The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV (18 page)

The convoluted plot also addresses the “Don’t Ask” policy. Tiner is seen coming out of a gay bar, so his co-workers assume he’s gay and begin treating him accordingly. But because of the military’s policy, no one can
ask
him if he is gay. Finally, Tiner takes the stand and Adm. Chegwidden (John M. Jackson), acting as Gunny’s lawyer, asks him the big question (which he can do because it’s in a civilian court). Tiner says no, and explains Proxy is his half-brother and they were in the gay bar celebrating his birthday. He now understands how his brother has felt his entire life because once his colleagues thought he was gay, everything he said and did suddenly seemed to have double meaning. During his testimony, Tiner takes a clear position against the “Don’t Ask” rule:

As in
21 Jump Street,
the larger issue surrounding gays in the military is once again resolved by displacing it onto a personal story, which coincidentally also involves two brothers.

But what about Manny? The detectives investigating the case were never able to track him down? Why doesn’t Proxy make any attempt to identify the man who started the incident? Proxy fingers Gunny as his attacker, but why not Manny? In the end, Gunny, who knows Manny is homophobic, follows the unwritten code of the military. He refuses to give up the name of his friend, who actually did start harassing Proxy (the writers try to even the score by having Proxy hurl insults back and take a punch at Manny while Gunny holds him back). But isn’t Gunny condoning Manny’s actions by his silence? Gunny is fined for refusing to give Manny’s name on the stand, but this simply reinforces the idea it is the unwritten “code of silence” keeping homophobia alive in the military. The episode ultimately sidesteps the issue by putting Gunny on the stand instead of Manny, and using the trial to air some sympathetic, yet very familiar, rhetoric.

Since the 1980s, law and order dramas have responded to the growing number of reported hate crimes. “Fag bashing” is certainly not a phenomenon of the last twenty years. Gays, lesbians, and transgender people have been the targets of violent attacks for centuries. But it has only been recently that the general public has become aware of the issue, in part because of the media attention given to certain cases, such as the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard.

Gay activists continue to fight for laws which will protect everyone — homosexuals and heterosexuals — from violence, for one does not necessarily have to be gay to be a victim. On
L.A. Law,
one of the firm’s partners, Douglas Brackman, Jr. (Alan Rachins) is gay bashed (“Do the Spike Thing”) while coming out of a gay restaurant where he has just had dinner with a friend. He’s initially afraid to prosecute because the publicity from the trial will give the public the impression he’s gay (which he is not). In the end, he realizes he must do the right thing and press charges.

In a compelling episode of
Homicide
aptly titled “Hate Crimes,” a young man is beaten to death by a group of skinheads at a bar in Baltimore’s gay section. Bayliss and his partner Pembleton talk to the victim’s distraught father, Bailey Lafeld (Terry O’Quinn) who becomes belligerent when the detectives imply his son was gay. “He was no queer,” Lafeld insists. “Queers are sick, perverted animals, diseased, unnatural.” LaFeld kicks the detectives out of the house and tells them, “If what you say is true, it’s better he’s dead.”

Throughout the episode, Bayliss and Pembleton have an ongoing discussion about homosexuality. Neither character is entirely clear how he feels; particularly Bayliss, which, in retrospect, suggests that the detective’s latent bisexuality was beginning to emerge.

At the conclusion of their investigation, Bayliss admits to Mr. LaFeld that he was mistaken — his son was not gay. The father becomes emotional and bursts into tears. “Thank God,” he cries.

“Hetero, homo, what does it matter?” Pembleton later asks Bayliss. “He’s dead.”

“That is the worst part,” Bayliss replies. “It shouldn’t matter, but it does.”

Not all officers are as open-mined as Bayliss and Pembleton. Sometimes it takes the death of someone you know before your eyes are opened. On
Street Justice
(“Bashing”), Malloy’s (Charlene Fernetz) gay brother Danny is gay-bashed and later dies from his injuries. The search for his killers gives Police Sgt. Adam Beaudreaux (Carl Weathers), the former partner of Danny and Malloy’s father, the opportunity to come to terms with his own homophobia. Danny was rejected by his late father because of his homosexuality and “Uncle Adam” never offered Danny his support, even after his father’s death. Adam admits he’s ashamed he never reached out to Danny, so he tries to make up for it by catching his killers.

