How Does the Matthew Shepard Myth Help Same-Sex Attracted People? Ep-2404

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Since that time of year again where the Matthew Shepherd
story is being retold, not the true story, but the story,
the myth. It's important. It's funny because people admit it's
a myth and then still say it's important that we
tell the myth, and they accuse us of a false gospel,

(00:23):
accuse Christians of that. So how does the Matthew Shepherd
myth help same sex attracted people. We'll talk about this
with the help of Bulwark Capital Management at Know Your
Risk podcast dot com and with God Almighty.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
The Todd Herman Show is one disapproved by big pharma
technocrats and tyrants everywhere from the high mountains of Free America.
Here's the Emerald City exime Todd Herman.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Today is the day the Lord has made in these
the times through which God has decided we shall live.
Where were you? Do you remember when you heard about
what was done to Matthew Shepherd and how horrific it was.
I remember hearing about it and just being beside myself

(01:21):
with grief, and I still am. It's a very sad story.
But this is from one of the media coverages of
this have came from Vanity Fair on their site now
they have their old print Meg and it's now an images.
So there's an image, of course of a half necked girl.
Nothing to do with me. That's just the image that

(01:43):
came up. Sorry for that. The article is called the
Crucifixion of Matthew Shepherd. It just gives you a look
back into what Vanity Fair was and continues to be.
The Crucifixion of Matthew Shepherd Melanie Melanie Thurnstrom, tied to
a wooden fence, tortured, left to die, twenty one year

(02:03):
old Matthew Shepard, a bright, sensitive freshman at the University
of Wyoming, has become a national symbol of violence against gays.
It's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, products of a
grim world of drugs, alcohol, broken homes, and twisted dreams,
have been charged with first degree murder, and the ton
of Larimrie, home to all three stands, revealed as an
American paradox, god fearing friendly place that harbors deep and

(02:25):
lingering prejudice. Melanie Thurnstrom explores the hidden topography of a killing.
I don't tell me. I could do an NPR voice
over coming that was okay, I'd have to be a
little bit more emotionless though. Yeah, it's horrific because he
was killed for being the same sex attracted dude in

(02:46):
a red neck land. That's the myth. Now, the reality
is not any better. Doesn't make it a better killing.
It can't be made better. It was murder, murder of
a young guy, and yeah, it's true he had been
in college at a time when we were putting together

(03:09):
this show. This morning, God reminded me that we can
look at this through the construct of NPR. Here I
was joking about doing the NPR delivery. We can look
at this through the construct of NPR. And incidentally, this
miss still persists. I was just looking at this online
and see that there are still people propagating this myth,

(03:30):
and those tweets are getting retweeted, and the tiktoks are
getting reticked and retalked. So, how does this help same
sex attracted people? The advocate thinks this helps same sex
attracted people. They admit that we'll get to that that
they admit it's all a myth, but it's a really
important myth. How does it help same sex attracted people

(03:54):
to believe that if they go to Larrymie Wyoming, they're
going to end up unalived because they are same sex attracted.
How does that help healing? How does it help to
ignore the other pathologies which incidentally, incidentally, and we're not

(04:16):
supposed to say this, We're never supposed to say this.
There's a lot of pathologies that often predate the arrival
at being same sex attracted. There's the pathologies of today
where young girls are being exposed to young men and
boys who have grown up believing that part of the

(04:40):
great joy of joining in sexual union is choking your
partner out with both hands while she does things to
you because women like that. And they're young girls whose
first sexual experience involves being choked. What's wrong? What's wrong?
The women on my phone like it when they're choked.

(05:04):
And suddenly you have girls saying, you know what, I think?
I am same sex attracted. So these pathologies, why is
it helpful to same sex attracted people to ignore that
these pathologies are occurring, or to society, or to people
who would otherwise be opposite sex attracted and fruitful and

(05:29):
multiplying and following God's plan for marriage. Perhaps perhaps it
can be same sex attracted and be way outside of
God's plan and you could be married in God's plan
and then being able to be fruitful in a marital
union working in the design of God. So how does
it help the Matthew Shepherd myth? How does it help

(05:52):
same sex attracted people? Maybe Catherine Marr, the CEO of
and PR could help us with this in a second.
How does it help you for your bank to give
you a business loan and give it to you for
your business and to tell you, congratulations, you have a

