Matthew Shepard Died Today*

*originally posted October 12, 2009 ... Shepard died in 1998

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay. But it wasn't the kid who got noticed on this day eleven years ago, it was his murder that caught us all, gay and straight, off-guard.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming. And he was gay. And, for being gay, he was tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. His attack occurred on October 6, but Mathew didn't die until almost a week later.

Matthew was born in Wyoming and grew up there. He spent his last high school year at The American School in Switzerland. After high school, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver and becoming a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming.

Political science. Matthew might have been a politician, or a community organizer, or a gay rights activist. Or a teacher or a bartender or any number of other things which we'll never know because he never got the chance to be anything else.

He was described by his parents, Judy and Dennis, as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

He might have done so much.

But Matthew knew he was gay, and so did many other people. And like so many in the LGBT community, he faced physical and verbal abuse all throughout his life, and death. In 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, he was beaten and raped, leaving him withdrawn from friends and family and battling depression and panic attacks. But he soldiered on, went back to school and seemed to be coming out of his depression.

Then, just after midnight on October 7, 1998, Matthew met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. They took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, robbed, pistol whipped, tortured him, and left him to die. They also found his address and decided to rob his home as well.

Matthew Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who mistook the beaten, dying young man for a scarecrow. Matthew was barely alive. And suffering.

There was a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital functions. There were also a dozen or more lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on October 12, 1998.

Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck. The two men had attempted to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis. They used the gay panic defense, arguing that they beat, tortured and killed Matthew Shepard because he came on to them. They even tried to say they only wanted to rob him, not hurt him.

But they hurt an entire community.

Russell Henderson pleaded guilty in April 1999, and agreed to testify against Aaron McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he was given two consecutive life sentences. The jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder, and as they began to deliberate on the death penalty, Matthew Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

In a statement read to the court, Dennis Shepard told McKinney what the sentence means to him:

“You won’t be a symbol.

No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing—just a miserable future and a miserable end.

It works for me ….

Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay kid. And he could have been any one of us, but in death, Matthew did what hadn't really been done before. He shone a light on hate crimes against the LGBT community. He gave us a face and a smile that needn't have been snuffed out so readily.

He could have been any one of us. He is every one of us.

Ain't That America XIII

Here we go again … the GOP doing everything from lying and cheating to hating and acting foolish … to a good step for LGBTQ+ Americans ... to one of Krist's Koncentration Kamps closing ... to losing in court and forcing Miss Lindsey to her fainting couch … so let’s dish …

Last week, in the middle of the night like rats and cockroaches, GOP Governor Ron Gogo Boots DeSantis ordered the removal of a rainbow-colored crosswalk outside the Pulse nightclub where 49 people were gunned down.

DeSantis said he “will not allow our state roads to be commandeered for political purposes.”

The murder of Americans is not a political issue, but DeSantis turns hate into politics.

On the upside, the very next day citizens took to the streets and repainted the crosswalk in an act of Resistance.

The US Gulf Coast is facing billions of dollars in yearly property damage by 2050 due to extreme weather tied to climate change which nary a single Republican believes in.

That’s all.

The Felon’s Justice Department is demanding that hospitals turn over a wide range of sensitive information related to medical care for young transgender patients, including billing documents, communication with drug manufacturers and data such as patient dates of birth, Social Security numbers and addresses.

It's an attack on privacy, individual rights, and trans Americans; it’s hate.

The Felon has called war criminal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war hero” and announced that he is also a war hero for sending US bombers to hit Iran’s nuclear sites.

Draft Dodger and a Murderer … birds of a feather.

The Felon is saying the people of Washington DC are thrilled to have armed troops patrolling their streets but the numbers tell a different story.

It was reported that business at DC’s restaurants, bars, and nightclubs has plummeted since the federal takeover of DC police.

Trust a liar or trust the people.

In a 2016 court filing, Marco Rubio, then a senator running for president, made the case that the Constitution conferred citizenship on essentially all children born in the United States.

