Matthew Shepard Foundation

Activities

The group advocates for expanding the definition of a “hate crime” as applied by the legal system and claims responsibility for helping pass the first federal hate crime legislation in 2009. The legislation was named after Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was violently assaulted by two men and left to die in a rural area outside Laramie, Wyoming in 1998. ¹

The Matthew Shepard Foundation lobbied for the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2009. In 2017, the foundation launched an instructional program on hate crime legislation aimed at law enforcement and criminal justice officials. The foundation claims that more than 1,400 police officers and prosecutors from more than 45 municipalities have received the training. ²

The foundation has attracted support from numerous major corporations, including the insurance provider State Farm, the beverage corporation Molson Coors, and the hotel chain Marriott International. A number of public officials have endorsed the foundation, including Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D), as well as many gay celebrities such as musician Elton John, actor George Takei, and Episcopalian cleric Gene Robinson. ^{3 4}

The foundation has funded and otherwise supported a variety of activist art projects which promote the LGBT movement’s story of Shepard’s death and agitate for the further normalization of LGBT people in society. ⁵ Its nonprofit allies include influential institutions like the Washington National Cathedral, which formally interred Shepard ashes in 2018 during a ceremony overseen by Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop. ⁶

Criticism

The Matthew Shepard Foundation has been criticized by right-leaning and libertarian policy advocacy organizations for advocating that government exceed authority and violate double jeopardy, which is the principle that a defendant who is acquitted should not be tried more than once for the same alleged crime. ^{7 8}

Since Shepard’s death, evidence has emerged that Shepard’s sexuality may not have been the motivation for the attack. In 2004, one of the lead investigators involved with the case told ABC News that “Shepard’s sexual preference or sexual orientation certainly wasn’t the motive.” In 2013, another former police officer who had worked on the case told The Guardian that the killers “were trying to find Matthew’s house so they could steal his drugs,” and that his colleagues had previously found one of the killers “in a sexual act with another man.” That same year, an investigative journalist published a book which revealed that Shepard had been dealing drugs and that he had been involved in sexual relations with one of his killers. ⁹

The foundation has denied these claims, calling them “factual errors, rumors and innuendo,” and the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center has backed the foundation, dismissing criticisms of the case and the subsequent societal reaction as being part of a “far right” agenda. ¹⁰

Leadership

Judy Shepard, the mother of Matthew Shepard, is the president and board chair of the foundation. Her husband Dennis is an emeritus member of the board. ¹¹

Warren Greene is the director of operations at the Matthew Shepard Foundation. He previously worked in development at the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT activist group in the United States, and the Gill Foundation, another prominent pro-LGBT advocacy organization. ¹²

Financials

In 2020, the Matthew Shepard Foundation received just under $1 million in contributions and grants. The foundation’s expenses for the year were more than $860,000 and its net assets amounted to more than $840,000. ¹³