the killing of another gay martyr, Saint Sebastian. The suffering is expressed in a subdued style with barely a trace of blood.

“The Murder of Matthew Shepard” by Matthew Wettlaufer

The grim scene of Matthew’s death is vividly portrayed in “The Murder of Matthew Shepard,” above, by gay artist-philosopher Matthew Wettlaufer. He lived in El Salvador and South Africa before returning to California. For an interview with Wettlaufer and more of his art, see my previous post “New paintings honor gay martyrs.”

“The Last of Laramie” by Stephen Mead

Above is a lyrical painting dedicated to Matthew Shepard: “The Last of Laramie” by gay artist Stephen Mead.of New York. It appears in his book “Our Book of Common Faith.” For more about Mead and his art, see my previous post “Gay Artist Links Body and Spirit.” His Chroma Museum website features more than 500 montage images from his series on historical LGBTI figures and allies.

California artist Sandow Birk painted a candlelight vigil for Shepard. With a drummer and a rainbow flag, it seems to echo “The Spirit of 76,” a famous patriotic painting of Revolutionary War figures by Archibald MacNeal Willard. But it is based on the 1889 painting (“The Conscripts” by Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, a work that takes a hard look at the toll of war, especially the conscription of young people into the military during the Franco-Prussian War.

For more about Sandow Birk’s art, see my previous post Stonewall’s LGBT history painted: Interview with Sandow Birk.

National Gallery unveils portrait of Matthew Shepard in 2022

A new devotional portrait of Matthew Shepard by artist Kelly Latimore was unveiled and dedicated on Dec. 1, 2022, at the Washington National Cathedral. It is used with permission at the top of this post. The portrait was commissioned by LGBTQ members of the Cathedral staff and composed in close collaboration with the Shepard family.

Matthew Shepard by Kelly Latimore. Copyright 2022, Washington National Cathedral. Used with permission.  All rights reserved.

Matthew’s image is surrounded by a rainbow of words that form a kind of halo.  They were snipped from the many letters and cards received by his parents, Judy and Dennis Shepard, in response to their son’s death. Phrases include: “He was all of us,” “You are not alone,” “I pray this hate will end,” “Strength in God and each other,” “Impact with his short life,” and “That could have been me!”

At the dedication service, Dennis Shepard explained his son’s gestures in the portrait.  He places right hand over his heart “in the eternal sign of thank-you” while he extends his left hand out in welcome: “Come.  I’m here as your friend, I’m here to help all of you.”

Q Spirit founder Kittredge Cherry is honored that her prayer will be part of the Washington National Cathedral’s annual worship service for gay martyr Matthew Shepard on Nov. 30, 3023. Her prayer begins, “Loving God of the rainbow promise…”  They also included her prayer in 2021 and at the 2022 dedication of the icon. Click here for info and videos of the services.

The devotional portrait was dedicated with this prayer:

“Precious Lord, your love is made manifest in the legacy of Matthew Shepard, in the work of his parents and friends and the thousands who join with them to work toward a more just future for your LGBTQ children. May the image of Matthew we dedicate this night be a reminder of the love that surrounded Matthew in life and the affection that holds his precious memory in the hearts of so many. May this portrait be a teacher for those who have yet to learn Matthew’s story and a beacon of hope for those facing oppression. May it be for all of us a symbol of the beloved community for which we strive, the community where all your children are accepted, embraced, and loved.”

The portrait will be encased in protective glass and put on permanent display for use in cathedral services, gatherings, and pilgrimages associated with Shepard and the LGBTQ community. Latimore is known for creating innovative icons of modern figures such as Stonewall icon Marsha P. Johnson. He began painting them in 2011 as a member of the Common Friars, an emerging Episcopal monastic community in Athens, Ohio. He grew up as a preacher’s kid in an evangelical church.

Grauer paints Ascension of Matthew Shepard

The hate-crime victim is transformed into a holy martyr who rises to heaven in “The Ascension of Matthew Shepard” by gay New York artist Carl Grauer.  The painting appears at the top of this post.  The ropes that bound Shepard when he was killed have come loose in the artwork, freeing his hands and becoming an elegant loincloth.  His whole body is blood-red, except for the white trails left by the tears on his cheeks.

“The Ascension of Matthew Shepard” by Carl Grauer.

He is surrounded by a flock of angels with faces like Sebastian, early Christian martyr and patron saint of gay men.  With Shepard for a surname, comparisons to the crucifixion of Jesus the Good Shepherd are apt and inevitable.  But Grauer makes a queerer comparison, equating Matthew with Mary, the mother of Jesus.  The scene follows the classic iconography for the Assumption of Mary, when the sinless virgin mother died and was accepted to “assumed” into heaven, body and soul.  Here the blameless yet beaten gay man is swept wholly into heaven without reservation.  The fence where he was beaten is visible on the earth below, but it fades into darkness in contrast to the brilliant stars around Shepard.  The stars recall the comments of Shepard’s father at McKinney’s trial : “You left him out there by himself, but he wasn’t alone… There were his lifelong friends… the stars and the moon.”