Now, under this regime he sings an entirely different tune as he now seeks to restrict birthright citizenship.

Flip flop hypocrite.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] is moving to make English the sole language used for all agency business, a move that is in line with The Felon’s executive order to make English the official language of the United States.

Funny then, that The Felon can’t speak English and let’s not get started with his Slovenian Hooker Wife.

Judge Kathleen Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami has ordered that no more immigrant detainees be sent to Kristi’s Koncentration Kamp in the Florida Everglades, and that much of the facility be dismantled. 

Williams gave both branches of the government 60 days to move out existing detainees and begin to remove fencing, lighting, power generators and other materials. The order also prohibits any new construction at the site.

US District Judge Fred Biery has ruled that Texas cannot require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom; it’s a temporary ruling against the state’s new requirement but it’s the third such state law to be blocked by a court.

Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target, is stepping down as the department store chain seeks to turn around its fortunes amid an ongoing customer boycott over its scaling back of diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] initiatives.

Target said people were scaling back spending over worries about the impact of tariffs and the state of the economy but also admitted that customer boycotts affected sales.

Boycotts work, y’all, keep resisting.

A dedication ceremony for a longtime public servant in New York’s North Country was interrupted by protesters on Monday. The event to rename the Clinton County Government Center as the John Zurlo Government Center was overtaken by a large crowd that quickly shifted to the protest against GOP Congresswoman Elise Stefanik; protesters zeroed in on Stefanik’s stance on the war in Gaza, barely letting her speak and forcing her to cut her speech early.

Stefanik eventually returned and shrieked over the protesters.

Fox News host Howard Kurtz has delivered a brutal assessment of The Felon’s meeting with Russian Dictator Vladimir Putin saying “it was clear not much was accomplished”:

“No ceasefire, no details, no questions from the press, just vague assurances that some progress was made without explaining what that was.”

Kurtz noted that the meeting, which did not include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had been preceded by a White House effort to dramatically lower expectations as it became clear in the days before the summit that The Felon is inept in every sense of the word.

The cult is demanding that Fox fire Kurtz. Because of course.

The Republican Party of Florida was pushing a new line of merchandise including baseball caps, T-shirts, mugs and insulating drink sleeves with “THE DEPORT DEPOT” in blocky stencil font diagonally across a bright orange square.

But the Home Depot stepped up and expressed concern about the unapproved use of its branding and suddenly the items were scrubbed from the Florida GOP’s digital storefront.

The GOP puts the Duh in Flori-duh.

The Felon has a new target, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut and as usual his issues is with appearance:

“The very unattractive (both inside and out!) Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy, said ‘Putin got everything that he wanted.’ Actually, ‘nobody got anything,’ too soon, but getting close. Murphy is a lightweight who thinks it made the Russian President look good in coming to America. Actually, it was very hard for President Putin to do so. This war can be ended, NOW, but stupid people like Chris Murphy, John Bolton, and others, make it much harder to do so.”

There’s a side-by-side of The Felon and Murphy; who’s the ugly one? Inside and out?

Hours after Texas GOP lawmakers approved a new gerrymandered congressional map a group of Texans asked a court to block it.

The plaintiffs, a group of Black and Latino Texans, filed an amended complaint in an ongoing challenge to the electoral districts Texas drew in 2021. The amended complaint alleges that the new map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment by diluting the voting power of Black and Latino communities.

Clearly the Texas GOP doesn’t want Black and Brown people to be represented in their state.

Illinois Democrat Governor JB Pritzker announced that his state is launching a “first of its kind” resource guide and hotline to support LGBTQ+ residents called Illinois Pride Connect that will serve English and Spanish speakers, according to the program’s site.

Callers can get advice on access to health care, identifying documents, housing, safety concerns and government benefits, such as Medicaid and SNAP.

As always, Democrats help, Republicans hurt.

