Evil Comes in All Forms

Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican politician from North Carolina, looks like someone's sweet grandmother. However, when she opened her mouth last week on the floor of the House of Representatives, she proved that she is tremendously offensive and criminally misinformed. Foxx was managing the debate for those individuals opposed to the Matthew Shepard Act, a proposed federal bill which would expand the current federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability. And regardless of how wrong it may be, Foxx is certainly entitled to her opinion. That is, until she decided to open her mouth and utter this: "The hate crimes 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. 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."

In case you are unfamiliar with the case of Matthew Shepard, Shepard was a homosexual 21-year-old and a student at the University of Wyoming who was murdered by Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney in October 1998. Both Henderson and McKinney admitted during the their trial that, after meeting Shepard in a bar in Laramie, WY, they pretended to be homosexual and then offered Shepard a ride. Shepard was subsequently robbed, pistol whipped, tortured with sharp implements, tied to a fence in a remote rural area and then left to die. Still tied to the fence, Shepard was not discovered until eighteen hours later by a bicyclist who, at first, thought that Shepard was a scarecrow. At the time of the discovery, Shepard was still alive but in a coma. However, he died four days later.

Although her remarks are extremely callous and insensitive, Foxx added to her shame by saying what she did while Matthew Shepard's mother was attending the debate and actually sitting in the House gallery at the time. Although she has since admitted that her use of the word "hoax" when describing the circumstances of Shepard's murder was "a poor choice of words", Foxx has not yet resigned from her Congressional seat. Therefore, please feel free to contact Foxx's Washington, D.C. office at (202) 225-2071 to express your disgust in her comments.