(06:12):
business line of credit and that business line of credit
has some superpowers that your individual line of credit doesn't.
And how does it help that they hide right there
in the small print that this is not a business loan.
This is a loan we gave you and we put
your business name on their credit card. But this is

(06:34):
a loan, and the leverage, the security of the loan
is your house, your retirement plan, your college shavings for
your kids, and your checking account. That's the collateral. Now
you can say, wait a minute, that's not the case,
because I have the corporate veil, my business is a
separate entity. Nope, no, no, it's not. In many cases,

(06:55):
people have gone and talked with my friends at Visible
their website is gobisible dot com. They've been five to
ten buddy who I had, a buddy who was fifteen
years in business, went and found out that he did
not have the corporate veil. And they'll tell you that
for free. They'll tell you if you have it or
not for free. Their website that you go to right
now is go bisible with a Z gobisible dot com

(07:18):
and the information is free. If they find out you
don't have it, they will fix it for you in
seven easy steps. And I suggest you just dive right
into that because the cosh reward ratio in this is
out of this world in favor of visible. It's go
bisible dot com. So this is NPR's Katherine mar You
remember this, and it helps us frame up the Matthew

(07:38):
Shepherd myth that continues to propagate this Now what is
it twenty seven years twenty seven years after that young
man met a really tragic ends.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
One of the most significant differences critical from moving from
polarization to productivity is that the wikipedians who write these
articles aren't actually focused on finding the truth. They're working
for something that's a little bit more attainable, which is
the best of what we can know right now, and
after seven years there, I actually believe that they're onto

(08:10):
something that for our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth
and seeking to convince others of the truth isn't necessarily
the best place to start. In fact, I think our
reverence for the truth might become might have become a
bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding
consensus and getting important things done.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Jesus Christ said, I am the way the truth in
the life. No one comes to the Father but through me,
So the truth is a distraction I see now. Incidentally,
part of the game people play when they do visionary things,
and back in the day I got to do visionary
stuff in tech. Part of the game you play is
you say something that's super provocative that way, and the

(08:56):
audience sits. They're like, oh my gosh, did she just
say a reverence for truth is a problem, And they're
sitting forward and can she possibly defend that? And oh
my gosh, she's willing to break barriers and she's willing
to say brave things, and yes, oh my gosh, she's
never thought of it that way. My mind is blown.
She was at Wikipedia at the time, which of course,
as you know, has been used from time to time

(09:16):
as a stock pump and dump device. Did you know
that a friend of mine investigated this on behalf of
the guy who ran overstock dot com because they were
watching it happen a great proof of this, and he
wrote an article about it, and that article got posted,
and he'd been investigating in Wikipedia from his small town
in Utah, investigating it and documenting the pump and dump.

(09:39):
He ended up in Forbes. He ended up going back
and getting interviewed on CNBC about this, and then Wikipedia
shut down access to Wikipedia for his entire town in Utah.
It was Bountiful. The entire town of Bountiful, Utah could
not access Wikipedia because jud had written this article that
they never came back. Can suit them for they never

(10:02):
said it wasn't true. So in a pursuit of truth,
it's in the way of getting things done. So when
we get to the crucifixion of Matthew Shepherd, which of
course is provocative in of itself, he wasn't crucified. How

(10:23):
does this serve same sex attracted people? There's the Matthew
Shepherd Foundation and it is still communicating and they're very
clever how they do this, The Matthew Shepherd Foundation. They're
very clever. This is a video they put out. This
is very clever. Watch very carefully, listened, very carefully.

Speaker 4 (10:46):
The story of Matthew Shepherd didn't start in nineteen ninety eight. Matt,
as we called him, was born on December first, nineteen
seventy six, in Casper, Wyoming, living a pretty typical Wyoming life.
His family would later overseas, where he gained a love
of languages, travel, politics, and a close network of friends
from around the world, but his college career would eventually

(11:09):
bring him back home to Wyoming.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
On October seventh, nineteen ninety eight, Matt was brutally attacked,
tied to a fence, and left to die. Five days later.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Kay the image says, homophobia kills what does the voiceover.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
Say, passed away at age twenty one. His life and
tragic death would forever change the way we talk about hate.
Inspired by their personal tragedy, his parents, Judy and Dennis,
founded the Matthew Shepherd Foundation to support LGBTQ plus youth,

(11:53):
inadvertently becoming parental figures to thousands of queer people around
the world while giving the community of voice that would
truly change hearts and minds. Their commitment to erase hate
led to over fourteen hundred appearances in twenty four countries,
a collection of resources to support legacy works inspired by

