There are truth tellers and there are liars on the right and on the left. But for the left, truth is subordinated to whatever it is the left most cares about: gay rights, minority rights, women’s rights, government health care and environmentalism being only the most obvious current examples.
Remember the terrible murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo. in 1998 — tortured, beaten and left hanging on a fence to die — because he was gay?
The American people were led from the outset to believe that Shepard was the victim of a hate crime, murdered because he was gay. And that is how virtually every American still views the story. In the words of Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), “Matthew Shepard is to gay rights what Emmett Till was to the civil rights movement.” A play based on Shepard’s killing, “The Laramie Project” became, according to the Wall Street Journal, “one of the most produced theatrical shows in the country.” And in 2009, Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, the Matthew Shepard Law, which expanded the definition of hate crimes to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
It turns out that Matthew Shepard’s murder had nothing to do with his being gay.
As early as 2004, the ABC News program “20/20” broadcast (to its credit) a denial by both murderers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, that the murder had anything to do with Shepard’s being gay. It was, they both claimed, a robbery gone bad.
“It was not because me and Aaron had anything against gays,” Henderson told ABC.
As a result, ABC News was widely attacked by all those who had a vested interest not in truth, but in maintaining the homophobia story: the liberal media, the gay rights movement and the lawyers for the victim’s mother.
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