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Foxx under fire for rejecting gay man's killing as hate crime
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Published: April 30, 2009
U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx came under fire yesterday for saying that the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay man in Wyoming, was not a hate crime.
Foxx, R-5th, who was arguing against a bill that would expand a federal hate crimes law to include acts motivated by sexual orientation, giving gay and lesbians more federal protection, said that attempts to call the murder a hate crime were "a hoax."
"The hate-crime bill that's called the Matthew Shepard Bill is 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 a robbery," Foxx said yesterday on the floor of Congress. "It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him — the hate-crimes bill was named for him — but it's really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."
The bill, called the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, passed the House, 249-175. A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate.
Shepard was 21 when he was robbed, beaten and left to die on a prairie fence near Laramie, Wyo. Two men pleaded guilty to killing him and testified that they singled him out because he was gay.
Videos of Foxx's comments were posted online at Politico.com and YouTube.
Wade Boyles, an openly gay Democrat from Winston-Salem who ran for the N.C. House of Representatives last fall, said that it is absurd to think that Shepard was killed in a robbery rather than because he was gay.
"It's crazy," Boyles said. "This just goes to show how out of touch Virginia Foxx is with today's issues — especially with gay and lesbian people and how we're treated by society. It shows she's ignorant on the issues and has no business being in Washington representing the people of the 5th District."
Foxx could not be reached yesterday, but her spokesman, Aaron Groen, sent a prepared statement from her by e-mail:
"It has come to my attention that some people have been led to believe that I think the terrible crimes that led to Matthew Shepard's death in 1998 were a hoax," the e-mail reads. "The term 'hoax' was a poor choice of words used in the discussion of the hate crimes bill. Mr. Shepard's death was nothing less than a tragedy and those responsible for his death certainly deserved the punishment they received."
Groen said that Foxx had relied on two news reports — one published in The Washington Times in 2007 and one aired on ABC's 20/20 in 2004 — that questioned whether Shepard was killed because he was gay or because of his money.
In the e-mailed statement, Foxx said: "Referencing these media accounts may have been a mistake, but if so, it was a mistake based on what I believed were reliable accounts. "
National organizations that lobby for gay and lesbian rights refuted Foxx's claims, calling them politically motivated lies.
"First of all, if her claim was true — which it absolutely is not — that still does not discount the thousands of other (similar) hate crimes that happen in this country each year," said Becky Dansky, who is the federal legislative director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which has lobbied in favor of the bill that Foxx was debating.
"I think when you get to that point where you're spreading misinformation, and in some cases just flat-out lying," Dansky said, "it's because you don't have a good argument or because you're not willing to say what it is you really want to say."
■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.
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