Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten to death by two gay-hating goobers in 1998.
The three men met in a bar, where Shepard apparently assumed that the other two were also gay.
The short, slight 21-year-old left with the two men, who drove him to a remote location outside Laramie, tied him to a Western-style rail fence, and gave him a savage beating. They left him there in frigid temperatures. Shepard died five days later.
Shepard, in a coma, was found there by a cyclist more than half a day later. The two men were arrested, and their girlfriends were charged as accessories after the fact.
The killers were sentenced to two consecutive life terms, without any chance of parole.
Public revulsion to this swinish crime was immense. In 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act addressing hate crimes against gays was introduced and made its way through Congress, only to be vetoed by President George W. Bush.
Another Republican added insult to fatal injury in April 2009, when North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx, in a fit of reactionary right-wing nonsense, referred to the Shepard murder as a hoax. Oh, brother...
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