(12:14):
Matt's story, the country's first federal hate crimes legislation to
include sexual orientation and gender identity, and the creation of
one of the most authentic ally voices of our time,
Judy Shepherd.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
It's really clever because only the image says homophobia kills
and time. In that video do they say that Matthew
was killed because he was same sex attracted. But what
would you think if you were watching my video? That's
what happened, right? How is this helpful? I would really

(12:57):
be curious to know from his parents what happened. I mean,
it sounds almost idyllic. He got to travel the worlds,
he came back to his hometown to pursue college. What happened, Oh,
he was just out at a bar and he happened

(13:20):
to mention his same sex attracted and a couple of
rednecks pulled him out of the bar and tied him
to a fence posts and beat him and left him
there to freeze to death. That's what happened, and nothing
went wrong with matt He was never anything was wrong
with him. That's really tragic that that never happened. It's
tragic that what happened happened. I reflect on this outside

(13:46):
of the Matthew Shepherd affair, and I reflect on it
in terms of in vitro fertilization and same sex attracted
men purchasing babies, and I do mean purchasing them. And
to reflect on the fact that if you track the
outcomes of kids who grow up in same sex attracted
parented homes to men to women, the outcomes are profoundly

(14:11):
less advantageous, less good than kids who grow up in
opposite sex attracted homes. Profoundly so. And you would think,
I would think that we would want to speak into
the lives of same sex attracted people to say, hey,
you know what, See it's in your heart that you
want to have kids, you want to have some, and

(14:34):
you're willing to purchase one or two or three or four.
Do you want to have the heartache of knowing that
those outcomes are statistically speaking, never as good as opposite
sex attracted homes. I shouldn't say never, but statistically speaking,

(14:57):
far less likely to be happy, and you want them
informed of that, because if you've ever been a parent,
and I am, and I have folks my age who
are parents, have kids who are much older, further into adulthood.
The pain your kids go through it cuts you in

(15:18):
unique ways. It harms you in unique ways. It can
suck from you life energy and unique ways. And I
would think I would want to tell them that. And
it's easy as a parent to look at dark times
in your kid's life and to feel like you did that.
It's much much better to step back and look at

(15:40):
the changes, like in the case of our daughter. Dear God,
thank you, Dear God, Thank you for giving my wife
the diligence and the intelligence and the focus and the
willings to sacrifice everything. Thank you for letting us see
what happens when that when we abide. Gosh, just bless you,
bless you. So those are great moments that everybody hopes

(16:02):
to have, seeing your kid come into themselves. And it's
also easy to say, yeah, but it didn't have to
have the dark time. So wrapped up in the lie
about Matthew Shepherd, of course, is this lie about same
sex attracted men purchasing babies in bulk. That that's brave
and it's stunning, and the kids are going to have

(16:23):
good homes, and no one's abusing that system. No one,
for instance, is taking that system and abusing it to
purchase kids to then use as sexual objects for themselves
and for sale, when in fact that's happened probably fourteen
times we know about. Some of it's very mechanical, as

(16:44):
in purchasing I think six babies at once, with the
design and the full purpose of doing that to them.
How does it help same sex attracted people to not
tell that part of the purchasing a baby's story. How
does it help same sex attracted people to divorce things

(17:07):
like sexual assault that can turn people towards same sex attraction,
towards gender defiance, towards gender confusion. How does it help
them to hide these pathologies to ought to refuse to
offer them. Do you know sometimes this is a trauma response?
Are you sure this is not a trauma response? Well,

(17:30):
because this myth is so vitally important, as the advocate's
about to explain, I'll show you here a tweet in
a second that got a huge bit of circulation on
the anniversary of the death or at least the discovery
of Matthew Shepherd out there right back up to the
Atlantic article with the softcore porn in it, and to me,

(17:53):
that's also fascinating. We have a sexual pathology that they're
saying was respond before Matthew Shepherd's death, and on the
reverse page they're selling clothing with an anorexic looking sexually
pathologized image. Vanity Fair can't see the side by side there, apparently.

(18:17):
So there's pathologies that are real, right. There are things
that you can look at physically, for instance, there are
things that happen to people's bodies, say after a car wreck,
so that people get into a car wreck and the
neck is never right, the back is never right. You
can see chiropractors, you can go and have that work
done consistently, but it's just never right and you just

(18:39):
never walk right. And then there are things that are
harder to believe but true. We just had a meeting
the other night with one of my very close friends
who helps run our life group and praise God, her
reports on what her life is like after she went
down to Mexico with me and Zach Abraham and her
husband's Mark. We're all down together, and she got this.

