When the first cop came across Matthew Shephard’s battered but still living body draped in crucifix form across a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, she spotted a deer that had nestled down next to him. She said it was clear the deer had been there all night long.

As she approached, she says the deer looked her right in the eye, got up and trotted off. The cop was sure the deer was Jesus Christ Himself. Today at the inurnment of Matthew Shephard’s ashes at the Washington National Cathedral, homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson said he was sure the deer was Jesus Christ, too.

Such is the hagiography of the newest saint in the pantheon of the LGBT Movement. Even deer stand guard near his body.

Matthew Shephard became the first inurnment of ashes at the National Cathedral since Helen Keller fifty years ago. He joins a few hundred other luminaries whose remains rest there including Woodrow Wilson and his wife. What all of them have in common is their accomplishments in life. Shephard is different, though. He is inurned there because of his death and the reason for it. Hate. Or so we’re told.

The Story We’re Told

On a cold October night twenty years ago, Matthew Shephard was murdered. The killers were apprehended rather quickly. They immediately claimed “gay panic” because Matthew supposedly came on to them, two complete strangers.

The gay movement had been longing for a gay face, a sympathetic face that the country would rally around.

The gay hagiography began immediately. Even as Shephard lay in a coma for five days, President Bill Clinton used the attack to advance federal hate crimes legislation, “I was deeply grieved by the act of violence perpetrated against Matthew Shepard. There is nothing more important to this country than our standing together against intolerance, prejudice and violent bigotry.”

As I wrote at Breitbart in 2013, “the gay movement had been longing for a gay face, a sympathetic face that the country would rally around.”

When Shephard died five days after the attack, the New York Times editorial board wrote, “For homosexuals, the key to winning acceptance and respect has been to make themselves familiar, visible and known. Yet in almost 30 years of struggle to repeal state sodomy laws and win equal protection under law, the modern gay rights movement has never achieved a recognizable public face. Now, in a victim, a young man who wanted to be a diplomat, it has been given one [emphasis added].”

And the Media Sung His Praises

The New York Times whipped the story furiously for weeks. A few days after the editorial, reporter James Brooke claimed that gay Matthew’s death was a hate crime. Two days later, Brooke filed another story about candle-light vigils in Laramie and that Laramie had a history of “homophobia.” A billboard had been defaced a few years before with the words, “Shoot a gay or two.”

The very next day the Times ran an editorial comparing Shephard’s death to the lynching of blacks, adding that his murder “may do much to dispel the stubborn belief in some quarters that homosexuals are not discriminated against. They are. Hatred can kill.”

Times columnist Frank Rich blamed conservative Christians and specifically mentioned the Family Research Council, which had been running TV ads encouraging gays to reconsider their way of life.

Time Magazine ran a cover story headlined “That’s Not a Scarecrow,” also blaming the Christian right.

The religious imagery began, too. Vanity Fair ran a story “The Crucifixion of Matthew Shephard.” The minister at his funeral said, “There is an image that comes to mind when I reflect on Matt on that wooden cross rail fence. I replace that image with that of another man hung upon a cross.” A pastor in Kirkland, Washington, sermonized that “Matthew Shephard Died for Our Sins.”

Pop culture joined in. Elton John wrote a song about him. Lady Gaga changed the words to John Lennon’s puerile anthem, “Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try, no hell below us, and only Matthew in the sky.”

But None of This is True

And this has continued unabated. It continued today at the National Cathedral where Bishop Robinson assured us — contra John Lennon’s claim there is no Heaven — that Shephard is in Heaven, sitting on God’s lap. It was a packed audience. Pretty much all white. Intersectionality took a hit. The only black faces were on the altar. To show the true and profound gravity of the event, NBC News actually provided a live feed. One of the sacrilegious Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence had a reserved seat (see above).

But here’s the thing. None of this is true. Not even remotely.

The claim was that Matthew was murdered by complete and total strangers because he was gay. He was killed for hate. In fact, according to some of the cops, the prosecutor, and many other witnesses uncovered by gay journalist Stephen Jiminez, a former producer at 20/20 who wrote the icon-busting The Book of Matt, Shephard knew his killers. Aaron McKinney was a sometimes sex partner of Shephard’s, and a fellow drug dealer. McKinney killed Matthew in a drug-fueled rage over Matthew’s refusal to share in a new crystal meth shipment he had received.

The sexual left needs martyrs to advance their cause. Even in the newish Trans-Moment, it is all about the murder and suicide of “trans” kids. The anti-Christian Human Rights Campaign publishes the names of each newly murdered “trans” person, asserting hate crimes, and never offering an ounce of evidence.

And so, folks can now go to the National Cathedral to venerate the ashes of St. Matthew Shephard. And when they do, no one would be more surprised, maybe even chagrined, than Matthew Shephard himself. He knew what he was about. But he is not here to speak for himself. Only the ideologues are. And they’re all speaking the same false message.