The painting is part of Grauer’s series “The Lavender Temple of Their Most Fabulous.”  It debuted in June 2019 at the Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, New York, for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.  The artist revealed the holiness of the LGBTQ-rights struggle before and after Stonewall with portraits using religious imagery and handmade frames like Catholic altarpieces.  He painted 15 LGBTQ pioneers, including Storme Delarverie, Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, Sylvia Rivera and Bayard Rustin.

The son of a former nun, Grauer grew up in rural Kansas in a conservative religious family that taught him homosexuality was a sin. His art reclaims religion for LGBTQ people.  “I’m going to take those same structures that were used against (LGBTQ people) and say, ‘we are important.’ ” he said in an interview with High Country News.

Books, films and plays about Matthew Shepard

Books about Shepard include “The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie and a World Transformed” by his mother (Judy Shepard) and “October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard” by Lesléa Newman, a novel in verse about the murder.

“Always Matt: A Tribute to Matthew Shepard” by Lesléa Newman (author) and Brian Britigan (illustrator).

Large, beautiful illustrations peppered with simple texts present the life and legacy of gay martyr Matthew Shepard, including people who took action in his memory. The “graphic novel” format illuminates the story of the young gay man whose 1998 murder got international attention and inspired laws against anti-LGBTQ hate crimes. Foreword by Jason Collins, the first openly gay active basketball player in the NBA, who chose the number “98” for his uniform to honor Shepard. Published by Harry N. Abrams / Abrams ComicArts in 2023.

The documentary film “Matt Shepard was a Friend of Mine” is directed by Michele Josue, who indeed was a close friend of Shepard. She takes a personal approach, exploring his life and loss by visiting places that were important to him and interviewing his friends and family. View the trailer below or at this link.

Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine: Teaser #2 from Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine on Vimeo.

Matthew’s story has also been dramatized in biopic movies such as “The Matthew Shepard Story” with Sam Waterson and Stockard Channing as the grieving parents.

The play “The Laramie Project” by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project has been performed all over the world since it premiered in 1998. Many American performances were picketed by Westboro Baptist Church members, who appear in the play picketing Shepard’s funeral as they did in real life. “The Laramie Project” draws on hundreds of interviews with residents of Laramie conducted by the theater company. A film version of The Laramie Project was released in 2002.

More than a 30 songs inspired by Matthew Shepard are listed in “Cultural Depictions of Matthew Shepard” at Wikipedia. They come from a variety of singers, including Melissa Etheridge, Janis Ian, and Elton John.

Shepard appears with other progressive heroes in the one-minute video “Imagine a World Without Hate” made by the Anti-Defamation League. It imagines the headlines and accomplishments of Harvey Milk, Martin Luther King, Anne Frank, Matthew Shepard and others if their lives were not cut short by hate. More than a million people watched the video and some were so moved that they vowed to take action in their own lives against bigotry and bullying.

Oratorio about Matthew Shepard

“Considering Matthew Shepard” is an oratorio by Craig Hella Johnson that premiered in 2016 and is the subject of a 2018 PBS performance documentary. The debut recording was released as an album by Conspirare, a Grammy-winning choral group from Austin, Texas. Johnson is founding artistic director of the group.

The song “Ordinary Boy” includes Shepard’s own description of himself that he wrote in a notebook.  It includes these lines:

I am funny, sometimes forgetful and messy and lazy. I am not a lazy person though. I am
giving and understanding. And formal and polite. I am sensitive. I am honest. I am sincere.
And I am not a pest…
I love movies and eating and positive people and pasta and driving and walking and jogging
and kissing and learning and airports and music and smiling and hugging and being myself

His three-part choral piece weaves together various musical styles to explore Shepard’s life, death and legacy. The lyrics come from Shepard’s own journal, interviews and writings by his parents, newspaper reports, hostile picket signs from his funeral, and poetry by various poets, including icons of same-sex love Rumi and Hildegard of Bingen.

The oratorio begins by evoking the Wyoming landscape in “Cattle, Horses, Sky and Grass.” The song’s premiere is captured on video.

Questioning the mythology of Matthew Shepard

Award-winning gay Journalist Stephen Jimenez does extensive research into the circumstances of the crime in “The Book of Matt.” He finds that Shepard was not killed for being gay, but for reasons far more complicated.

The tendency to acclaim Shepard as a martyr is analyzed in a chapter in “Dying to be Normal: Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics” by Brett Krutzsch, visiting assistant professor of religion at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. The book examines how activists applied Christian traditions to prominent LGBTQ deaths to counteract Christian conservatives between 1995 and 2015.

The chapter stems from a scholarly paper that won the 2014-15 LGBT Religious History Award from the LGBT Religious Archives Network. “The Martyrdom of Matthew Shepard” is an excerpt from Krutzsch’s Ph.D dissertation, “Martyrdom and American Gay History: Secular Advocacy, Christian Ideas, and Gay Assimilation,” which examines how religious rhetoric and gay martyr discourses facilitated American gay assimilation from the 1970s through 2014. He finds that secular gay advocates invoked Shepard as a gay martyr, using Christian ideas to present gay Americans as similar to the dominant culture. He explores the politics of martyrdom and analyzes why the deaths of a few white, middle-class, gay men have been mourned as national tragedies.

