Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is strange and bitter crop.

       Abe Meeropol (a.k.a. Lewis Allen)

We are a tragic, pitiful and deeply flawed culture.  As the body of young Matthew Shepard hung crucified and dying on a fence outside of Laramie, Wyoming this week, our infectious and rotten core was once again ripped from its dark hiding place and laid bare for all the world to see. Never mind that he was gay. It was but an excuse to vent the hatred that has been woven deeply into the fabric of our culture from the beginning. Blacks, Indians, Mexicans, Gays, Jews, Women. What does it matter? As long as you're not a white, Christian, heterosexual man, you're fair game.

Make no mistake. It was indeed my white, male heterosexual progenitors who scalped the first Indian, hung the first black man and beat to death the first gay brother. And it is in much of their progeny that the hate continues unabated. It is obvious that not all white, Christian, heterosexual men carry this hate. But it is just as obvious that the vast majority of hate crimes in this country are committed by white,

Christian, male heterosexuals who cannot abide anyone on earth who is not like unto themselves. We saw our ugliness reflected back to us in Hitler and fought a war to destroy him. We came home victorious but failed to kill the beast within ourselves. And all of us by our silence, bear the burden of each new savage act of hate. We thought the Holocaust could never happen again. But just look at us…

Abraham Lincoln said, ``To sin by silence when they should speak, makes cowards of men." And so have we all become cowards by our silence. We have seen the strange fruit hanging  from Southern trees but turned our eyes, hid in the safety or our silence and widened the range of targets.

Will my own daughter have to be raped to shake me out of my complacency? Will my own body have to be hanging from a fence, battered, bloodied and dying, before my parents will raise their voices and cry for an end to the intolerance? Will your own son or daughter, brother or sister have to be beaten, raped or tortured to within an inch of their lives before you raise your voice and demand an end to the evil of bigotry and hate? What deadness in our souls allows us to dismiss this savagery as somebody else's problem? Wasn't it Christ who said, ``Insomuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."

The grief in the hearts of Matthew Shepard's parents tonight is a grief that belongs to all of us. It was our son that was murdered for being gay. It was our brother hanging from the poplar tree because he was black and it  is  our  sisters whose sacred paces have been torn apart and raped because they could be. It is a lie we tell ourselves when we say that the problem is somebody else's.

When we sit silent in church and allow the minister to spew his venomous condemnation of gays, we  perpetuate the atmosphere in which they are beaten and killed. When we allow a racially demeaning joke to be told in our presence, (or God forbid repeat it,) we are feeding the climate of hate and intolerance that keeps dark skinned corpses swinging from the branches of poplar trees. When we allow rapists to serve fifteen month jail terms, we guarantee that another one of our daughters will be raped. And when we allow judges to mollycoddle the perpetrators of hate crimes, we insure the survival of hate. Our silence in the face of hatred, bigotry and violence is all the permission that's needed for the beast to keep killing.

God wrench us from our silence and complacency. Give us the courage to write a letter to our political leaders, shout down a bigoted priest or say no to an initiative that would limit any law abiding citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Help us remember that any time we have done it unto one of the least of these, we have done it unto ourselves. And please, hold young Matthew Shepard and all of our children safe in your arms until we figure out how to do it better than we're doing it now.