In the instance of the Murdock Cooper interview I could imagine it being hard to hold back. "You don't pick up regular people," He said. "I am not excusing there actions, but it made me feel better because it was partially the guys who did it you know, maybe it's fifty-fifty (58)." .
Although the play was not intended to give the town of Laramie a bad name, the interviews portrayed Laramie in a somewhat eerie light that made the reader or viewer of the play think twice about small town life. In the interview with Jonas Slonaker he talks about the responses he gets from gay people that used to live in Laramie and were too scared to go back, the response in overwhellming. "But every once in a while there would be a guy, 'Oh gosh, I miss Laramie. I mean I really loved it there, that's where I want to live.' And they get this starry-eyed look and Im like: If that's where you want to live, do it (22)." I think that this line best represtens a lot of the book, it sends the message that gay people really aren't free to live their lives like everybody else. Jonas, as well as Matt, had to travel out of state just to go to a gay bar where they could be accepted, and then to hear stories like the one that Jonas told is just a very depressing scene. You don't have to be gay or even be a minority to see the way society is, it is right in front of our eyes. I am sure that everyday the average American sees an act of discrimination, and hate crimes happen more frequently than most people know of. It shouldn't take something like what happened to Matthew Shepard to make people open their eyes. Incidents like these happen on a daily basis, you see it time after time and nobody stands up until it gets so bad that a young gay man is brutally beaten and chained to a fence and left to die out in a field because of a difference, that's what it takes for some people to open their eyes. Matthew had been awake to situations like these for a long time but he didnt let it control his life, if he did his story might have had a better ending, or atleast better for him.
