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LGBT Tag

In 2013, we wrote a series of posts about the 1998 death of Matthew Shepard, a death widely described as an anti-gay hate crime, resulting in federal legislation, The The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, 18 U.S.C. § 249. The occasion of our series of posts was the publication of a book by author Stephen Jimenez, The Book of Matt, which called into question the narrative of the death as an anti-gay hate crime.

The London High Court has ruled a police investigation into allegedly "transphobic" tweets unlawful. The presiding judge, Justice Julian Knowles, likened the police methods used in the case to that of the Soviet secret police Cheka and the Nazi Gestapo. The police action amounted to a "disproportionate interference" with the freedom of speech, the court found on Friday.