Some series have tried to put their own spin on the subject of gay bashing. In an episode of David E. Kelley’s short-lived detective series,
Snoops
(“Constitution”), a man hires Glenn (Gina Gershon) to find out if his future son-in-law is gay. What she discovers is the exact opposite — he’s a gay-basher. On
The Big Easy,
Mitchell Teague is murdered at his own bachelor party by his friend, Fairchild (Taylor Nichols), who found out Mitchell was sexually involved with a drag queen named Tawny (“Cinderfella”). Fairchild, sickened by the idea that Mitchell lived a deviant lifestyle and was soon going to marry a woman he was in love with himself, ironically dons drag to pin the crime on Tawny. Before hitting the streets to catch a transvestite-basher (“Javelin Catcher”),
Nash Bridge
’
s
Inspector Evan Cortez (Jaime P. Gomez) gets some fashion tips from drag queen Simone DuBois (RuPaul). The sting is a success and they catch two men hired by a land developer trying to clean up the area. Coincidentally, dressing in drag also perks up Cortez’s love life. The detective, who was having trouble pleasing his girlfriend in the bedroom, discovers she gets turned on seeing him in a dress.

Gay-bashing received more realistic treatment on episodes of
Third Watch
and
Law and Order. Third Watch
(“32 Bullets and a Broken Heart”) opens with a bloodbath at a gay Valentines Day wedding. According to witnesses, a gunman entered the church and opened fire during the ceremony, killing several people. The gay community is understandably upset and feels the police aren’t doing enough to catch the killer. When the gunman strikes again, some gay men start taking matters into their own hands by forming a vigilante group. At one point, the overzealous group starts harassing a man they mistakenly believe to be the assailant. The episode concludes with the police apprehending the killer, but not before the vigilantes nearly beat him to death.

As in
Homicide,
the crimes provide the series’s regulars the opportunity to share their respective views about homosexuality and gay rights, all of which have a familiar ring to them. Carlos (Anthony Ruivivar) compares the struggle of homosexuals as a minority with the struggle of African-Americans. His African-American partner, Doc (Michael Beach) resents the comparison between the struggle up from slavery and the struggle for sexual preference. The bigoted Bosco (Jason Wiles) tells his partner Yokas (Molly Price) that gays are only asking for it by assembling together in public. She finds his racist and homophobic remarks offensive.

The writers seem to be bending over backwards to offer multiple viewpoints, by using the characters as mouthpieces. The episode is also equally critical of the gay vigilante group, who are depicted as distrustful of the police. Of course, it’s hard to blame them after we overhear homophobic officers like Bosco expressing opinions about “fags” and “queers.”

Gay political activists with a lynch mob-mentality are also featured in a compelling episode of
Law and Order
(“Pride”). The murder of San Francisco City Councilman Harvey Milk in 1978 by fellow ex-City Councilman Dan White provides the basis for this story about a gay city councilman, Richard Durban, murdered by an ex-cop-turned-right-wing-councilman, Kevin Crossly (Daniel Hugh-Kelly). Crossly claims that, despite their strong public policy differences, he and the deceased were actually friends.

But Crossly’s defense team argues their client is being accused of murder solely because of his anti-gay views, which is what Crossly planned to do to hide his real motive. As Harvey Milk did to Dan White, Durban had managed to get Crossly voted off of the city council, so Crossly sought revenge. Although the evidence, largely circumstantial, makes it clear Crossly killed Durban, the jury’s deadlocked. The conclusion (or lack of one) is in perfect sync with the episode’s criticism of politicians who take certain ideological positions to win votes, as well as political groups that are too quick to rush to judgment.

Perhaps the DA’s office should have used the same strategy they employed a few seasons later to convict a man of murder. In “Phobia,” a gay man is beaten to death in broad daylight and his adopted baby snatched. The baby’s mother, Celia (Catherine Kellner), an ex-junkie who gave it up for adoption, had notified the child’s natural father, Robert Kelly (David Vadim) about his son. Kelly was upset his child was being raised by a gay couple, so he and Celia seized an opportunity to take the child. In the process, he beat the child’s adopted father to death shouting “Faggot! Faggot!” The prosecutors are able to add a hate crime to the other charges and get a conviction, thanks mostly to Celia’s testimony, offered in exchange for immunity. “Phobia” broadens the definition of hate crimes by demonstrating how they are the motivation for other criminal acts.