(19:02):
She got the stem cells in her back, the stem
cells that come only from umbilical cords, and they are
the inverse of what's done in the States. Everything they
do down there, including these being donor based cells, so
they know the women, they know how healthy they are.
They in fact track their health during pregnancy. They track
the health of the woman and the baby after pregnancy.

(19:22):
These stem cells are taken straight down from the hospital
on a five minute walk to world class lab and
often the reject eighty percent of the stem cells they get.
And you say, well, how can they stay in business
because they've undertaken the incredibly expensive process of culturing the
stem cells that make it through their quality screening, meaning
they make more of them. So in the case of

(19:43):
our dear friend, when she got this stuff injected in back,
these stem cells, she'd been at a point where she
picked up her little baby, grandkids. She couldn't do anything
for us to the days. Pain was so intense. She
was in fatigue for the rest of the day. Now
she's playing rounds of golf, eighteen holes at a time.
She's walking around all day, She's doing things like hiking,
et cetera. And her back continues to heal. Doctors had

(20:06):
told her, Yeah, we're flummox We don't know what to do.
This can happen to people after car wrecks. Well, it
can be soft tissue damage that can be corrected to
the stem cells destroying the inflammation and then actually rebuilding cartilage, muscle, tendon,
bonees happened in my back. It's not just backs, traumatic
brain injury as well. They've had great success. Go check

(20:28):
them out at renew It's r E n ue dot Healthcare.
Please tell them you're part of the Todd Hermanshaw family.
Renew r E n ue dot Healthcare. This got tons
and tons of action on social media. The Angry Ostrich
twenty seventy years ago today, Matthew Sheppard died after being beaten, tortured,
tied to a fence, and left for dead, all for

(20:50):
being gay. Reports from those who found Matthew indicated that
he had only two spots on his face not covered
in blood, the trail of tears that ran from his
eyes in memory. Matthew sheperd October twelve, nineteen ninety eight. Yeah,
it's terrible, and the truth is terrible, and the myth

(21:13):
is terrible. You shall not lie. You cannot bring Matthew
Shepherd back to life. Jesus conquered death. He brought himself
back to life, conquered death. Those of us who accept
Jesus Christis or Savior, we speak it with our mouths.

(21:34):
We confess him with our mouths. We agree to be
changed by him. We signify this through baptism, and we
take that first important step prior to all of that,
or repenting of our sins, which involves true sorrow. Repent
except Jesus, signified through baptism, aregreing to be changed. Then

(21:56):
we conquer death through him He does for us. The
lies can't bring Matthew Shepard back to life, and the
truth can't. But the truth can do something the lies cannot.
The truth can. Pride check the organizations that make money

(22:20):
from this myth, I said, pride check, not fact check.
Why do they continue to tell the lie? Because they
would have to come back and say, we're wrong. But
we've been wrong so long that it's been this insane

(22:43):
thing to our advantage. I was watching a documentary a
few years ago about guys who got caught in stolen
valor pretending to have served in the military, or pretend
you do ben in combat, you know, inflating the role
they did play if they served. And they talked to

(23:06):
this guy and said, and he had a house filled
with military memorabilia, weapons, patches, pictures. He had gone to
the extent of a searching through black and white military
photos until he found a guy who looked a lot

(23:27):
like him when he was young. And he'd gone to
the extent of getting these pictures and getting them made
into something that looked like old photos, so even it
looked like photographic paper. And he had these things or film,
had these on his wall in his office, and he
had those back on a bookcase that he only showed

(23:48):
his good friends. And they talked to him and said,
you've been caught, You've been shamed. This was prior to
their being against this. How did it start? And he
said that he was out to dinner with a couple

(24:12):
of friends and the waitress came along and said, hey,
are either of you service members? We give a discount?
He said, yeah, I served. Oh, okay, where you go
a should discount? And he didn't know these guys, well, oh,
we're to surf, and the story began. So these are

(24:33):
some colleagues from work and first time they really hung
out together. Goes to work the next day, his boss
come says, hey, I didn't know your vet. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know. I don't like I don't like talking about it.
Oh okay, well we know we have a veterans program.
Yet you know what, I don't like those things. You know,
I did my job and there was my job, and

