Reflections on Matthew Shepard’s Birthday

December 1 is Matthew Shepard’s birthday. Every year, that date is a reminder of what his life might have been, and of how long it’s been since he was murdered in Wyoming. It’s hard to believe that decades have passed—and just as hard to accept that in all that time, the violence and hatred toward LGBTQ+ people has not disappeared.

What feels especially jarring is that this all lives side by side with the season we’re in now. This is supposed to be the time when we celebrate the birth of Christ, talk about peace on earth, and focus on gratitude, love, hope, and joy. And yet, the ugly side of the world doesn’t take a holiday. So many in the LGBTQ+ community still live with threats, harassment, and violence. People are still being harmed and killed simply because someone has decided they are “not normal.”

But that raises a question: who exactly is normal? And who gets to decide what that means?

What’s not normal is hating other people. Being in the majority doesn’t give you special privileges or moral authority. It just means there are more of you. It doesn’t give you the right to decide who is worthy, who is acceptable, or who deserves to be safe. And it certainly doesn’t give you the right to hate or harm people simply for being who they are.

All of this comes back to Matthew Shepard. Matthew was just trying to be himself—trying to live as his true self in a place where that was dangerous. For that, he was murdered. Killed by people who hated him simply for existing as who he was. Maybe they hated him because they’d been taught to hate people like him. Maybe they hated him because they hated something in themselves. Whatever the reason, that is what’s not normal.

Being in the majority doesn’t make that hatred right, and it doesn’t make it normal. It just makes it louder.

Many of us in the LGBTQ+ community have had that painful thought at one point: If there were a pill I could take to make me straight and “normal,” would I take it? Wouldn’t everything be easier if I were like everyone else?

But if you follow that thought all the way down, what you end up saying is, I’m a mistake.

The truth is, the real longing isn’t to be straight. It’s to be accepted. To be safe. To live without having to apologize for who you are. Normal isn’t what we want. We just want to be ourselves. Matthew’s death reminds me of that.

Ask any trans person who has ever looked in the mirror and known deep down that something about the body they were given does not match who they are inside. Changing the outside doesn’t change who you are on the inside—it just lets your outside finally line up with your truth.

Being gay, trans, bi, queer, intersex—none of this is a medical error to be fixed. It is a reality to be understood, accepted, and embraced. These are not glitches in our design; they are part of our design. They are woven into our DNA. We were born this way, as the saying goes. These are not mistakes our Creator made.

The real “abnormality” is hating other people for who they are. Often, that kind of hate says more about the person doing the hating than the person being targeted. It hints at a deep, unhealed self-loathing that gets projected outward.

What is hard, and very human, is the feeling of being outside the majority. That can make acceptance a long journey. But being in the minority also puts you in an ever-expanding group of people who have the courage, strength, uniqueness, nerve, and talent to claim their wholeness. To say: I am here. I am not a mistake. I am a complete person.

Matthew Shepard was taken far too soon, in a way that is always painful to remember. And he isn’t alone. People like James Byrd Jr., and so many others whose names we don’t always know, suffered horrific deaths at the hands of hate.

Remembering them is our way of saying: We don’t forget you. Your life mattered. It was significant. It changed things, even if your time here was brief.

So this Christmas season, in the middle of the lights, music, and celebration, give yourself one more gift: the gift of acceptance.

Not the wish to be “normal,”

but the courage to be exactly who you are.