Two bicyclists were riding down a country road in Wyoming in early October 1998 when they noticed what appeared to be a scarecrow tied spread-eagle to a split-rail fence. Upon further investigation, they discovered that the scarecrow was actually a young man who had been so badly beaten that he was in a coma. The man was Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. The night before, Shepard had been in a bar where he tried to pick up two men, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney. The two lured Shepard out to their truck by pretending to be gay, then robbed him of $20, pistol-whipped him, and lashed him to the fence, where he remained in near-freezing temperatures for almost eighteen hours before his discovery. Four days later, Shepard died, never awakening from his coma.

Shepard’s murder was immediately branded a “hate...