In October 1998, 22-year-old Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten and left to die in a field on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. Two locals, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, pistol-whipped and robbed the gay University of Wyoming student before tying him to a cattle fence. Eighteen hours passed before his blood-drenched body was found. He never regained consciousness and died in a hospital five days later.

The murder and subsequent trial received national media attention because of the horrific nature of the crime that was so clearly motivated by hate. Henderson pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping and felony murder. McKinney also entered a guilty plea, but his lawyers were prepared to argue that he was inebriated and under the influences of methamphetamines when Shepard allegedly came on to him, which triggered his childhood memories of being sexually abused. Judge Barton Voigt of the Second Judicial District Court of Wyoming barred McKinney’s lawyers from using the “gay panic” defense because it was a form of temporary insanity or diminished capacity defense, neither of which are allowed under Wyoming law.

Henderson is currently serving two consecutive life sentences. McKinney was found guilty of first-degree felony murder and second-degree murder. He faced the death penalty, but in an impassioned speech to the judge, Matthew’s father, Dennis Shepard, speaking on behalf of his family, recommended his son’s murderer not be put to death.

“Mr. McKinney, I am going to grant you life, as hard as it is for me to do so, because of Matthew,” Mr. Shepard said. “Every time you celebrate Christmas, a birthday, the Fourth of July, remember that Matt isn’t.”
⁵⁵

Shepard’s life and death is the subject of three made-for-TV movies, beginning with
Anatomy of a Hate Crime,
which debuted in January 2000 to kick off MTV’s year-long campaign, “Fight for Your Rights: Take a Stand Against Hate Crime.”
Anatomy
is a well-intentioned, yet heavy-handed account of the events surrounding Shepard’s murder. The first half focuses on Matthew (Cy Carter), who is portrayed as a sensitive, intelligent, and politically minded college student. He also suffers from bouts depression, is HIV positive, and has problems with intimacy, which is apparently linked to being raped by three men in Morocco. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t have the time to examine any of these issues in any detail, so their significance in relation to Matthew’s death is ultimately unclear.

Like many made-for-TV movies,
Anatomy
tries to cover too much territory and show the events leading up to and following Shepard’s murder from the perspective of Shepard, his executioners, and their girlfriends, who help Henderson (Ian Somerhalder) and McKinney (Brendan Fletcher) hide the evidence. Serving as the film’s narrator, Matthew reappears at the conclusion of the trial to reflect on whether his death accomplished what he had aspired to do with his life. It’s an effective device, yet marred by the final moment — a touch of unnecessary theatricality — in which Shepard, walking near the site of his murder, turns to the camera and says “Don’t forget me.”

Following the film, MTV’s John Norris hosted a discussion on hate crimes with two guests: Matthew’s friend, Romaine Patterson and Jim Andersen, a representative of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (G.L.S.E.N.). The segment serves as an introduction to an unprecedented television event. For next 17 hours, MTV interrupted its usual programming with a continuous loop of the first names of hate crime victims (including “Matthew”) and a short description of the crimes committed against them. It’s an extremely powerful strategy, even more than the preceding film, for spreading the word about the prevalence of hate crimes in a country where there is still no national Hate Crimes bill protecting all Americas on the basis of gender and sexual orientation.

In March of 2002, two made-for-TV movies about the Shepard case debuted one week apart. The first, NBC’s
The Matthew Shepard Story
, doesn’t stray too far from the TV movie formula. John Werrick and Jacob Krueger’s well-crafted teleplay interweaves Matthew’s life story with his parents’ struggle to cope with their loss. More specifically, the story focuses on the decision Judy and Dennis Shepard must make regarding McKinney’s fate. Should they ask for the death penalty or allow one of their son’s murderers to live out the remainder of his life in a prison cell?

