Brody's Notes... Appalachian State University Rejects Judy Shepard's Book About Her Murdered Gay Son

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) June 9 | North Carolina based Qnotes Editor-In-Chief Matt Comer writes in an article published Tuesday, that the summer reading program at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, has rejected a memoir by Judy Shepard, mother of slain, gay college student Matthew Shepard.  
According to Corner:

"Kathy Staley, an archivist at Appalachian State’s Belk Library, wrote on her Facebook Monday that the committee had not chosen Shepard’s book, “The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed,” because some found it to contain “homophobic” passages. Staley wrote;

“Did anyone find Judy Shepard’s ‘The Meaning of Matthew’ homophobic? I didn’t but ASU’s summer reading group nixed it because two readers found it homophobic.”

Shepard’s book, which was co-written by The Advocate's Editor-In-Chief Jon Barrett, chronicles the 1998 hate-crimes murder of Shepard’s son and Shepard's own evolution as a LGBT rights advocate. The memoir hit The New York Times’ best-seller list when it was published last September and comes out in paperback this month.
The QNotes' Editor wrote:

Dr. Emory Maiden, Professor of English and director of the summer reading program, denied the accusation that the summer reading program committee rejected the memoir as homophobic but did say that there were “concerns that a grief-stricken mother had gotten into print on a subject that she neither wholly understand nor have (sic) a broad experience with.” 
In an email response to Corner, Maiden writes that it would be a “huge oversimplification” to attribute the program’s book choices to any single issue. He said the book failed to meet the program’s several criteria.He said the committee had a “long and…reasonable discussion” regarding the book but said:

“one of the dominant concerns [was] whether this writer — Matthew’s mother — was the best spokesperson to bring to campus on this issue — most people thought not — there were better voices to be heard.”

[ Read the entire article at QNotes Here]