Posted on 10/14/2023 10:36:33 AM PDT by nickcarraway
President Biden commemorated the 25th anniversary of his tragic death by celebrating legislation passed in Shepard's name. But it was based on a major falsehood.
In the fall of 1998, a man named Matthew Shepard was savagely beaten, strung out on a fence like a scarecrow, and left to die as the Wyoming night temperatures plunged. Over the last two and a half decades, the killing has been called many things. But a BBC headline from 2018 perhaps captures best: It was "the murder that changed America."
A statement from President Joe Biden helps explain why. "Twenty-five years ago today, Matthew Shepard lost his life to a brutal act of hate and violence that shocked our nation and the world," he said this morning. "The week prior, Matthew had been viciously attacked in a horrific anti-gay hate crime and left to die – simply for being himself."
Shepard's murder was, without a doubt, an act of hate and violence. But the latter part of Biden's statement—that his murder was spurred by homophobic animus—is the most important. For years, it has been repeated in some of the largest media outlets. It has driven federal policy. It is the part that "changed America," despite all evidence pointing to the fact that it isn't true.
If Biden's statement is any indication, that claim has regardless had long-lasting consequences, including a federal hate crime law bearing Shepard's name that broadened those offenses and gave federal law enforcement more muscular authority to pursue such investigations. Over the years, his death has been invoked as proof that gay people have a great deal to fear in the U.S. "simply for being" themselves, per the president.
How the robust narrative took shape is complex. But it didn't take very long. A few initial elements possibly corroborating such a story were there: Shepard was, indeed, gay; Aaron McKinney—one of the murderers, along with Russell Henderson—used gay slurs in his confession; and McKinney's attorneys attempted to introduce the "gay panic defense," hoping to argue at trial that he had essentially descended into madness when Shepard put a hand on his leg. (The judge was not having it, and his team was prohibited from employing that.)
There were, however, many questions that continued to go unanswered after the initial shock wore off. "The act-of-hate story never quite added up," wrote Elizabeth Nolan Brown in the October 2021 issue of Reason. "Why did police insist that the perpetrators' primary motive was robbery? Why did the allegedly violently homophobic perpetrators supposedly pretend to be gay? And if hate crime protections were needed to stop horrific acts like this from happening, why did Wyoming have no trouble convicting the men of first-degree murder and sentencing them to life in prison?"
It wasn't until the prominent gay journalist Stephen Jimenez published his 2013 book, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard, that those gaps started to narrow significantly. McKinney and Shepard reportedly were connected by the drug trade, with Shepard set to receive a $10,000 shipment of methamphetamine around the time he was killed. Also relevant is that McKinney was allegedly not traumatized by advances from Shepard, as the two had been sexually involved.
In other words, Shepard's murder was almost certainly fueled by disagreements over money and drugs rather than gay identity, something that Henderson confirmed in an interview from prison with the Associated Press in 2018.
But the myth has continued to persist, as they sometimes do when in service of what is seen as the greater good. "25 years after Matthew Shepard's death," the A.P. noted in a piece this morning, "LGBTQ+ activists say equal-rights progress is at risk." Contrast that with what Shepard's father, Dennis, reportedly told Wyoming's governor not long after the murder: "We should not use Matt to further an agenda," he said. "Don't rush into just passing all kinds of new hate crimes laws. Be very careful of any changes and be sure you're not taking away rights of others in the process to race to this."
Yet, we've done that and more. Shepard continues to live on in calls for government intervention and a buttressed police state, as well as culturally, when we tell younger generations of gay people that they could be next.
Shepard's murder was evil. It was evil because murder is evil. Unfortunately, though, that's not always enough.
With Fatass Rosie pimping it as a hate crime you can bet gayness had nothing to do with it.
Of course it wasn’t he was a drug addict. And like almost every other lefty hero it is a bunch of BS.
A LOT of folks knew that all along. But the narrative needs a victim so..........
🙏🇮🇱👍
If I were to say to someone that it was a gay man who killed Matthew Shepard, would I be accused of homophobia? I’d say probably.
P.S. There are gay men who have a problem with straight men existing, and want all of them to be depopulated.
Dryg deal gone bad. But don’t let the truth stand in the way of a good “Hate Crime’.
You always need a poster child for a movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White
Of course it was a bunch of homo’s that caused this hemophiliac to contract AIDS and die because they polluted the nations blood supply. But do you really want a bear (a fat male in leather) as the poster child for the gay rights movement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyd
At times it gets almost comical. I suppose timing is more important than reality, and so a thug with an extensive violent criminal record, on drugs, resisting arrest, who was actually committing a crime (using counterfeit currency), becomes the poster child for a civil rights movement.
In short this whole Matthew Shepard lie was an early fake hate crime.
A common theme in gay porn is the seduction or “turning” of straight men, especially masculine men in any sort of uniform. Matthew Shepard was no exception. He once continually pestered a hetero guy at a campsite. The guy made it clear he wasn’t interested, but Shepard continued to press him for sex. The guy finally hauled off and punched Shepard, breaking his jaw. This was only revealed several years after his canonization, perhaps in the book cited above.
Water under the bridge. Do you think the truth matters to these people? The rest of the people know about it as much as they know where the Gaza is.
It seems there was a journalist who actually did his job.
And some women like the idea of turning gay men.
.....Shepard’s murder was DEFINITELY fueled by disagreements over money and drugs rather than gay identity.....
But the “gays” and their leftist allies ALWAYS treat Matthew Shepard as a “gay martyr”!!! His leftist parents even got him buried as a “martyr” in the National Cathedral!! Phooey to the sacrilege!!!!
Of course, demented biden goes along with all of this! Phooey again!!
Brix: “Confirmation bias will always lead zealots to believe the narrative that favors their cause even in the preponderance of contrary evidence.”
Indeed.
They learned this from the AIDs propaganda campaigns in the 80s where they were successfully able to setup and control a narrative to change public discourse.
This was the next logical step and you see it with Trayvon Martin and George Floyd. Capitalizing on an issue and distorting it into rage bait to change the culture in society..
Just as Stonewall was a raid on a Mob-Controlled bar.
Soviets invented it
Pavlik Morozov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov
In the mid-1980s, Yuri Druzhnikov, a dissident writer expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union, performed an investigation, met with surviving eyewitnesses, and wrote a documentary exposé about Pavlik. Originally circulated through the samizdat, it was published in Russian in the UK in 1988 and soon thereafter translated into several languages. The first English translation appeared in 1996 under the title Informer 001: The Myth of Pavlik Morozov. Druzhnikov disputes every aspect of the Soviet propaganda version of Pavlik’s life. For example, different sources in Soviet literature list different ages for Pavlik at death and show photographs of different boys. Pavlik was not a Pioneer when he was killed. According to the Soviet version, Pavlik’s grandfather was responsible for his murder; according to Druzhnikov, the grandfather was heartbroken about the death of Pavlik, organized a search when the boy went missing, and maintained his innocence during the trial. While not saying it outright, Druzhnikov hints that Pavlik was killed by a GPU officer, whom Druzhnikov met while doing his research.
“...almost certainly not a hate crime.”
Almost. Having it both ways. No jokes please.
Okay, go ahead.
And the ID channel just did a show on the subject with ads being run ad nauseum with a lead in commentary that he was murdered because he was gay.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.