Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: A response to a Morehouse College concern
Recently there was an article, disjointed nightmare really, that wondered what would happen to Morehouse College, an all men’s school, if it kept being tolerant of gay men. Would it become competition for its sister institution Spelman College, an all women’s school, because all those gay men would follow the dream of every male sodomite: being a fabulous woman.
Writer Leethaniel Brumfield II, with care and precision, takes the previous essay to task for its hysteria and double standards when the conversation turns to gay male students.
“Having a large number of openly gay black male students is neither a dilemma nor death sentence but a common reality that schools across this nation–including Morehouse College– must embrace,” Brumfield said.
The Langston University student does something that is easy to forget especially if the topic is gay. College life for all students, from the jock dating the cheerleader to the young man with the Louis Vuitton bag, is about forging an identity. When straight folk go down the identity path, people pay no mind. Let a gay kid do the same thing and suddenly the world is coming to an end.
“Dealing with a man with a glowing face of MAC makeup and a pair of five-inch Stilettos is no more challenging than attempting to understand the slurred speech of a classmate who speaks through a blinged-out, gold-encrusted grill.”
Ultimately Brumfield doesn’t want us to to take our eyes away from the prize. Identity worries keep us from the stark realities of black-American life (HIV rates anyone?). These are the things that require our attention, not some concerns based on stereotype.
We had a similar problem on my campus at Vanderbilt. Several students began writing articles that in my opinion bordered on hate speech. After the articles came out, the attacks against gay students doubled for the next three months (according to several housing officials I knew). The thing that made it so …surreal… was that the young men writing the articles were closeted homosexuals. One in particular was head of a prominent Christian group on campus and also routinely promoted the “true love waits” campaign. At first I didn’t believe he was gay… I mean how could you write something like that and be gay. But then my friends slept with him, and pictures don’t lie…
I went and read the linked article which lead to a linked YouTube video. What struck me about that ugly, sad video is that if you replace all the instances of ’same sex’ or ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ with the words ‘black’ or ‘interracial’ or ‘interfaith’, the video plays just as well to its target audience.
The same lies, arguments and sickness were preached from innumerable pulpits back when segregation was the norm … back when interracial marriage was illegal in the majority of this country . . . when interfaith marriage was sinful in the majority of religions.
The arguments haven’t changed – only the verbiage. The ignorance and hatred haven’t changed – only the target. But that is a great thing!
Because the legal results of all their foolish debate will result (sooner than later) in their arguments, ignorance and hatred being relegated to their pitiful religions and not being allowed to easily spill over into the real world.
We are on the verge of joining the real world.
While that is a wonderful thing, let no one believe that integration will be an easy thing or pleasant thing. It will require tolerance, assimilation and vigilance. But it will happen.
And don’t believe we are fighting mostly for ourselves. If that is true, we fail. We have to know that we are fighting for our children and for their children. Whether those children be our own biological children, or the gay kids who are only kids now, or those gay kids who have yet to be born, we are fighting for them.
If our battles do not go beyond ourselves, the benefits we will see may well be short lived. Just as our fight is founded on the struggle of those who fought long before us, so our fight must be motivated by those who will come long after us.
Neil
It’s nice to see that this particular conversation, an important one, is being opened. I tend to dislike “gay politics” in the US: we’ve become like former Soviet citizens – everything must be based on inflexible ideology. Having lived in communist countries, I’m familiar with the pitfalls of groupthink. The gay hive-mind in the US is the sad result of continued institutionalized and legal discrimination… And it has led to breathtaking political bigotry on both sides of the argument.
In Canada, and several European nations that are less like our own, the gay political discourse in the USA is painful to follow: it is a reminder of how fearful Americans are of change. Once gays are given legal equality, so much of the hatred we still discuss just fizzles out, as the general population comes to realize that their gay minority is NOT a threat to anything fundamental about society. Once gays are treated equally under all laws, they generally participate in a nation’s political life in a much more productive manner: the homosexual agenda disappears and becomes a more humanitarian agenda. To see my great nation stuck in such a tired mode of cultural hatred and/or imposed religiosity is really draining.
I can’t wait for the day that US gays are equal citizens. I know that many will realize that they preferred being discriminated against (victimhood and oppression are hard to give up, since you go from “special/notorious” to just “normal/boring” and lots of people don’t adapt well to that loss of specialness). But once we’re full citizens of the USA, we can move on to a more modern form of activism, one that benefits more Americans.