(24:55):
they don't like any of that special recognition. So please
don't do that. Just you know, thank you for telling me.
Thank you, But we don't need to spread this around.
Went back to the guy I said, he I really
appreciate you guys saying that. It's just, you know, I
think people get too prideful of that, and it was
it was a job, and you know, well but you do.
And then it kind of got spread around little bit

(25:16):
more because people. He always so humble, he isn't want
people to know. But the feelings he got from this
validate him in ways that his job didn't. His job
was not something that he thought was important. It was
it was providing an income. So he started to mithbuild

(25:37):
and it got to that point where he actually devoted
himself to finding someone who served, who looked like him
as a young guy, and putting this in a special
place in his office where people would say, do you
have any pictures if you're serving? Yeah, I really don't
shield this around because you know it's but hey, it's
come into my office, goes into his little dead there
and there's there's the pictures and some metals and wow,

(25:58):
wow wow, oh wow. And all the while he knew
I am lying, I'm going to get caught. He thought
about moving to another area and starting over it, but
the myth was so important to him, and the myth
of Matthew Shepherd has become so important to so many

(26:20):
of these organizations and so important to believe because it
puts you on the right side. We stand against the
rednecks in Laramie, Wyoming who felt it was okay to
go torture and kill a man because he was gay.
We stand against that. That's what we stand against. I

(26:40):
don't know what you stand for, but we stand for
the freedom to go to Laramie, Wyoming as the same
sex attracted man. And if you're not on our side,
you're on the side of the people who took Matthew
Shepherd and tied him to a fence and crucified him.
That's hate. You stand with hate. We are racing hate.
You are writing it into the record. We are the
good guys and you are the bad guys. And Matthew

(27:02):
Shepherd was a college student on the way to a
promising career. And these rednecks, these drug addicted, drug dealing rednecks.
That's a powerful myth. So it happens that a gentleman
decided to look into this story and he wrote a book.

(27:31):
It took him about thirteen years to write this book.
He was going to go back and write a screenplay.
His name is Stephen Jimenez. The book is called The
Book of matt It took him thirteen years. He had

(27:53):
just intended to write a screenplay about the murder of
a guy in Redneckville for the crime of same sex
attract So let's get into that a second. No one
wants to see stuff like this. No one wants to
see the outcome of this a young man who've gone
through that. No one wants to see the after effects
of war. Anybody not up close, you know, you to

(28:19):
talk about it changes people. My friend Tim Krukshank, three
separate times went and was deployed on my behalf in yours.
I'm wearing one of tam shirts today bone Frog Classic shirt,
and three separate times. He did that as a medic
attached to the seal teams, so he was in the
business of reviving and saving the lives of terrorists they

(28:43):
confronted on the battlefield so that they could be interrogated.
He was in the business of rushing to try to
save the lives of fallen teammates and often succeeding, sometimes
not being able to save their lives, and being with
them as they passed on. He had to exp sperience
of shooting ats and being shot ats, placing explosives and such,

(29:05):
and he came home decided to teach other people how
to become Navy seals. He did that for a while
at Buds. It's a Buds instructor. All the while in
his mind he was constructing the coffee company he runs
today called bone Frog. It began with this, what will
I call my coffee company? He went through several names,
landed on bone Frog, and the insignia of the bone
Frog indicates a fallen Navy sealed. Makes sense since he

(29:27):
was a medic or some people say Corman Tims's medics,
so I'll say what he says. And then the coffee
company began to take shape. Coffee is a big thing
when you are down, it's a hell week and you're
one of the instructors and you get to have coffee,
and the people going through it don't, but you do.
And when he founded the company, then he went and
was very honest with himself. I don't know a bloom

(29:49):
and stinking thing about making coffee. So he went and
did what Seals did. He put together a team, brought
on Dave Stewart as a mentor. He makes some of
the roasts. He mentors the team. Dave started Seattle's Best Coffee,
which is a legendary coffee company. When you buy from
bone Frog, you are supporting the fallen. The families have
fallen Navy Seals. Ten percent of proceeds go to them.
Every time. You're supporting a company that stands proudly with God.

