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DYING TO BE NORMAL
DYING TO
BE NORMAL
Gay Martyrs and the Transformation
of American Sexual Politics
Bret t Krutzsch
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Notes 167
Selected Bibliography 227
Index 239
vii
I L LU S T R AT I O N S
ix
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
This book owes its existence to Rebecca Alpert. She read every page and
offered incisive suggestions that undoubtedly made the book stronger.
More than that, she has been an incredible mentor from whom I have
learned much about how to be a generous, kind, and productive scholar.
The ideas for this book emerged while I was completing my Ph.D. in
Religion at Temple University. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have
a dissertation committee that included, in addition to Rebecca Alpert,
Laura Levitt, David Watt, and Janet Jakobsen at Barnard College.
Laura greatly influenced my thinking about the legacies of historical
traumas. David introduced me to numerous debates within American
religious history that I found fascinating. And Janet’s work on secu-
larism and sexuality significantly influenced my own work. I must also
thank Kathleen Biddick, Professor Emerita of History, who introduced
me to a rich world of scholarship on martyrdom.
Several institutions were supportive of my work on the history of
secular gay martyrdom and deserve my gratitude. The LGBT Religious
Archives Network awarded me the LGBT Religious History Award for
a portion of my chapter on Matthew Shepard, which gave me the en-
couragement to expand that research into this book. The Center for the
Humanities at Temple University awarded me a fellowship so I could
xi
xii Acknowledgments
1
2 Introduction
quickly became the first gay citizen whose murder seemed to matter to
the nation.
Five months after Shepard’s death, Vanity Fair published a fifteen-
page essay entitled, “The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepard.”4 The ar-
ticle depicted Shepard’s death as similar to Jesus’s crucifixion, a motif
gay activists had advanced since Shepard first became a household
name. For both gay activists and Vanity Fair, though, the similarities
went beyond how Shepard and Jesus died. Shepard, activists argued,
epitomized Jesus’s teachings. He had joined his university’s Episcopal
student club, he had been baptized and had served as an acolyte, and
his friends made such declarations as, “If anyone lived the Christian
ideal of turn the other cheek, it was Matt.”5 The article’s accompanying
pictures showed Shepard in preppy, middle-class attire, and often with
his family. As gay activists had insisted since he’d died, Shepard looked
like a respectable Christian college student. In this way, Shepard
countered the image of gays as godless adults, an idea the politically
conservative Christian right had promulgated for decades. In contrast,
Vanity Fair’s portrayal of Shepard reinforced his public image as a
pious gay Protestant who suffered and died as Jesus had. Gay activists
were therefore able to present Shepard as the model gay citizen—and
martyr.
The reason that Men do not doubt of many things, is, that they
never examine common Impressions; they do not dig to the
Root, where the Faults and Defects lye; they only debate upon
the Branches: They do not examine whether such and such a
thing be true, but if it has been so and so understood. It is not
inquir’d into, whether Galen has said anything to purpose, but
whether he has said so or so.—Montaigne.
§ 3. Theophrastus Paracelsus.
Henry More.