Book Notes: The Book of Matt by Stephen Jimenez

I’ve known for a while that Matthew Shepard’s murder had nothing to do with homophobia. It’s one of the perks of becoming a conservative that you are allowed to know what actually happened in a host of news stories. So yes, I’ve known that the Matthew Shepard case was a precursor of George Floyd. It’s a standard liberal trick to misrepresent a tragic death as being a result of identity-based “hate” and use it to advance a political agenda. Like George Floyd, Shepard died because of drugs and not because anybody hated him for his identity. Like Floyd, Shepard was elevated to a saint-like status and his crimes (including sexual molestation of small children) and his outré lifestyle were concealed. Like Floyd, Shepard was used to inculcate guilt in a group that had no culpability in his murder. I have known all this for a while.

What I didn’t know is the wealth of details that journalist Stephen Jimenez provides in his investigative report on Shepard. The only reason why Jimenez could even write the book is that he himself is gay and very politically liberal. Even that, however, didn’t spare him from being insulted and accused of all sorts of things by liberal organizations and media outlets. Jimenez is brave and honest and didn’t buckle under the pressure to conceal the truth behind politically useful lies. Not every story has a champion like Jimenez.

The Book of Matt is very well-researched and gives truly shocking details about everything that happened. That such an egregious hoax was perpetrated against the public, that history was falsified to such a terrifying extent, and that children were taught terrible lies in school (and are still taught them in many places) is a disgrace. Many journalists abandoned truth to become a wrecking crew at the disposal of dishonest politicians. We are all lucky that Jimenez made a different choice and that he happened to be gay or we still wouldn’t know the facts behind the Matthew Shepard murder.