South Carolina GOP Representative, Liar and Transphobic Loon, Nancy Mace—who is currently running as a South Carolina gubernatorial candidate—was forced to cancel a speech for the local chapter of the far-right organization Moms for Liberty last week.

Not because she was booed offstage but because only eight people showed up.

Mace reportedly slunk away backstage to avoid addressing the situation directly, before pivoting to speaking with those in attendance individually, which didn’t take long because there were only eight of them.

Speaking at the White House recently The Felon told reporters he was going to stop mail-in ballots because it’s corrupt.” He then claimed that he went to vote in person—though in the last several elections he has voted mail-in, he was asked to show his “license plate.”

Maybe one day, someday, he’ll be working a job making license plates and be only too happy to show them.

Right after The Felon was publicly spanked by Dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska, South Carolina GOP Senator Lindsey Graham announced that the next phase of American diplomacy over the war in Ukraine needs to target Moscow’s pocketbook.

Graham has personally threatened to discontinue his use of Russian male prostitutes to help crush the Russian economy and that alone could cripple a nation.

And now, just a reminder …

Repost: Black History Month: Medgar Evers

Civil rights activist, Medgar Evers, was born in Decatur, Mississippi, in 1925. At age eighteen he left Mississippi and enlisted in the United States Army, where he fought in both France and Germany during World War II before receiving an honorable discharge in 1946.

In 1948, he entered Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley; they later had three children: Darrell, Reena, and James. After graduating in 1952, Evers moved his family to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he worked as an insurance salesman.

In 1954, the year of the momentous Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which should have ended segregation of schools, Medgar quit the insurance business; he applied for, and was denied, admission to the University of Mississippi Law School. His unsuccessful effort to integrate Mississippi’s oldest public educational institution attracted the attention of the NAACP’s national office.

Medgar Evers moved to Jackson and became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As such, he recruited members throughout Mississippi and organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination; he worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks, most notably the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman.

As early as 1955, Evers’ activism made him the most visible civil rights leader in Mississippi. As a result, he and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. Then, on June 12, 1963, at 12:40 a.m., Medgar Evers was shot in the back, in the driveway of his home, in Jackson.

He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

A police and FBI investigation of the murder soon had a suspect--Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. Despite substantial evidence against him--a rifle found near the scene was registered to Beckwith, had his fingerprints on the scope, and witnesses placed him in the area—Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder.

Two trials followed; Beckwith received the support of some of Mississippi's most prominent citizens; then-Governor Ross Barnett appeared at Beckwith's first trial to shake hands with him in full view of the jury. In 1964, Beckwith was set free after two all-white juries deadlocked.
After the second trial, Myrlie Evers moved with her children to California, where she earned a degree from Pomona College and was later named to the Los Angeles Commission of Public Works. Convinced that her husband's killer had not been brought to justice, she continued to search for new evidence in the case.

In 1989, the question of Beckwith's guilt was again raised when a Jackson newspaper published accounts of files from the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, an organization that helped the maintenance of segregation. The accounts showed that the commission helped Beckwith's lawyers screen potential jurors, but a review by the Hinds County District Attorney's office found no evidence of jury tampering. The DA's office did locate a number of new witnesses, including several individuals who would testify that Beckwith bragged about the murder.

In December 1990, Beckwith was once again indicted for the murder of Medgar Evers. After a number of appeals, the Mississippi Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of a third trial in April 1993. Ten months later, testimony began before a racially mixed jury of eight blacks and four whites. In February 1994, nearly 31 years after Evers' death, Beckwith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in January 2001 at the age of 80.

It took thirty years for justice to be served. That is unconscionable. 

Matthew Shepard Died Today*

*originally posted October 12, 2009

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay. But it wasn't the kid who got noticed on this day eleven years ago, it was his murder that caught us all, gay and straight, off-guard.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming. And he was gay. And, for being gay, he was tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. His attack occurred on October 6, but Mathew didn't die until almost a week later.

Matthew was born in Wyoming and grew up there. He spent his last high school year at The American School in Switzerland. After high school, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver and becoming a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming.

