News Release

For Immediate Release:  November 25, 2008

Contact:  Diane Gramley   1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355

Another Shepherd Dies – Where’s the Outrage?

(Philadelphia)  -- Bill Smithson of Delaware County, Pennsylvania will spend the rest of his life in prison for the strangulation murder of 23-year-old college student Jason Shephard.  Smithson, an openly homosexual man, murdered Shephard after slipping him the date rape drug GHB.  Smithson attempted to rape Jason Shephard and when the young man resisted his sexual advances, he was strangled.  The American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), remembers another Shephard who was murdered ten years ago in the state of Wyoming and homosexual activists used that murder to push for hate crimes laws to include ‘sexual orientation.’ 

“The silence of homosexuals is deafening when it comes to their own murdering innocent people.  The murders of both Matthew Shepherd and Jason Shephard were tragic, but one murder is being used by homosexual activists to push their agenda of special rights.  No additional laws are needed – murder is murder, but apparently the murder of Matthew Shepherd was more important for those pushing an agenda,”   noted Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA. 

Homosexual activists say that Matthew Shepherd was specifically targeted to be killed because he was homosexual, yet the evidence shows something else.   An ABC 20/20 investigation which included interviews with the two murderers revealed that Shepherd’s murder resulted from a botched robbery.  Yet this has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

A couple additional examples of silence are the murder of Benton County, Arkansas 13-year-old Jesse Dirkhising who was sodomized numerous times by two homosexual men and allowed to die in his own vomit in 1999 [Click here to read the affidavit.  WARNING:  Graphic material] and another is the 2002 murder of Chicago grandmother Mary Stachowicz who was sexually assaulted and her body stuffed under the floorboards of the homosexual murderer’s apartment. 

“Jason Shephard was a young college student targeted by a homosexual man to fulfill his sexual desires.  Homosexual activists are silent on this murder – yet they still use Matthew Shepherd as the poster child for their campaign to write ‘sexual orientation’ into hate crimes laws.   Hate crime laws are not needed – Wyoming still does not have one and Pennsylvania’s was thrown out this summer.  Matthew Shepherd’s murderers are spending the rest of their lives behind bars just as the murderers of Jason Shepherd, Jesse Dirkhising and Mary Stachowicz are.  Murder is murder and increased penalties for attacking a specially protected group listed in a hate crimes law is a waste of everyone’s time and resources.  Such a law creates unequal protection under the law,” concluded Gramley.

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