Cathedral to take ashes of gay man killed in ’98

When Matthew Shepard died on a cold night years ago after being beaten with a pistol butt and tied to a split-rail wood fence, his parents cremated rather than buried the body of their 21-year-old son, for fear of drawing attention to the resting place of a young man who had become a global icon for combating hatred against gay people.

This past Friday marked the 20th anniversary of their son’s murder, and the Shepards have decided to do just that: Interring his remains inside the crypt of the prominent Washington National Cathedral, where gay activists say the ashes can be a prominent symbol and even a pilgrimage destination for the movement.

Although the cause of LGBTQ equality has made historic advancements since Shepard was killed, it remains divisive anew in many parts of a country re-embracing tribalism of all kinds.

The 1998 killing of Shepard, a slight University of Wyoming student, by two young men in a remote area east of Laramie, Wyoming, was so horrific that his name is on the federal law against bias crimes directed at LGBT people. It has been the subject of books, movies and the play “The Laramie Project,” which is one of the mostperformed theater pieces in the country.

Savagely beaten and left to die, Shepard was found almost 18 hours later by a bicyclist, who thought his limp body was a scarecrow. He died a few days later, on Oct. 12, 1998.

On Oct. 26, Shepard’s ashes will be placed in a niche in the crypt columbarium, a private, off-limits Shepard