(30:12):
H Beg says God Country Team, and you will enjoy
the best coffee in the world, made either through the
mentoring or the direct work of a coffee legend who
got in the way of Starbucks so much that they
had to give them a ton of money to buy
Seattle's best coffee. There's no downside. Go subscribe to their
coffee Bonefrog Coffee dot com slash todd. You use promo
code todd to get fifteen percent off subscription in Coffee

(30:33):
for Life. And yes, there are people buying Christmas presents already.
I know Halloween did not hear, but yeah, you could
buy this shirt Bonefrogcoffee dot Com slash todd. So this
guy decided to look into the death. Stephen Jimenez said
to look into the death of Matthew Shepard, and Revolvert
News pointed you to this in their article. This month
marks the twenty seventh anniversary of one of the most

(30:55):
powerful US syops. So, writing in The Guardian about Matthew
Shepherd's story, read this, but the Matthew Shepherd story is
not yet finished. A new twist came last year with
the publication of another book, this one by investigative journalist
Stephen Amenez, who spent thirteen years interviewing more than one
hundred people with a connection to the case. His conclusion

(31:16):
outlined in the Book of matt Hidden Truce about the
murder of Matthew Shepherd is that the grotesque murder was
not a hate crime, but could instead be blamed on
crystal meth, a drug that was flooding Denver and the
surrounding areas at the time of Matthew's death. The new
theory has understandably caused a lot of anger. J Menez
faced a barrage of criticism since the publication was booked,
and has had readings to promote the book Boycotted. Hemenez claims, however,

(31:39):
that many of his critics have not yet actually read it.
The Advocate Americans Leading LGBT so called t LGB so
called TA magazine published a piece last year entitled why
I'm not reading the Trutherism about Matthew Shepherd. Amenez has
been accused of being a revisionist, a criticism you should
reserve for extreme right wing ideologues that deny the Holocaust,
and labeled a homophone in this thirteen years he spent

(32:03):
investigating this, there is no sign that he was a
right wing home full There was no sign that he
was right wing at all. He intended to make a
screenplay about a tragedy. Back to The Guardian, Jimenez found
that Matthew was addicted to in dealing crystal meth and
a dabbled and heroin. He also took significant sexual risks

(32:25):
and was being pimped alongside Aaron McKinney, one of his
killers with whom he'd had occasional sexual encounters. He was
HIV positive at the time of his death. This does
not make the perfect poster boy for the gay rights movement,
says Simonez, which is a big part of the reason
why my book was so trashed. Matthew's drug abuse in

(32:46):
the fact that he knew one of his killers prior
to the attack was never export in court. Neither was
the rumor that the killers knew that he had access
to a shipment of crystal meth with a street value
of ten thousand dollars, which they wanted to steal. He
was born into an affluent family and had attended State College,
a state school in Casper, whoming the twenty one year

(33:06):
old political silence major at a major at Laramie University.
He stood only five to two inches tall in his
blonde hair, embraces and slight frame given him air vulnerability
and innocence. In his junior year of high school, Matthew
moved his family to Saudi Arabia. There were no American
high schools in Saudi at the time, so he was
sent to the American school in Switzerland. By the time
he enrolled at Laramie, he spoke three languages had aspirations

(33:27):
to be human rights advocate. Somewhere along the line, however,
Matthew fell from being a grade day student to a
drug addicted prostitute who diced with danger. He suffered periods
of depression, possibly as a result of being gang raped
a few years earlier while on holiday in Morocco. Hmm, gosh,

(33:49):
wasn't I asking earlier in the show what went wrong?
That seemed idyllic? What went wrong? I would think being

(34:10):
gang raped would be horrific. I would think it would
feel as if Satan was pouring out wrath on you.
I would think one might even be tempted to be ashamed,

(34:35):
even though you never did anything. I would think Matthew
Shepherd was haunted by that. I would think that's an
important detail. I would have hoped that Matthew would have

(34:59):
had the lord to turn. He did have the lord,
but maybe not the knowledge. He had money affluence college,
but didn't have the capacity to go to the Lord,

(35:20):
and to say, why me, why me? What am I
to learn from this? Help me forgive? Helped me be cleansed.

