Matthew Shepard's Murder Was Almost Certainly Not an Anti-Gay Hate Crime

In the fall of 1998, a man named Matthew Shepard was savagely beaten, strung out on a fence like a scarecrow, and left to die as the Wyoming night temperatures plunged. Over the last two and a half decades, the killing has been called many things. But a BBC headline from 2018 perhaps captures best: It was "the murder that changed America."

A statement from President Joe Biden helps explain why. "Twenty-five years ago today, Matthew Shepard lost his life to a brutal act of hate and violence that shocked...