Political science. Matthew might have been a politician, or a community organizer, or a gay rights activist. Or a teacher or a bartender or any number of other things which we'll never know because he never got the chance to be anything else.

He was described by his parents, Judy and Dennis, as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

He might have done so much.

But Matthew knew he was gay, and so did many other people. And like so many in the LGBT community, he faced physical and verbal abuse all throughout his life, and death. In 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, he was beaten and raped, leaving him withdrawn from friends and family and battling depression and panic attacks. But he soldiered on, went back to school and seemed to be coming out of his depression.

Then, just after midnight on October 7, 1998, Matthew met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. They took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, robbed, pistol whipped, tortured him, and left him to die. They also found his address and decided to rob his home as well.

Matthew Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who mistook the beaten, dying young man for a scarecrow. Matthew was barely alive. And suffering.

There was a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital functions. There were also a dozen or more lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on October 12, 1998.

Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck. The two men had attempted to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis. They used the gay panic defense, arguing that they beat, tortured and killed Matthew Shepard because he came on to them. They even tried to say they only wanted to rob him, not hurt him.

But they hurt an entire community.

Russell Henderson pleaded guilty in April 1999, and agreed to testify against Aaron McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he was given two consecutive life sentences. The jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder, and as they began to deliberate on the death penalty, Matthew Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

In a statement read to the court, Dennis Shepard told McKinney what the sentence means to him:

“You won’t be a symbol.

No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing—just a miserable future and a miserable end.

It works for me ….

Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay kid. And he could have been any one of us, but in death, Matthew did what hadn't really been done before. He shone a light on hate crimes against the LGBT community. He gave us a face and a smile that needn't have been snuffed out so readily.

He could have been any one of us. He is every one of us.

Bobservations

This is less a Tale Of Carlos being funny than it is a Tale of What A Fabulous Human Being Carlos is …

The other night I came home from work in a mood; not a bad mood, but not a good mood. A bitchy mood that I couldn’t explain. And as we ate dinner I wasn’t very nice to him; I was naggy and sarcastic and just plain unfriendly to the most important person in my life for no reason whatsoever. And yet with every snide comment I made he didn’t get angry, he just answered me back.

After dinner I went back to the office by myself and did some work on the computer but I kept going back to my nasty mood. I was about to get up and go talk to him when he came into the office to ask a question, and I said:

“Let me say something first.”

“Okay.”

“You know I love you, right?”

“Of course I do.

“Well, I have been nasty since I got home and there’s no excuse—”

“You have a lot of things on your plate.”

“It’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have said what I said and acted like I did.”

“I know, and I know you didn’t mean it, and I know you’d realize it, and that I love you.”

That’s why he’s the most important person in my life; he takes that kind of mood and understands it and doesn’t get mad but lets me work through it.

That’s the Tale of Carlos I love most of all.

This Tuxedo Memory is creatively entitled ‘#TuxedoInABox,’ and is from November 2017

‘Recently we returned from a CostCo run and set one of the boxes on the living room floor.

Tuxedo loves to sleep in them, but something about this box got him all kerfuffled and he was rolling around it in like a mad man.

Huh. Does CostCo sell catnip in bulk?’

Lynn Conway has died at age 86. She is credited with developing a simpler method for designing microchips that are now used in cell phones  in the 1970s but it’s what happened a few years earlier that’s important.

In 1964, Lynn Conway joined IBM Research, where she made major innovations in computer design; recently married and with two young daughters, she lived a seemingly perfect life but she had a secret: she had been born a boy.

Having struggled with her gender identity since childhood, Conway had made a failed attempt at transition in the late 1950s but in 1967, she learned of the pioneering gender-transition work of Dr. Harry Benjamin and sought out his help, She began the life-changing, and perhaps lifesaving, transition from male to female but  when IBM’s Corporate Medical Director learned of her transition plans in 1968, he alerted CEO Thomas J. Watson, Jr., who fired Conway to avoid the public embarrassment of employing a transwoman.

