New Book Claims Matthew Shepard was a Meth Dealer and Addict. WTF?

Sigs was tongue in cheek, I believe.

 

Certainly no more than groups who use his image or story for fundraising purposes.

 

OK. I see what you mean--------

 

The author started out wanting to write a screenplay (about Matt Shepard), and asked for Judy Shepard's help. She told him: no thanks - yet he wouldn't let it go.

This book is the result of her rejection of a big Hollywood movie based on the torture and murder of her son. I certainly can respect why she said no. The book is nothing more than vindictive insanity. Period.

QP

 

who is? which one of those people made out to be model persons are really what they're thought to be throughout? no-one. everyone has their drug habits, lies, theft, cheating, whatever.

this ''poster child'' is a myth created and upheld by delusional people. it has no basis in reality. human beings are what they are. not bad, not good. just human, with everything that comes along with it.

 

What do you imagine is done with the funds raised by groups using the story of how Matthew's murder was a hate crime?

 

so multiple people knew Shepard had sex with one of his killers on a regular basis? did the two of them did it in front of all those people? cause that is the only way to know when someone other than yourself is having sex. the alternative is rumors, letting your imagination fly, and what the situation might have looked like from the outside.

i had a buddy in college. we got really close really fast and stayed solid friends throughout our studies and beyond. several people in our class thought we were having sex. we never did. if i had ended up dead in a ditch somewhere at that time, i'm pretty sure some of my former classmates would have quoted suspicions of such nature and it would have ended up in reports too. and i know it looked like that from the outside myself.

a drug deal gone bad is a ridiculous scenario. and i am open to interpretations other than hate crime. murder like that is personal or the murderers are clinically ill. nobody goes out of their way like that for even kilos of the good stuff. besides, police investigators aren't some impotent morons who can't tell a table from a chair. they're usually trained professionals with a lot more experience with this sort of thing than any book writer (who has a lot of experience with imagination though), and they had immediate access to the scene when it happened (as opposed to the writer). they can get some stuff wrong if the case is unusually complicated and/or misleading, but mostly they know what they're doing. and it was the police investigators who pointed out Shepard's sexuality played a factor in the whole act. if there hadn't been truth to the hate crime part of it it wouldn't have established itself so quickly in the more professional circles.

 

Right on.

Matt's mother wrote a book (in 2009) about her son's depression and drug use. So it was far from a secret.

What I find totally revealing - is when people all of a sudden state that everybody knew that Matt used drugs and slept around. What, are we back to stoning people for their sins? As if we have none of our own?

I wonder what a book about Stephen Jimenez would tell us about drugs and sex?

But nobody would buy it. They'd keep their stones in their pockets. He's too unknown.

Awesome quote, MW. It smacks of Jesus. And that dude really had a way with words.

QP

 

He is worthy and he is not the only one to have his face on a poster because they died due to the hatred of others for being non-hetero.

The suicide of Phoebe Prince, on January 14, 2010, led to the criminal prosecution of six teenagers for charges including statutory rape and civil rights violations,[1] as well as to the enactment of stricter anti-bullying legislation by the Massachusetts state legislature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Phoebe_Prince

Tyler Clementi (December 19, 1991 – September 22, 2010) was an eighteen-year-old student at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010. On September 19, his roommate, Dharun Ravi, and a fellow hallmate, Molly Wei, used a webcam on Ravi's computer and a computer in Wei's dorm room to view, without Clementi's knowledge, Clementi kissing another man. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Tyler_Clementi

Daniel Mauricio Zamudio Vera (3 August 1987 - 27 March 2012) was a 24-year-old Chilean gay man who was tortured and murdered in Santiago in 2012 after his attackers learned of his sexual orientation.[1] He has become a symbol against homophobic violence in Chile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Zamudio

Gwen Araujo (February 24, 1985 – October 3, 2002), was an American teenage pre-operative trans woman who was murdered in Newark, California.[1] She was killed by four men, two of whom she had allegedly been sexually intimate with, who beat and strangled her after discovering she was transsexual.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Gwen_Araujo

The murder of Larry King refers to the February 12, 2008, shooting death of Lawrence "Larry" Fobes King (January 13, 1993 – February 13, 2008), a 15-year-old gay student at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, California, United States. He was shot twice by a fellow student, 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, and kept on life support until he died two days later.
Newsweek described the shooting as "the most prominent gay-bias crime since the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard", bringing attention to issues of gun violence as well as gender expression and sexual identity of teenagers.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Larry_King

Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover was 11-- hardly old enough to know his sexuality and yet distraught enough to hang himself last week after school bullies repeatedly called him "gay." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/14/carl-joseph-walker-hoover_n_186911.html

Jamey Rodemeyer (March 21, 1997 – September 18, 2011) was an openly bisexual[2] teenager (although he referred to himself as gay on Tumblr and some YouTube videos[3][4]), known for his activism against homophobia and his videos on YouTube to help victims of homophobic bullying. He committed suicide as a result of constant bullying and being called gay.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Jamey_Rodemeyer

They are all "poster children"


The flip side of their posters spread the message




Every bit of the legislation brought about in the wake of their deaths has been much needed.

 

Let's stop the hate (for real). Your awesome pictures are worth thousands of words.

QP

 

As for Angel Action Atlanta, I'll go ahead and answer for what we do with the limited funds we are able to raise. This year we've raised about $300.

We spend them on the signs you see in the photos and a banner we carry in parades.

They rest of the money we spend on wings, robes, gasoline, time taken off work, items made to raise funds - all of that comes out of our pockets.

Aside from the anti-bullying awareness activities, we attend funerals of fallen service men and women which are targeted for picketing by hate groups.

We also have joined with another local group to help the 900 LGBT youth who sleep on Atlanta's streets each night. We will be helping to feed them and provide warm clothes and blankets to them since shelters are turning them away due to their sexual orientation. Again out of our pockets or the generosity of compassionate donors.

Another thing we do is to help raise awareness about Pit Bulls and other Bully Breeds who are discriminated against and hated for being who they are.

We have a webpage for those who are victims of any kind of bullying. We have resources there so that people who are victims of bullying, child abuse, domestic violence, etc. Also for those with eating disorders and those feeling suicidal.
www.angelactionatlanta.org

 

It doesn't justify torture and murder that he slept with one of his killers but it kinda nullifies the ''hate crime against gays'' theory.

 

This is why it was considered and anti-gay hate crime:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/21/u...al-killing-of-gay-student.html?pagewanted=all

 

Dude, there is no theory. Plenty of talk, hell yeah. Legally, lots of "little faggot to rip off" - big and plenty. Read the damn trial transcript (it's not too hard to find).

And speaking as a gay man - Matt Shepard would not have given his half-wit killers' the time of day. Except they pretended to be gay. And gay folks were a rarity in Laramie in the 1990s.

He never slept with them. But they sure as hell pretended to be his friend. Right up until the moment they robbed, beat, and tied him to that fence.

The irony is they are only still alive because of his empathy and compassion: Matt was opposed to the death penalty. That's the only reason his killers' are still allowed to breathe the fresh air Matt was forever robbed of: Matt's parents' chose to honor their son's political beliefs.

Remarkable people.

The world is a much better place because of Matt and his parents.

Their lives speak volumes, while Stephen Jimenez barely manages a gasp.

QP

 

Thank you. A link is your best friend.

QP

 

Is it really such a ridiculous scenario though? More ridiculous than someone who knew Shepard was gay, and even had sex with him prior to the night of the attack, killing him simply because he was gay? According to court records his killers were both high on meth when they attacked Shepard. Is it such a stretch to believe that maybe, just maybe, being high on that shit pushed them to do things many of us would consider "personal"?

Hell, the primary attacker now denies that "gay panic" had anything to do with the murder, and that the defense tried to use it as a mitigating factor. But he must be lying, right?

A former boyfriend of Matthew's says that he and Matthew had been to gay clubs with his primary attack before. He must be lying though, right?

Friends of both of them claim it was well known they knew each other for a while prior to the attack, and that his primary attacker was a known bisexual. But they must be lying too, right?

No one is arguing against the idea that this crime was vicious and that the attackers don't deserve to spend the rest of their lives behind bars. No one is saying Matthew deserved it because he was gay. All that the book is saying is that he may not have been killed for the reason we are all lead to believe: because he was gay.

 

But was Matthew really killed because he was gay? People who knew him, and his primary attacker, say otherwise.

I totally agree.

 

What reason do they have to lie? No one is trying to say Matthew deserved to die, QP.

 

Doesn't really fit with people known to them both who said both Matthew and McKinney frequented gay bars together, and knew each other for months prior to the attack. But they must be lying.

 

"People who knew them both" doesn't convince like McKinney's own recorded admission in the days between the attack and Matthew's death.