July 16, 2009
When the lie is more helpful than the truth…

Posted at 10:47 am, in: Uncategorized
Tags: Barach Obama, Dick Lugar, George Voinovich, Harry Reid, John McCain, Judd Gregg, Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard, Olympia Snower, Susan Collins

Here we go again, advancing the lie that Matthew Shepard was the victim of a hate crime in order to restrict religion and free speech:

Republicans are protesting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s move to attach a controversial hate-crimes proposal to a must-pass defense bill, but they may not have the votes to stop it.

In an effort to circumvent GOP opposition, the Nevada Democrat has proposed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act as an amendment to a $680 billion defense authorization bill.

Reid is hoping for support from Republican Sens. Dick Lugar of Indiana, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire for legislation that would otherwise struggle to obtain a 60-vote majority as a stand-alone bill.

On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took to the floor to blast Reid’s move, calling it an “abuse of power.”

“Those of us who oppose this legislation — and it is important legislation — will be faced with a dilemma of choosing between a bill which can harm, in my view, the United States of America and its judicial system and a bill defending the nation,” McCain said. “I don’t think that’s fair to any member of this body.”

For once, I find myself agreeing with John McCain. Scary! But, he’s right. This is an abuse of power that has become common play on Capitol Hill.

I hate to break this shocking news to the world, but Matthew Shepard’s murder was not a hate crime. He was not murdered because he was gay. He was murdered for drugs and money. I’m not excusing what happened to him, by any means, but let’s face the facts, here. At the very least, let’s be honest about what really happened instead of twisting the facts in order to advance a political cause.

That Reid would even take the chance of putting a defense bill in jeopardy to pass this legislation, which has been around for about 15 years because it has been unable to pass previously, is disgusting. This bill is bad for America and will erode our Constitutional rights. But, this is what King Obama wants, and so this is what he’ll get. And, yes, although all of the Democrats are salivating at the prospect of passing this bill, it is The One who is behind it.

Most people probably missed at the end of last month when Obama was pandering to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community at the White House at the end of June, in a blatant move to play on the public’s sympathies in order to push the hate-crimes agenda along he paraded the Shepards out and stated:

Judy and Dennis Shepard, as well as their son Logan, are here today. I met with Judy in the Oval Office in May — (applause) — and I assured her and I assured all of you that we are going to pass an inclusive hate crimes bill into law, a bill named for their son Matthew.

Judy Shepard has been misrepresenting the reality of her son’s murder since it happened. In fact, she’s made quite the career out of it, booking speeches at college campuses across the country in which she blasts organized religion and the bible and blames both for her son’s murder. I must have missed the press report that said her son’s killers were fundamentalist Christians who beat him to death with a bible.

I don’t know if they still do it, but I would be surprised to hear they stopped the practice. Roger Williams University used to bring her in every year during freshman orientation and make her speech mandatory. Of course, our school president later claimed it was not mandatory when we reported it in our conservative school newspaper. Too bad that’s not what our resident assistants (RAs) told us. I’m sure this indoctrination is still happening there and at other schools across the country.

Look, I get it. I feel bad for this woman and her family. I cannot imagine what it was like to suffer through that tragedy. But, we cannot continue to perpetrate the lie that his death was a result of his sexual orientation. As Newsbusters.com reported:

But, on the November 26, 2004, 20/20, ABC host Elizabeth Vargas ran a report in which a number of figures tied to the case, including the prosecutor, were interviewed, and made a credible case that Shepard was targeted by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson not because of anti-gay sentiment, but because McKinney was high on methamphetamines, giving him unusual violent tendencies as well as a desire for cash to buy more drugs. Vargas not only found that a meth high can lead to the kind of extreme violence perpetrated against Shepard, but that McKinney had gone on to similarly attack another man, causing a skull fracture, very soon after his attack on Shepard. Additionally, McKinney’s girlfriend and another friend of McKinney’s even claimed that McKinney himself has bisexual tendencies, although McKinney himself denied it.

Vargas appeared on the November 19, 2004, The O’Reilly Factor on FNC and summarized her findings:

The prosecutor who prosecuted these crimes says that he never believed it was a hate crime. He believes it was a drug crime. Aaron McKinney, according to Aaron McKinney himself and to several other witnesses, was coming down from a five-day methamphetamine binge. He freely admits he not only used methamphetamine but dealt them, sold them. Five days up with no sleep, strung out on drugs, desperate to buy more, desperate to rob somebody to get money to buy more drugs. This was the motive, according to Aaron McKinney and the other witnesses.

This legislation is inherently against the principles and ideals that our country was founded on. It cannot be tolerated and it cannot be passed. Matthew Shepard did not die because he was gay and even if he did this legislation would have changed nothing. The people responsible for his death were sentenced to the maximum. Hate-crimes legislation would not have stopped McKinney, in a drug induced rage, from murdering Shepard.

Both McKinney and his accomplice Russell A. Henderson received two consecutive life sentences (avoiding the death penalty at the request of Judy and Dennis Shepard) for the murder. What more could hate-crimes legislation do? It would have neither prevented this crime, nor made the punishment any worse. So, what’s the point?

The point is that this isn’t about hate-crimes. This is about silencing people who oppose homosexuality (or bisexuality, or transgenderism) based on moral or religious grounds. The point of this is to codify political correctness into our law. The federal government has no authority to do this. Harry Reid has no right to tack it on to a bill that is completely unrelated. And, the Shepards and the politicians have no right to mischaracterize the motives of Matthew’s murderers in order to guilt the public into accepting the erosion of our fundamental, God-given rights.