Matthew Shepard

From Conservapedia

Matthew Shepard (1976-1998) was an American college student from Wyoming. On October 7th, 1998, he was savagely beaten and robbed by two men, and died on October 12th. The killers were heavily involved in drugs and had met Shepard in a bar, giving him a ride afterwards.

Homosexual activists converted this drug-related killing ^[1] into a hate crime even though the prosecution never described the killing as a hate crime.^[2] Activists claimed even before the details of the crime were known that the murder was due to anti-gay bias. Once the crime was discovered, Shepard's friends "were calling the County Attorney's office, they were calling the media and indicating Matthew Shepard is gay and we don't want the fact that he is gay to go unnoticed."^[3]

A misguided defense of one of the killers tried to make an issue of Shepard's homosexuality in order to employ a ""gay panic defense" based upon the defendant's alleged prior homosexual experiences, but this was rejected by the judge.^[2] In fact, at least one of Shepard's killers admitted in an interview on ABC's "20/20" that money and drugs motivated their actions that night, not hatred of gays.^[3] One of the girlfriends of the accused testified that they had planned to pretend to be homosexuals so that they could rob Shepard.^[2]

Ever since Shepard's death it has been cited by homosexual activists to promote legislation to classify attacks against homosexuals as a hate crime that would be punished more severely than a crime against a heterosexual. All legislation, both in Wyoming and on the national level, has failed, but under Democratic leadership the U.S. House of Representatives passed a hate crimes bill in 2007.^[4] President George W. Bush has vowed to veto it.