(35:41):
Though it wasn't my fault. He didn't have that. He
had what a lot of people in twenty twenty five
America have. He had people telling him brave and stunning,

(36:02):
embrace who you are. Don't worry about how it came about,
Just be that. So Stephen de Menez was actually welcome
to Bay Area Television, which is insane to me because
Bay Area television is not a place I would think
that this author could get a friendly hearing, but he did.
He went on un talked about his book. There's soul

(36:23):
a lot to get to, such as the advocate now
effectively admitting Stephen the Menez is right, but the myth
is so important. They sound a lot like Catherine Mayer.
We'll get to that in a second. This is a
good break to remind ourselves that not all is dark,
not all is scary, not all is bad. Even people
who are facing death can do so bravely and with
a great sense of comfort. My friend John, who runs

(36:46):
Alan soaps, he disclosed to us about six months ago
that the doctors had told him Hey, here's where the
cancers at in your body. It's kind of all over
the place right now. And he has decided to not
stop the fight, not go all in on this because
he wants quality of time with his family. So he's
in treatments, but he's not all in and he thinks

(37:08):
he might make another summer. Now. This doesn't change the
fact that Alan Soaps is the best soaps in the world.
They're made in America, all natural fragrances you can't find
anywhere else because they come from the mind of his son, Alan,
who's a great kid. I hope you get to meet
him one day. There's a whole bunch of pictures of
him doing things at Alan Soaps dot com slash todd.
He works there every day packaging, quality control, inventing soaps.

(37:31):
Unique looking kid because he's got a unique structure in
his body. He's been through eighteen operations at his young
young age, and his brother Ian works there also impacted
by autism. At a time we had Amy working there.
Needed to make a change. As John is going through
his change to go to the Lord. These soaps that
you can buy at Alan Soaps dot Com, slash todd
or as gentle as possibly can be, because this family

(37:52):
that makes him, they don't add any chemicals. They can't.
They've been doing this for three generations. They refuse to change.
So go to Alan Soaps dot Com slash Todd gets
soap that cleanses you, that proves it all lives matter
and is not not going to hurt your soul as
you use it in the you know, in comparison to
using soaps made in oh, I don't know, prison camps
in China. And when you subscribe to the soap, you're

(38:14):
going to help the family. As John's wife takes over
running the company on behalf of her sons, we hope
to get back to a point where we can hire
more people like Amy, who is also working there. It's
Alan Soaps dot Com slash Todd. That's Alan Soaps dot
Com slash Todd. Steven Demenez sat down in San Francisco
Television and kpix talking about the story of Matthew Shepherd's

(38:38):
and writing of the book and what he discovered. This
is a brief bit. There's a link to the full video,
which is fascinating.

Speaker 6 (38:44):
It was centered around the drug methamphetamine, which at the
time really was not being reported on nationally. Remember this
is fifteen years ago. In nineteen ninety eight, meth was
already becoming a very big problem in Wyoming and in
other states in the in the Midwest and the West,
but it really wasn't being discussed. And at the very
same time, it was also starting to become a serious

(39:04):
problem in the gay community in urban gay enclaves. And
it wasn't until five six years after Matthew's murder that
people really began to look seriously at this problem and
the national media began to report on it.

Speaker 7 (39:17):
Why did it take so long? Because I remember in
nineteen ninety eight when he was killed, so viciously killed,
he was left at a fence for what eighteen hours?
He was tied to a fence, eighteen hours. He died
five days later. We all remember that, and there was
so much national media attention on this, and it was
considered a hate crime. Why did we hear about drugs then?

Speaker 6 (39:38):
Well, I think one reason, Michelle is that very quickly
all the records in the case were sealed by the
court and all the witnesses were placed under a gag order,
and that went on for one year from shortly after
the crime until after the principal perpetrator, Aaron McKinney was
convicted and sent away for two life sentences. It wasn't

(40:00):
until after that time period, and that's when I went
to Laramie that the records were really available, and by
that point journalists thought the story was over.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
He doesn't say because journalists were idiots. He doesn't say
because they set out to lie. He gives them grace.
They did know, but they reported it like they knew
because it should have been true. I mean Laramie, Wyoming.

(40:35):
These are rednecks. Of course, they killed the guy because
he's gay. They're rednecks. That's what rednecks do. They kill
gay guys. When you're the national media and people like us.
I live in North Idaho, people like us are foreign
to you, it's easy to make these miss up or

(40:59):
keep him. This was propagated on October fix of this year.
This is a so called priest father Jim chic Sicco.
Twenty six years ago tomorrow, Matthew Shepard was beaten and
left for dead, tied to a fence and whaleming. The
only part of his face not covered in blood in
blood was two white lines running down his cheeks from
where his tears ran dry? Is death ignited a fight