Not just a transwoman, but a brilliant transwoman.

In 2020, fifty years later, IBM apologized to Lynn Conway and awarded her a lifetime achievement award for her work. Conway has had five U.S. patents, a career at Xerox, the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the U.S. Defense Department. She also had honorary degrees from many universities, including Princeton University. But most of all she was trans and she made it easier for y’all, even the anti-trans haters, to use their phone.

Say her name; and Thank her.

The person—and he will never be named on this blog—who murdered five people and maimed nineteen others during a mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado, has been sentenced to 55 concurrent life sentences plus an additional 190 years in prison.

Good.

This past week Romans came out for Pride dressed like Pope Frankie, wearing papal hats and T-shirts that read:

“There is never too much frociaggine.”

That’s a reference to the offensive anti-gay slur that Frankie has been accused of uttering … twice … complaining that there was too much “gayness” in the church. Martina Lorina, an Italian actress, called the phrase “the slogan of the 2024 Pride”, using a longtime tactic to turn insults into words of pride.

Homophobic bigot who says one thing about us, and behind closed doors uses slurs against us.

A lady picked up several items at a discount store. When she finally got to the checkout she learned that one of the items had no price tag or bar code so the checkout girl got on the public address system and asked:

"Price check for Tampax super-size."

Sadly, someone at the rear of the store  mistook the word 'Tampax' for 'thumbtacks' and called back over the PA system:

“Do you want the kind that you push in with your thumb or the kind that you belt in with a hammer?"

Ouch.

Four years ago Christian Cooper, an avid birdwatcher and out Black gay man, was in the Ramble in Central Park, birdwatching he noticed a dog running off-leash, violating park rules designed to protect his beloved birds, so he approached the dog’s owner, Amy Cooper, requesting that she leash her dog.

Instead, Amy, er, #CentralParkKaren, Top of Form

Bottom of Form

threatened to call the police and make a false claim that “an African-American man” was threatening her life. Christian captured the incident on video, which quickly went viral and Amy Cooper was rightly vilified in the press and also lost her job.

Then Christian Cooper’s story caught the attention of National Geographic, leading to the creation of his show, “Extraordinary Birder,” which premiered in 2023. The show has since garnered critical acclaim, culminating in Christian Cooper winning the Daytime Emmy Award this week for Outstanding Daytime Personality.

Winning.

Money raised by The Felon’s 2024 campaign is being sent right back into the con artist’s pockets in various forms, according to a The ALLEGED billionaire criminal has not donated any money to his 2024 presidential campaign, $4.6 million worth of donations has been transferred to his business empire. And MAGAts keep sending checks.

Tell me how this isn’t a cult.

Matty Carrington, a UK based model who once worked as a roofer and rugby player before walking in shows for Astrid Anderson, Givenchy, Sibling and Bobby Abley is this week’s Would You Hit It?

Matthew Shepard Died Today*

*originally posted October 12, 2009

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay. But it wasn't the kid who got noticed on this day eleven years ago, it was his murder that caught us all, gay and straight, off-guard.

Matthew Wayne Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old college student at the University of Wyoming. And he was gay. And, for being gay, he was tortured and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming. His attack occurred on October 6, but Mathew didn't die until almost a week later.

Matthew was born in Wyoming and grew up there. He spent his last high school year at The American School in Switzerland. After high school, he attended Catawba College and Casper College before he relocated to Denver and becoming a first-year political science major at the University of Wyoming.

Political science. Matthew might have been a politician, or a community organizer, or a gay rights activist. Or a teacher or a bartender or any number of other things which we'll never know because he never got the chance to be anything else.

He was described by his parents, Judy and Dennis, as "an optimistic and accepting young man [who] had a special gift of relating to almost everyone. He was the type of person who was very approachable and always looked to new challenges. Matthew had a great passion for equality and always stood up for the acceptance of people's differences."

He might have done so much.

