Rep. Virginia Foxx dishonored Matthew Shepard’s death on the House Floor
(video: Media Matters Action at YouTube)
If you were wondering just how low the radical religious right and their Republican enablers would go to fight The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 — aka The Matthew Shepard Act. Now we know.
They’re absolutely convinced that if they repeat this lie often enough, people will eventually believe it.
From Media Matters Action Network:
Rep. Virginia Foxx Called Matthew Shepard Hate Crime “A Hoax”
Summary: On April 29, 2009, in a speech on the House floor, Rep. Virginia Foxx claimed that Matthew Shepard’s death was merely the result of a robbery gone bad. While his killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson did rob him, they also admitted that they were well aware of his sexual orientation and pretended they were gay to lure him away from the bar he was in at the time. The most striking feature of the case, of course, is that during the course of a normal, simple robbery, the victim is not generally beaten, tied to a post, and left for dead.
[video above]
Rep. Foxx: “The bill was named after a very unfortunate incident that happened, where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. The bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it’s, it’s really a hoax, that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”[House Floor Speech, 4/29/09]
All the evidence clearly indicates that this was a vicious hate crime, not a robbery gone bad.
(emphasis: from the original)
Media Matters Action Network has a fact sheet to counter the outrageous claim made by Rep Virginia Foxx (R-NC).
