Democrats Applaud the Myth of Matthew Shepard’s Murder

The tale of Matthew Shepard’s gay martyrdom filled the TV screens at the Democrats’ convention in Philadelphia — even though the story is a myth, from beginning to end.

The myth says Matthew Shepard was innocently lured to his death by two men he had never met before that night. The men were said to be offended that Shepard was gay and then lured him to a remote stretch of road and then beat him to death and left him hanging on a fence with his arms outstretched like he had been crucified. Stories at the time even referred to him being crucified “like Jesus.”

The story made national and even international news almost immediately. Gay activists immediately spread the narrative that is now repeated over and over, and has become the stuff of gay legend.

Shepard’s death was the impetus for national legislation related to hate crimes. Foundations have been named for him, and his name is intoned almost constantly by the sexual left.

The facts, however, are inconvenient; Shepard knew his killers, he dealt drugs with them, and rather than being homophobic, the man who beat him to death was Shepherd’s sometimes sex partner. In short, the evening was a drug deal gone bad, not a martyrdom.

We know this because of an award-winning gay journalist named Stephen Jimenez went to Laramie, Wyoming, to gather information for a screenplay about Shepard and his murder.

Jiminez said he went there as a believer in the Shepard myth. Over several years, and thousands of hours of interviews, he slowly unraveled the truth about Shepherd and his murder.

Jiminez discovered that Shepard was a meth dealer handling huge shiploads from major dealers, and that he was on a five-day meth binge at the time of his death. He was killed because he would not share a big shipment he had received that day.

The gay movement and the Democrats hold onto the myth of Matthew Shepard because his death gets to what they see as the underlying truth, that gay men live in constant fear for their lives from the largely unrepentant homophobic culture around them.

And the only thing that supposedly will save them is the forced reeducation and silencing or jailing the “haters.”