Meanwhile, some of my friends back East were having a hard time picturing me living -- happily, no less -- in a Montana canyon. They were worried about me, they said. How could I live in that part of the country? Didn’t I know what happened to homos there? Hadn’t I heard about Matthew Shepard’s murder? Of course I knew about Matthew. Three days after the attack, I was on a cattle ranch in Roscoe, Montana, a few hundred miles from Laramie, attending a gay commitment ceremony. As Matthew lay dying in a hospital bed, more than 100 people -- family, friends, and neighbors; ranch hands, cooks and cowboys, the vast majority of them straight -- had gathered to celebrate the love between two others. That sort of thing also happens in this part of the country. David Weiss, a former senior advertising executive in New York City, has co-authored a sales-and-marketing book,written articles for national magazines and regional newspapers and (almost) graduated from UO’s LNF program.