Steve Jimenez – Feminism and Religion

This piece was originally posted on November 2, 2013. Part I published yesterday.

The day after his death, I went to teach Gender Women’s Studies (then Women’s Studies) and I cried in front of my students and then sang to them because I didn’t know what else to do. So in 1998 I sang a 1975 Holly Near song to my students, “It Could Have Been Me,” about the Kent State massacres and murder of Chilean poet Victor Jara. “And it could have been me, but instead it was you./ So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two…/If you can live for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom! …if you can live for freedom, I can, too.”

This piece was originally posted on November 2, 2013.

Matthew Shepard died October 12, 1998 – fifteen years ago. This month I have already attended three events memorializing his death. The first was a screening of the Emmy-award winning teleplay The Matthew Shepard Story (starring the amazing Stockard Channing as Judy Shepard), where I served as the moderator for an impassioned question and answer session for the monthly meeting of Comunidad, the Ministry of Gay and Lesbian Catholics group where I serve on the board at St. Matthew’s in Long Beach, CA.

I also recently attended two productions of Beyond the Fence produced by the South Coast Chorale, in which my friend Robin Mattocks performs. This musical created by Steve Davison and others moved me to tears several times—and I know and teach the story of Matthew Shepard every year at this time—I have already done so four times this month. I attended with a friend the first night and because I am a professor the director let me come to the Gala the next night where I met Matthew’s real life best friend Romaine Patterson.