File this one under Seriously Stupid:
Matthew Shepard;s mother, Judy, has written a memoir, The Meaning of Matthew, which chronicles the 1998 hate-crimes murder of Matthew Shepard, and Judy Shepard emergence as an LGBT rights advocate. It was a New York Times’ best-seller when it was published last fall and will be out in paperback this month.
It has also been rejected from the summer reading program at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. because some people at the school say the book is considered homophobic.
Homophobic? A mother's account of her son's murder for being gay is homophobic?
Kathy Staley, an archivist at ASU’s Belk Library, wrote on her Facebook page: “Did anyone find Judy Shepard’s The Meaning of Matthew homophobic? I didn’t but ASU’s summer reading program nixed it because two readers found it homophobic.”
Emory Maiden, an English professor and director of the summer reading program, says he is unaware of anyone who found Shepard’s book homophobic, but did say that the reading group committee “wondered aloud about how her book would work as a discussion of the oppression of and attacks on those who are perceived to be ‘Other.’”
Um, because it's the story of such oppression and attack?
Maiden also said that that there were “concerns [on the committee] that a grief-stricken mother had gotten into print on a subject that she neither wholly understood nor [had] a broad experience with.”
Judy Shepard. The mother of a young man who was murdered for being gay and has since come out as a true fierce advocate for the LGBT community doesn't "wholly understand" or have a "broad experience" with the subject of her book: her son's death for being gay.
Wow. I was stunned stupefied and pissed off when I heard that. But then I learned that Appalachian State University is in the congressional district represented by Republican Virginia Foxx, who, you'll remember, called Matthew Shepard's murder "a hoax" when arguing against federal hate-crimes protections last year.
Now it makes sense.
