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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."<ref name="20/20" />
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."<ref name="20/20" />
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.<ref name="courttv"/> In fact, at least one of Shepard's killers claimed in an interview on ABC's "20/20" that money and drugs motivated their actions that night, not hatred of gays.<ref name="20/20">[http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1 20/20 News Story on Matthew Shepard]</ref> One of the girlfriends of the accused testified that they had planned to pretend to be homosexuals so that they could rob Shepard.<ref name="courttv"/>
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.<ref name="courttv"/> In fact, at least one of Shepard's killers claimed in an interview on ABC's "20/20" that money and drugs motivated their actions that night, not hatred of gays.<ref name="20/20">[https://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=277685&page=1 20/20 News Story on Matthew Shepard]</ref> One of the girlfriends of the accused testified that they had planned to pretend to be homosexuals so that they could rob Shepard.<ref name="courttv"/>
Gay activists essentially made the argument that a physical homosexual advance involving touching of one man upon another was not a crime that could produce a violent, or even possibly a deadly reaction.
Gay activists essentially made the argument that a physical homosexual advance involving touching of one man upon another was not a crime that could produce a violent, or even possibly a deadly reaction.