But Matthew knew he was gay, and so did many other people. And like so many in the LGBT community, he faced physical and verbal abuse all throughout his life, and death. In 1995, during a high school trip to Morocco, he was beaten and raped, leaving him withdrawn from friends and family and battling depression and panic attacks. But he soldiered on, went back to school and seemed to be coming out of his depression.

Then, just after midnight on October 7, 1998, Matthew met Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson in a bar. McKinney and Henderson offered Shepard a ride in their car. They took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence, robbed, pistol whipped, tortured him, and left him to die. They also found his address and decided to rob his home as well.

Matthew Shepard was discovered 18 hours later by Aaron Kreifels, who mistook the beaten, dying young man for a scarecrow. Matthew was barely alive. And suffering.

There was a fracture from the back of his head to the front of his right ear. He had severe brain stem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, body temperature and other vital functions. There were also a dozen or more lacerations around his head, face and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors to operate.

Matthew Shepard never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on October 12, 1998.

Police arrested McKinney and Henderson shortly thereafter, finding the bloody gun as well as the victim's shoes and wallet in their truck. The two men had attempted to persuade their girlfriends to provide alibis. They used the gay panic defense, arguing that they beat, tortured and killed Matthew Shepard because he came on to them. They even tried to say they only wanted to rob him, not hurt him.

But they hurt an entire community.

Russell Henderson pleaded guilty in April 1999, and agreed to testify against Aaron McKinney to avoid the death penalty; he was given two consecutive life sentences. The jury found Aaron McKinney guilty of felony murder, and as they began to deliberate on the death penalty, Matthew Shepard's parents brokered a deal, resulting in McKinney receiving two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

In a statement read to the court, Dennis Shepard told McKinney what the sentence means to him:

“You won’t be a symbol.

No years of publicity, no chance of commutation, no nothing—just a miserable future and a miserable end.

It works for me ….

Mr. McKinney, I give you life in the memory of one who no longer lives.

May you have a long life, and may you thank Matthew every day for it.”

He was just a kid. A slight kid, a sweet kid. A gay kid. And he could have been any one of us, but in death, Matthew did what hadn't really been done before. He shone a light on hate crimes against the LGBT community. He gave us a face and a smile that needn't have been snuffed out so readily.

He could have been any one of us. He is every one of us.

Bobservations

I don’t really have a Carlos story this week, but I have one about Rosita and Tuxedo and MaxGoldberg, and a conversation Carlos and I had. It feels like a reincarnation story, except that Rosita was born before Max and Tuxedo passed, so maybe it’s more of a friendly possession tale?

We have decided that Rosita is somehow possessed by both Max and Tuxedo because of very specific things she does that they did. Both MaxGoldberg and now Rosita love to crawl onto Carlos while he’s sitting in a chair, put their butts down on his stomach, and then lay their front paws across the arm of the chair while he pats them. I look at them and I see Max … and then the other morning while having breakfast, Rosita them jumped behind Carlos on his chair, which is also something Max used to do.

As for the Tuxedo connection, one of his favorite spots to nap, and he was the only cat we’ve had do this, was to jump onto the clothes hamper, and then leap to a closet shelf six feet off the ground, curl up and nap; and not too long after bringing her home, I found Rosita in the same spot. And this week, Rosita has been disappearing for a few minutes and then coming back out to us with wet paws and a wet head; just like Tuxedo who would get into the tub after we’d showered and let the water dripping from the shower head drench him, which is what I found Rosita doing this morning.

Add all that up with the fact that Rosita looks a little like a Tuxedo cat, except she’s gray, and that MaxGoldberg was a gray cat and … yes, Carlos and I are slightly nuts.

This Tuxedo Repost is from March 2011, shortly after we adopted Consuelo Roca Jones and wondered how the two boys would take to another cat:

"Tuxedo Caturday

I LOVE  that face!

