In his letter of Oct. 22, 1997, Perry Paulding of Stonebrook Community Church states “it IS possible to condemn homosexual behavior out of loving motives, and at the same time, vehemently condemn the sinful, violent response to that behavior” with regard to popular sentiments about the death of Matthew Shepard.

Mr. Paulding is uncomfortable with the suggestion that Christians facilitate the bigotry that engendered Matthew Shepard’s death, stating that if this were the case, “Christ Himself and all of His true followers would clearly have condemned it.”

One wonders if Mr. Paulding requires divine intercession to settle the matter.

We stand in mute witness at the dearth of reports of Jesus, accompanied by his elect, denouncing Shepard’s death as a clearly hate-motivated crime.

Mr. Paulding makes much of “homosexual behavior,” but I would like him to enumerate those behaviors, specifically in the Wyoming case.

Does going out for a beer, as young Shepard did, constitute a homosexual act? Perhaps the drinking of that beer?

No doubt, Mr. Paulding disputes the idea of sexual orientation; after all, he never refers to “homosexuality” but always “homosexual behavior.”

There is a problem here. It’s one of intellectual dishonesty masquerading as piety.

I have yet to hear a Christian, any Christian, refer to someone as a “practicing heterosexual.”

“Practice” seems uniquely confined to non-heterosexuals.

With Mr. Paulding’s scriptural interpretation, homosexuals become a mere collection of behaviors to be modified.

Right there, in that very idea, is that negation of humanity which allowed two men to rob, brutalize and kill Matthew Shepard.

It is that negation of humanity that paid for a national ad campaign touting reparative therapy for homosexuals, even though its success has long been debunked in scientific circles.

It is that negation of humanity which allowed untold thousands of homosexuals to be killed in Nazi concentration camps, and which left the homosexual survivors imprisoned when all the others were liberated at the end of World War II.

It is that negation of humanity which allowed Ronald Reagan to deny the very existence of the AIDS epidemic, though it had been underway for four years.

It is that negation of humanity which allows, to this very day, the summary execution of homosexuals worldwide for simply being homosexual.

Mr. Paulding closes by saying, in part, “We [Christians] feel your [homosexuals’] pain” having previously stated ” … for every Matthew Shepard, there are thousands of Christians worldwide brutally martyred every year simply because they’re Christians.”

A lesser man would point out that Christians choose to be Christian, but that would be measuring Mr. Paulding by his standard of measure, and a monstrously ironic measure it is.

Most revealing about Mr. Paulding is that in telling us of the Christians who are killed because of their beliefs, he compares these Christians’ deaths to Shepard’s, in a context of discerning whose martyrdom is worthier.

Here again is the negation of humanity that allowed two men to rob, brutalize and kill Matthew Shepard.

A lesser man would also suggest that until one hears stories of angry squads of drunken baseball bat-wielding louts accosting churchgoers with cries of “[expletive-deleted] Christian!”, Mr. Paulding does not feel any pain whatsoever, because he appropriates stories not only of Christian martyrdom abroad, but stories of gay-bashing for his own guileful purposes.

End your hypocrisy, Perry Paulding.

End your church’s hypocrisy.

It’s killing both of us.

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Karl von Uhl

Resident

Ames