After the incidents of prejudice and intolerance that marred the darkening fall of this academic year here at the University, it was heartening this past Tuesday to see hundreds of students and some faculty don black T-shirts marked with the folksy tolerance of the phrase "Gay? Fine by me."After the welcome, if soft provocation of such cheery acceptance, however, came the inevitable, indeed predictable response.A single student hung a sign in his window with the all-too-easy reply, "Gay? NOT fine by me."Putting his lack of imagination aside, it will become clear to many what we, even the gay students, especially gay students, already knew, that "NOT fine" was the silent thought of many University students that day, and by putting a sign in his window, one student found what I'm sure he thinks is the courage to say what others were afraid to utter.
If that were the beginning and end of the story, then the lesson learned would be a banal one: that every time a social movement takes a small step forward, some small part of society reacts with a big leap back. But we already knew this. What's far more important is to see the social structure that locks this anti-progressive, two-step dance in place here at the University. The truth is that a university complicit with state and federal policies that insist on discriminating between heterosexuals and non-heterosexuals dooms its students, all of its students, to suffer the residual, corrosive, and socially eroding effects of intolerance.A sign in the window in this case is only a small outburst in an otherwise stable system which harms gay students, faculty and employees on a daily basis.
The most visibly and deeply embedded structure in this sytem of bias is the campus ROTC. It is not enough, however, to say that the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (and the oft ignored), "Don't Pursue" policy is unfair, and therefore the ROTC should be barred from Grounds. The fact is, at the age of 17, young recruits may have the most noble, patriotic personal career goals in mind, or, more often these days, they may simply lack the money for college. With the golden apple of paid tuition hung before them, they are led to strike a devil's bargain.If they accept the terms and conditions of that bargain then they must accept and enforce a policy that requires them to discriminate every day against their fellow students and future brothers and sisters in arms.That is to say, they arrive for day one at the University with the policy, "Gay? NOT fine by me" inscribed on every page of their admissions packet and on every dollar the University accepts from the military to cover the cost of their education.
Less visibly, while the country struggles to define, redefine or undefine what a spiritual marriage between two people of whatever gender should be called on paper, the University continues to refuse to acknowledge the facts of life, that couples of the same gender still plan their lives together, choose their careers together and make their homes together.Yet here at the University, no two people of the same gender are allowed to occupy the housing the University reserves for married couples of different genders.Similarly, the University refuses to offer domestic partnership benefits for couples of the same gender that still, as students, faculty or employees, must plan for life's difficulties and rely on the University for health benefits, retirement benefits and the like.It isn't true that only one angry and morally confused student has hung a sign in his window that says "Gay? NOT fine by me." The University itself hung that sign in every window of every dorm and every university-owned apartment long before this student had the idea to make that sign visible.
Some who've read this far will complain that there is nothing the University can do: The state legislature would never agree to change, the president is against us, the Senate will punish us. This may be so. But if it is so, then the University, President Casteen, the faculty, employees and students must make plain what neither a t-shirt nor a sign in the window has yet to articulate, that the University for as long as these policies of discrimination persist, is held by its state and federal governing bodies in a state of moral captivity.
Making plain that case and sounding it loudly are the first steps.Once the argument is made, we here at Mr. Jefferson's university know what, in the course of human events, must come next.
Robert Stilling is a Student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
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