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Matthew Shepard, who was found savagely pistol-whipped and tied to a fence outside town last week, left Wyoming as a teen, finishing high school in Switzerland. He overcame worries about coming back to attend the University of Wyoming here, but friends said he was happy with his initial experiences.
"He had a lot of the same fears other people have coming into a small community," said Walt Boulden, a graduate student. "When he left Wyoming he had just started dealing with being gay. So he was very concerned about the attitudes when he first came back.
"But he really felt at home and comfortable here. He felt this was the place to be right now."
Shepard was unconscious yesterday at a Fort Collins, Colo., hospital, where he was listed in critical condition with severe head injuries. Hospital officials said his condition had deteriorated since the midweek beating. About 500 people attended a candlelight vigil Saturday night.
A close friend, Alex Trout, was surprised Shepard was targeted for attack because of his sexual preference, as police believe. Trout said his own homosexuality has never caused a problem in his four years in Laramie, a Western-tinged college town with a population of 27,000 .
"In a sense (Wyoming) is 'red neck,' but it's not so bad (that) gays can't live here," Trout said.
"Most of Wyoming has an attitude of live and let live," said Joe Corrigan, cofounder of United Gays and Lesbians of Wyoming.
Residents of what is nicknamed the Equality State agreed.
The beating of Shepard came just before National Coming Out Day, which was yesterday, and on the heels of an advertising campaign by so-called family values groups urging gays to renounce homosexuality.
A plan championed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and team owner George Steinbrenner to move the Bronx Bombers out of the House That Ruth Built and into a new $1 billion stadium in Manhattan has so inflamed passions that a proposed referendum on the matter is expected to increase voter turnout so much it could hurt D'Amato.
"If it's on (the ballot), it's got to help Democrats," said Maurice Carroll, head of the Quinnipiac College Polling Institute, in Hamden, Conn. "A: It's a city issue, ... and B: it's a Bronx issue, and the Bronx is loaded with Democrats.
"To the extent that anybody comes out and says 'I'm going to vote to keep the Yankees in the Bronx,' ... you've got to assume that more of them than otherwise would say, 'As long as I'm here I'll vote for a Democrat.'"
D'Amato challenger U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer could benefit, since voter turnout would likely be low in an otherwise relatively ho-hum election season.
But the referendum might not even be a factor on the Nov. 3 ballot. The city's appeal of a legal ruling could still take the decision out of voters' hands.
A judge ruled last week that voters should be allowed to have their say on whether to pay for the Yankees' proposed move to pricier digs, as voters in several other cities have done for their teams in recent years. An appeal will be heard this week.
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, a Bronx Democrat who championed the ballot measure, praised the judge's ruling. But few think any referendum spillover would benefit him in his bid to unseat Gov. George Pataki in the gubernatorial race, since he lags far behind in opinion polls.
Denning had a history of emphysema and died of cardiac arrest.
He played the governor in "Hawaii Five-O" for 12 years. He also appeared in dozens of films including "Some Like It Hot," "Creature from the Black Lagoon," "An Affair to Remember," "Adam Had Four Sons" and "The Lady Takes A Flyer."
Denning, who was born in 1914 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., studied accounting at Woodbury University because he expected to take over his father's garment manufacturing business. After graduating, he did just that.
But Denning also dabbled in acting, winning a Warner Bros. screen test through a contest on the radio show "Do You Want to Be An Actor?" He resembled Errol Flynn, then on contract with Warner Bros., and the studio did not sign him.
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Speaking at a canonization Mass in St. Peter's Square, the pope paid tribute to "the millions of Jewish brothers and sisters" slaughtered by the Nazis and pleaded that there will be no recurrence of such a "brutal plan to wipe out a people."
"For the love of God and man, I once again raise my voice in a heartfelt cry: Never again may such a criminal act be repeated against any ethnic group, any people, any race, in any corner of the Earth," John Paul said, drawing applause from a crowd of thousands.
"It is a cry I send out to all men and women of goodwill and all who believe in the eternal and just God," he added in a strong voice. "We should all be together on this. Human dignity is at stake."
Usually, this is the season when the networks launch new shows, but this year's offerings have been drastically reduced. Reruns are in, and foreign soap operas are being replaced by replays of political talk shows, of all things.
A talk show on wheels, Taxi TV-6, in which the hosts picked up passengers on the street and interviewed them about life and love, is being canceled.
movies; it's cheaper to reschedule old classics, television executives say.
"We are having to resort to reruns," said Grigory Simonovich, a spokesperson for ORT, one of Russia's leading networks. "Practically all TV channels are doing it now. We have to rerun programs from past months and even years. We had big plans; we had many new projects in mind, but some of them have been delayed."
NTV, another major network, said it had made some money-saving programming changes even before the crisis began two months ago and that more are on the way. "The situation now requires management to be even more careful," said spokesperson Tatyana Blinova.
Television is a good example of how Russia's thoroughly unstable economic situation can hit hard at an industry that appeared to be on the verge of booming. But the declining exchange value of the ruble now makes buying foreign programs prohibitively expensive - and even if the networks have a little money available for new programming, getting it out of the country's foundering banks is next to impossible. Moreover, foreign producers are reluctant to provide credit; they want payment in advance.
Most television fare in Russia is created by independent producers who depend on the networks to buy their programs. Rubles paid them in advance are now worth two-thirds less against Western currencies than they were two months ago. If they did not get cash up front, they are now facing delays in payment and perhaps cancellation of their projects. A company called Class TV, which produces children's shows, is facing bankruptcy because it has not been paid for a series of shows already made. The company is negotiating for at least enough compensation to stay afloat.
10-12-98
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