In a series of flashbacks that cover Matthew’s high school years through the events leading up to his murder, we slowly come to understand Matthew (nicely played by Shane Meier), who is portrayed as an amiable but somewhat discontented young man. Matthew feels like an outsider, in part because he is gay, but also because in comparison to his peers, he never feels like his life has any real purpose. His anxiety is compounded by a traumatic incident: while on a school trip in Morocco, he is gang-raped by three men. The film suggests his emotional scars from the rape were the cause of his lack of direction during his teen years. Ironically, he is beginning to feel his life is just starting to have a purpose when it is suddenly cut short on that tragic October evening. As he explains to his best friend, Romaine (a superb Kristen Thomson), he enrolled in the University of Wyoming so he could “major in political science, become a diplomat, travel around the world, help people, and make the world a better place.”
⁵⁶

As the Shepards, Stockard Channing and Sam Waterson are, as always, terrific, conveying a mixture of pain, grief, and anger. For a film produced with the cooperation of the Shepard family, it is surprisingly critical of the couple, who, over the course of the film, slowly recognize their limitations as parents who never fully understood what Matthew experienced as a gay man in a homophobic world. More importantly, they come to realize how, despite his daily encounters with homophobes (like the neighbor who hurls derogatory remarks at him and writes “fag” on his door), he had a touch of the idealist in him because he trusted people to a fault and was always able to see the good in them. “You are going to think the whole world hates you,” he advises a friend who is about come out of the closet, “but you will be surprised who’s standing in your corner.” Thus, when the two narrative threads — Matthew’s and his parents’ — come together, we understand that the Shepards spared McKinney’s life because it is what Matthew would have done.

Ironically, neither Matthew nor the Shepards are central characters in the second film,
The Laramie Project,
which premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival before its March 2002 debut on HBO. The docudrama is based on interviews with residents of Laramie, who share their feelings and opinions about Shepard’s murder, the trials, and their effect on the sleepy Wyoming town. The transcripts of the interviews, conducted by Moises Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Program, formed the basis of a stage play that received critical acclaim when its debuted in Denver in 2000, followed by a short run in New York and a national tour.

In adapting their play for the small screen, director Kaufman and his team of co-writers have crafted a powerful portrait of a community that brought closer together as the result of tragic events.
Laramie
gives the townspeople a voice — an opportunity to respond to the murder and the trials that put them in the national spotlight by the media, which many people felt painted Laramie and it residents as intolerant, ignorant, and homophobic. A few knew Shepard personally, while others, like the cyclist who found his body and the officer who arrived on the scene, were connected to him only through his death.

Their words are translated and interpreted by an impressive amalgam of actors from television, films, and the stage: Dylan Baker, Steve Buscemi, Nestor Carbonell, Kathleen Chalfant, Jeremy Davies, Peter Fonda, Joshua Jackson, Terry Kinney, Laura Linney, Amy Madigan, Camryn Manheim, Christina Ricci, Frances Sternhagen, and Lois Smith. Although the use of recognizable actors could have been distracting, in this case it proves to be an asset. These diverse actors offer uniformly subtle performances as they each take their turn on screen to offer their characters’ perspectives.

There are some definite stand-outs: Jackson as the guilt-ridden bartender who served Matthew his last drink in the bar where he met McKinney and Henderson; Buscemi as a limo driver who befriended Matthew when driving him to Denver so he could go out to the bars; Linney as a polite, homophobic housewife who doesn’t quite understand why so much attention is being paid to Shepard’s death; and Davies as an enthusiastic drama student who defies his parents by playing a gay man in the U of W’s production of
Angels in America
.

Out of respect for the grieving family, the writers decided not to interview the Shepards, though they appear as characters in a recreation of trial. The talented Kinney, a Chicago stage actor best known for his work on Oz, has the privilege of delivering Dennis Shepard’s speech. Compared to Waterston, who, perhaps after all these years on
Law and Order
is too adept at addressing the court, Kinney’s rendition rings truer because its less polished and theatrical.

The one character who does not appear in
The Laramie Project
is Matthew himself. Kaufman’s choice not to include and/or recreate his image or voice reinforces Shepard’s role as the film’s structuring absence. In this case, it’s not necessary because it is evident through the words of the people of Laramie that the effect he has had on their, and all of our lives, will endure.
⁵⁷