The Laramie Project: Hate Crime, Culture, and Tolerance
This essay examines Moisés Kaufman's The Laramie Project as a lens for understanding the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student beaten and left to die by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The paper identifies key factors that contributed to the crime, including overt anti-gay prejudice, a community culture of denial, and religious and civic leaders who expressed or tolerated intolerance. Drawing on interviews compiled in Kaufman's work and FBI data on hate crimes, the essay concludes with recommendations from the National Association of School Psychologists for teaching tolerance to children and modeling compassionate behavior in communities.
- Overview of Matthew Shepard's Murder: Facts of the 1998 assault and Kaufman's play
- Hate Crimes as a Factor: Anti-gay motive and FBI hate crime context
- The Culture of Laramie: Community denial, religious intolerance, civic leaders
- Actions to Promote Tolerance: NASP guidelines and modeling compassion for children
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its analysis in direct quotations from Kaufman's text, letting the voices of Laramie residents illustrate the cultural attitudes under examination rather than relying solely on the author's assertions.
- It moves logically from describing the crime, to diagnosing contributing factors, to prescribing actionable responses — giving the essay a clear cause-and-effect structure.
- The inclusion of the FBI's historical context for hate crimes adds institutional credibility and connects the specific case to a broader national pattern.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses textual evidence as sociological data. Rather than simply summarizing the play's plot, the author treats quoted statements from community members as primary evidence of cultural attitudes, then interprets that evidence to support an argument about how prejudice is normalized and transmitted across a community.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with factual background on Shepard's assault and introduces Kaufman's work. It then splits its analysis into two labeled sections — hate crimes and Laramie's cultural climate — before pivoting to a prescriptive conclusion that draws on NASP guidelines. The Works Cited page follows MLA format. The structure is appropriate for an introductory undergraduate response paper.
Overview of Matthew Shepard's Murder
Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old gay student attending the University of Wyoming in the fall of 1998 when he was kidnapped, robbed, tied to a split-rail fence, beaten, and left for dead by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. A little after midnight on October 7, McKinney and Henderson met Shepard for the first time at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, Wyoming. The two men subsequently offered Shepard a ride home, but instead of driving him there they took him to a remote rural area. Shepard, still alive but in a coma, was discovered 18 hours later by a cyclist, Aaron Kreifels, who at first thought he was a scarecrow.
Shepard sustained skull fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. The beating caused severe damage to his brainstem, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart rate, temperature, and other vital functions. Because of the severity of his injuries, doctors were unable to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and was on full life support until he passed away on October 12 in a Colorado hospital.
The Laramie Project is a book and play by Moisés Kaufman that explores this heinous crime and the events surrounding its aftermath. The work is a compilation of interviews with the people of the town and their perspectives on the incident.
Hate Crimes as a Factor
Most people agree that Matthew Shepard was murdered because he was gay. Two days after the assault, McKinney told police, "[he looked] like a queer…like a fag." McKinney told police that he and Henderson had discussed "jacking him up" before they left the bar, and claimed that after they had driven past Wal-Mart, Shepard had "put his hand on my leg, and slid his hand like he was gonna grab my balls." It was then that McKinney hit him with the butt of his pistol (Kaufman). The defense team argued that McKinney was motivated by Shepard having made a pass at him.
Aaron's girlfriend of two years offered this account:
"Aaron said the guy walked up to him and said he was gay and wanted to get with him and Russ. Aaron's really bad about that. He doesn't like to be around gay people at all, and neither does Russ. They just don't like them at all. So he got aggravated with it and said he was straight and he didn't wanna have anything to do with it, and he walked off. He said that's when him and Russ went into the bathroom and decided to pretend that they were gay and get him in the truck and rob him. They wanted to teach him a lesson not to come on to straight people. I'm not excusing their actions, but it seems to be partially his fault" (Kaufman).
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), crimes of hatred are a sad fact of American life. The term "hate crime" did not enter the American vocabulary until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads launched a wave of bias-related crime. The FBI began investigating what we now call hate crimes as far back as World War I, when the Ku Klux Klan first attracted federal attention.
Works Cited
FBI. "Hate Crimes Add an Element of Bias to Traditional Crimes — and the Mixture Is Toxic to Our Communities." Federal Bureau of Investigation. n.d. Web. 20 June 2012.
Kaufman, Moisés, Dir. The Laramie Project. Home Box Office, 2002. DVD.
Kaufman, Moisés. The Laramie Project. New York: Vintage Books, 2001. Book/Play.
NASP. "Promoting Tolerance and Peace in Children." National Association of School Psychologists, 2002. Web. 20 June 2012.
Create your account
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.