Judy Shepard, on the Night She Learned Her Son Matthew Was Killed

Published September 03, 2009 @ 09:17AM PT

Matthew Shepard

Judy Shepard, the mother of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard who was murdered more than ten years ago in a hate crime, has a new memoir coming out. In it, she talks about the tragedy of losing a son simply because he was gay, and the tireless work she's done over the past decade to get the U.S. Congress and the White House to pass hate crimes legislation that includes protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The book is called The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed. Judy has an excerpt of it in Newsweek's current issue, and when we say it's powerful, we mean it's powerful. Check out these few sentences:

As Dennis and I rushed around in a daze—packing our bags and preparing paperwork rather than staring at the slow-moving clock—I did everything I could to stay hopeful. Dennis and I had only limited information about the extent of Matt's injuries, and absolutely no information about the circumstances surrounding his attack. We knew he was critically injured and that his hold on life was tenuous, at best. Still, our highest hope at that point was for Matt's complete recovery. Our most basic, and perhaps most realistic, hope was that he would hold on to life until we could be with him, by his side.

Shepard died on October 12, 1998. But Judy's memoir is done in part to share with readers the life that Matthew lived before he was killed. As she told Newsweek, "There are still some things that as a family that we’ve chosen to keep to ourselves. We’ve loosened up a little bit, but there just doesn’t seem to be a need for the world to know everything about us or Matt. The reason I wrote the book was because I wanted to reconcile the public Matthew with our Matt. As I said in the book, he had a life before he was killed."

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This is so tragic, what a waste of a beautiful life.

Posted by Kathy Jackson on 09/03/2009 @ 09:45AM PT
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The bill in Congress which will add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of federal hate crimes must become law. It's good that President Obama will sign it. Judy Shepard is a strong advocate for that bill. The book she will be release will be a testiment to the unfortunate murder of that young man. Although there is some complexity in the murder of Matthew Shepard, one thing that's known is that violence against people on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.

Posted by Edwin Bonilla on 09/03/2009 @ 04:05PM PT
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I thought that particular bill had already been passed ?

Posted by Thomas McHugh on 09/04/2009 @ 08:57PM PT
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Lol...Mr. jernigan...

You are seriously fucked in the head...

1 : Pedophiles and/or rapists are, more often than not, heterosexual.

2 : Rape aint about sexual pleasure...Its about power and controll.

3 : Sexual orientation aint a choice whether you were born heterosexual as I was or you were born homosexual or bisexual as many others are.

4 : Soddom and gomorrah got hammered because those cities were filled with people sharing your outlook...Not because of homosexuality.

This is illustrated in the book of ezekial...

5 : There is no such thing as the right to hate or discriminate being given in ANY religion no matter how you twist the context.

6 : We dont live in a theocracy...Thank the lord and lady.

Posted by Thomas McHugh on 09/05/2009 @ 08:17PM PT
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Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.