The award announcement explains: “The paper argues that Shepard’s appeal was connected to constructions of him as Christ-like and as an upstanding young, Christian man. His posthumous notoriety reveals a historical moment when Christian ideas significantly shaped arguments for American gay social integration. In turn, Matthew Shepard became an icon of the apparently ideal late twentieth-century gay citizen: a white, nonsexual, practicing Protestant.”

National Cathedral honors Matthew Shepard

The Washington National Cathedral has found many beautiful ways to honor Shepard over the years. Annual services are held in his honor every year for his birthday.  In addition, the cathedral’s Bourdon Bell, its largest bell, tolled 25 times to mark 25 years since his death on Oct. 12, 2023.  The deep, solemn-sounding bell is typically used for funerals.

With the 20th anniversary of Shepard’s death, his ashes were interred with a memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral on Oct. 26, 2018.  Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop, presided over the service with Marianne Edgar Budde, bishop of Washington.  It was the first interment of a national figure there since disability activist Helen Keller 50 years earlier. The service was recorded on video.  A memorial plaque dedication service was held on Dec. 2, 2019. The National Cathedral is the main church of Anglicanism in United States and the site of the cathedra (chair) of the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Washington National Cathedral and the Matthew Shepard Foundation commemorate Matthew’s birthday with special worship services. Q Spirit founder Kittredge Cherry is honored that her prayer concluded his worship service for three years in a row from 2021 to 2023.

The cathedral posted the 2021 service leaflet, 2022 service leaflet and 2023 service leaflet online, plus the 2021 video, 2022 video and 2023 video of the worship services.  The full text of the prayer is included in the worship service leaflets for both years. The prayer begins, “Loving God of the rainbow promise, Thank you for creating us in your holy image, with a wide range of genders and sexualities that reflect your own sacred diversities. May we hear your voice and embody your love today and always….”

Cherry was not there in person, but her prayer was read aloud at the Washington National Cathedral by Rose Duncan, canon for worship (pictured here), and Patrick Keyser, priest associate.

She originally wrote the prayer for the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.  For more info, see Q Spirit’s article about the prayer and the National Cathedral.

Matthew Shepard prayers

Q Spirit’s Litany of Queer Saints includes this line:

Saint Matthew Shepard, crucified by men who hate, young forever, pray for us.

A powerful collect for Matthew Shepard was written in 2020 by Micah Ketchens, a queer liturgist out of Appalachia.

Everlasting God, whose unfailing love wipes every tear from our eyes: Nurture in us the fruits that grew in the life of your witness Matthew Shepard, that justice may grow in the same soil as love, and that both may sustain your creation. We hear your voice, we are known, and we follow you; never alone in the light of Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

It is the first of what Ketchens hopes will become an ongoing series (and eventually a book) of prayers and readings for a queer calendar of saints. His current lectionary project is The Book of Dolly.

Shepard’s memory is invoked with a reference to Laramie in a Pride Month hymn commissioned for the 2019 LGBTQ Pride celebration at Trinity Episcopal Church in Everett, Washington. Composed by Henry Lebedinsky, it includes these stanzas:

As we journey on together,
We remember those we’ve lost,
Those who could not make the voyage,
Those whose lives have paid the cost.
Stonewall, Laramie, Orlando…
Change borne on a sea of tears,
Bitter struggle, bitter hatred,
So much pain from so much fear.…

Through the years of loss and conflict,
We’ve been called to turn our hearts,
And together, be Love’s beacon
When all other light departs.
May we be the light God made us,
Rays of hope in times of pain;
Peace and justice be our promise,
Sunlight shining through the rain.

The Altar Cross of LGBTQ Martyrs from Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco features photos of Matthew Shepard, Harvey Milk, Gwen Araujo and others. In the center of the cross is the fence where Shepard was tortured and murdered in Laramie, Wyoming.
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Related links:

National Cathedral unveils portrait of Matthew Shepard, the gay hate-crime victim interred there (Episcopal News Service, Dec. 2, 2022)

Cultural Depictions of Matthew Shepard (Wikipedia)

“Last Night, I Prayed to Matthew”: Matthew Shepard, Homosexuality, and Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America” by Scott W. Hoffman

Smithsonian Receives Matthew Shepard Collection includes a photo of an outdoor pop-up memorial for “St. Matt Shepard” by Freddie Neim in the style of Keith Haring.

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Top image credit:
“Saint Matthew Shepard” by Andrew Freshour.

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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.

This article has evolved and expanded greatly since the first version was posted in October 2009. It was published on Q Spirit in October 2017, was enhanced with new material over time, and was most recently updated on Nov. 16, 2024.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

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Kittredge Cherry

Founder at Q Spirit

Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian author who writes regularly about LGBTQ spirituality.She holds degrees in religion, journalism and art history.She was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served as its national ecumenical officer, advocating for LGBTQ rights at the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches.

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