(41:21):
for equality? You don't have to be gay to be
a supporter, You just have to be human. Now, he
doesn't say the so called priest, and I say so
called because he appears to be a career liar. He
doesn't say that Matthew Shepard was killed because he was gay,
because he probably knows better. And that line about the

(41:41):
two tiers, the only place not covered in blood was
where his tears ran down. Maybe that's true. It's also
an image they put out constantly and continue to pretend
because he was same sex attracted. There is a podcast
called silver Linings The Silver Lining Handbook podcasts of interesting

(42:01):
conversations hosted by former New York Times reporter writer Jason Blair.
Stop and think, Jason Blair. Jason Blair, does that name
bring back any memories? It did for me. After I
listened to this piece, I thought, ah, yeah, Jason Blair,

(42:23):
this is from twenty twenty four.

Speaker 8 (42:27):
It takes a while, because you know people, it's everything
they do is a learned behavior pretty much, and everything
trickles down from like our ancestors and how we were raised.
That's how we are the people we are. If a
parent is going to be homophobic, they're going to probably
raise their kids homophobic, and those kids will raise their

(42:50):
kids homophobic. So you know, there's a lot of deprogramming
that needs to be done within people because of how
they grew up.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Here's how they described this podcasts at the Silver Linings Handbook.
The brutal murder of Matthew Sheppard, a gay University of
Wilding student, shocked America, the American conscience and mine. C. A. J. Johnson,
the host of Rainbow Crimes, joins me Tuesday to discuss
that moment in covering crimes against those who were LGB
so called T and Q. Jason Blair, I thought that

(43:26):
name struck a bell. I went to the magic Google
machine and even let an AI answer It's AI answer
it for me. The Jason Blair controversy refers to the
two thousand and three scandal where former New York Times
reporter Jason Blair was exposed for journalistic fraud, including plagiarizing
and fabricating stories. The scandal led to the resignation of
two top editors, a major blow to the newspaper's credibility,

(43:48):
as if it had any and prompted industry to ride
changes in editorial standards and accountability. Well, it didn't temporarily.
He actually it was really good. If you read Jason
Blair article, said, Wow, this guy's a great reporter. It's
almost like reading fiction that Jason Blair. We had no

(44:13):
problem doing it then and apparently has no problem doing
it now. Remember Katherine Merris quote, are reverence for the
truth gets in the way of getting things done? Here's
the advocate writing, there are valuable reasons for telling certain
stories in a certain way at a pivotal time, at
pivotal times, but that doesn't mean we have to hold
on to them once they've outlived their usefulness. In his

(44:36):
book Flagrant Conduct, Dale Carpenter, professor at the University of
Minnesota Law School, similarly unpicks the notorious case of Lawrence
versus Texas, in which the arrest for two men having
sex in their own bedroom became a vehicle for affirming
the right of gay couples to have consensual sex and
private Except that the two men were not having sex,

(44:56):
and we're not even a couple yet this non story,
fully edited and taken all the way to Supreme Court
changed America in different ways. The Shepherd story We've come
to embrace was just as necessary for shaping the history
of gay rights as Lawrence versus Texas that galvanized the
generation of LGB so called t youth and stung lawmakers
into action. President Obama, who signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act,

(45:19):
named for Shepherd and James Byrd Junior, into law in
October twenty eight, two thousand and nine, credited Judy Shepherd
for making him quote passionate about LGB so called tea equality.
There are obvious reasons why advocates of hate crime legislation
must want to preserve one particular version of the Matthew
Shepherd story, but it was always just that a version.

(45:40):
Jimenez's version is another. An article goes on to say,
were well researched, sounds a lot like Catherine Marer. Jesus
Christ said, I am the Way, the Truth in the life.
No one comes to the Father, but through me we

(46:01):
cannot get anything done, anything that matters in an eternal
sense without Jesus, without being attached to the mind. He
is the truth, the way in the life, the way,
the truth and the life. Our reverence for the truth
is reverence for God. You should not lie, lies of convenience,

(46:21):
lies to cover lies that are embarrassing, lies to cover
things that you are doing to yourself. I'm not really
addicted to drugs. I just dabble or lies about Matthew Shepherd.
They don't help you, and the lies about Matthew Shepherd
do not help the community of same sex attracted people.

(46:42):
This is the Todd Hermannshaw. Please go, be well, be strong,
be kind, Please make every effort to walk in the
light of Christ. And I hope you're cooking up a
good weekend with your beloved family like I hope to
be cooking up with mine.

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