RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina congresswoman said Thursday that she chose her words poorly when she called claims that a Wyoming college student was murdered because he was gay a “hoax.”
Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx said during debate in the House that Matthew Shepard’s 1998 death wasn’t a hate crime and shouldn’t be invoked by supporters of a bill to expand the definition of such crimes to include violence motivated by sexual orientation.
“We know that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay,” Foxx said during debate. “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 House approved the bill Wednesday.
“The term ‘hoax’ was a poor choice of words used in the discussion of the hate-crimes bill,” Foxx said Thursday. “Mr. Shepard’s death was nothing less than a tragedy.”
