The Legacy of Matthew Shepard: Queer Erasure and the Lives of Rural LGBTQ+ Young Adults

Applying a queer historical framework, this study examines the legacy of Matthew Shepard while centering the perspectives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two–Spirit, and other people of expansive genders or sexualities (LGBTQ+). In particular, this study highlights the varied responses of LGBTQ+ people during and after his murder, and how queer young adults living and working in Wyoming today have been shaped by Shepard's legacy. Drawing on evidence from archival and interview data (n = 23 interviews), we argue that the social process of collective memory endemic to Matthew Shepard has largely been one of erasure—not erasure of the incident itself, but erasure of historical and contemporary queer activism, community, and resistance in the region. For many young people, Matthew Shepard's legacy is that of a cautionary tale. His name is invoked by allies and anti-LGBTQ+ people alike to deter LGBTQ+ visibility, thereby constructing and reifying a heteronormative imagining of rural America. This study illustrates the value and importance of expanding queer history to represent rural queer voices in diverse, nuanced, and accurate ways. We also make a call for Sociologists to examine how they, too, may be perpetuating rural queer erasure within their scholarship.