We were worried about Tuxedo getting on with Miss Jones when she came to live with us. He was leery of MaxGoldberg when Max first came along—though they are best buddies now. He was leery of Tallulah when she first moved in and is still leery of her now because she's one crazy bitch. So, when Consuelo moved in, we watched him, but then he started playing with her and chasing her and letting her chase him; it's like he's her big brother.

Just adorable."

Tuxedo was always easy going with the other cats and with people who came into our house; he was never the cat who hid, he was the cat who came out to say ‘Hello.’

Hundreds of law enforcement officers responded to an active shooting situation in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood yesterday after Allegheny County Sheriff’s deputies went to a residence to serve an eviction notice and the suspect began shooting.

Just another day in the United States of Guns.

In South Carolina, where it’s not the heat but the stupidity, the state’s new all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion and upheld a near-total abortion ban.

Women, rise up.

Yesterday Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell and Jenna Ellis turned themselves into Georgia police for their part in The Big Lie to circumvent a free and fair election.

Rudy looks three sheets to the wind, while Sydney has mastered the Kraken face, and Jenna Ellis seems to be reliving her prom photo. Now we’re just waiting for Mr-former-fake-one-term-twice-impeached-currently-four-time-criminally-indicted-not-my-president-gurl—hat tip to Randy Rainbow—to step up for his mugshot and there are already bets on what color orange his mug might be:

Marm-a-Lago Orange +500

Geriatric Ginger +600

Presidential Pumpkin +600

Ballot-rigged Bronze +700

Twitter Tan +800

MAGA Mango +800

I kinda like MAGA Mango personally. What’s your bet?

Kristi Maris, a teacher at a Christian school in Texas, was fired for attending a drag show and sharing pictures of it on social media.

Yes; Maris was fired from First Baptist Academy, where she had taught physical education for 19 years, after watching a drag show at the Houston’s Hamburger Mary’s restaurant with a coworker and her adult daughters; her co-worker was also fired … for what they do on their day off with their grown children.

Fuck Texas.

Hamburger Mary’s has organized a GoFundMe to support Maris and her colleague, raising over $10,000 so far. In addition, the restaurant will also host a fundraising event for the pair on August 3.

Laura Ann Carleton, a store owner in Lake Arrowhead, was murdered in her shop after a man shot and killed her over her displaying a Pride Flag. Deputies found Carleton dead, and then chased the suspect, armed with a handgun, down and shot him and killed him.

This is Hate, y’all, plain and simple, and I’ll explain why: had that guy killed Carleton because he wanted the money in the cash register, which would have been hateful, but he murdered her because she flew a Pride flag; that’s Hate. And what makes it even more vile is that Laura Ann Carleton was a straight, married woman with nine children who just happened to be an LGBTQ+ ally.

This is a Hate Crime.

This overweight guy was watching TV when a commercial came on for a guaranteed weight loss of 10 pounds in a week. So the guy, thinking what the hell, signs up for it.

The next morning an incredibly beautiful woman is standing at his door in nothing but a pair of running shoes and a sign around her neck that reads:

"If you can catch me, you can have me."

As soon as he sees her, she takes off running. He tries to catch her but is unable. This continues for a week, at the end of which, the man has lost 10 pounds.

He then opts for the next weight loss plan, 15 pounds in a week. And the next morning an even more beautiful woman is standing at the door, in similar conditions. The same happens with her as the first woman, except he almost catches her. This continues for a week, at the end of which he, as suspected, weighs 15 pounds less.

Excited about this success, he decides to do the master program but before he signs up, he is required to sign a waiver and is warned about the intensity of this plan. Still he signs up and the next morning, waiting at the door, is a hulking ripped muscle man with nothing but a pair of running shoes, a raging erection, and a sign around his neck that says:

"If I catch you, you're mine!"

The man was supposed to lose 25 pounds in the week; he lost 34.

Funny, it didn’t work that way for me …

This is Marin Barba-Rosie who was spotted by a photographer while working as a waiter on a beach in Italy but that’s not important … Would You Hit It?