As the panel of gay fraternity brothers and sorority sisters relate their positive experiences in the Greek system, and as audience members join the conversation, what impresses me most is that the question at hand is not whether to be gay and Greek. Unlike Baker’s experience at MTSU, or mine at William and Mary, it is assumed that there are gay people in Greek organizations. Instead, the conversation centers on how to ensure that gay Greeks get the acceptance and respect that everyone in the room – gay and straight – agrees they deserve.

“Most of the strong fraternities on campus have an out member,” Bowen says. “And not just people who come out after they’re members.”

“No one really cares if you’re gay on campus,” Warren ads, wearing a pastel pink T-shirt with stitched-on TKE letters. “They’re busy. They have jobs, they’re going to school. They don’t have time to hate you.”

The increased acceptance of gays and lesbians in Greek life hasn’t just been noticed by academics like Windmeyer, or by members of local fraternity and sorority chapters. In 2007, ABC Family premiered the hour-long comedy series Greek, about a group of college students who are members of the Greek system. One of the show’s characters, a fraternity brother named Calvin, is gay.

The cast of ‘Greek’

Patrick Sean Smith, the show’s Creator and Executive Producer, was motivated to create Calvin by a desire to increase the visibility of gay characters on television. Smith, who is openly gay, believes that, “having that perspective and having that voice in television is important to a group fighting marginalization.”

But the writers of Greek don’t see Calvin’s sexual orientation as his central identifying characteristic. When developing storylines for Calvin, Smith says, “I don’t want to limit him to only gay issues because our point with Calvin is that it’s only part of him.”

This approach reflects conversations Smith and his writing staff have had with students who are currently active in the Greek system.

“What I came to find when we were researching the Millennials is that it’s not an issue,” he says. “It’s just not.”

Greek Staff Writer Matt Whitney is also openly gay and was a member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Whitney, who graduated from UC Boulder in 1999, was not out in college and remembers a fraternity experience that was less than gay-friendly. “If I had come out in my fraternity who knows what the reaction would have been,” he wonders.

Like Smith, Whitney has spoken with current undergraduates, and he has noticed a difference since he was in college. “It seems, from the people that we’ve talked to who are in fraternities now, that it’s much more accepted to be out and in a fraternity,” he says. “We’ve progressed so much in the last decade.”

This acceptance of gay men and women in the Greek system affects how Greek’s writers approach Calvin.

“We just treat him like every other character,” says Co-Executive Producer Mark Stegemann. When writing story lines for Calvin, Stegemann says, “I never consider it like, ‘How would a gay guy say this?’ It’s just, ‘How would Calvin deal with this?’”

So, academic observations aside, what is it actually like to be gay and Greek these days?

Thor Rudebeck is a senior at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and a member of Theta Chi fraternity. Rudebeck says that when he accepted his bid, his brothers had no reaction to having a gay member in the fraternity. “It was never an issue,” Rudebeck recalls. “I’ve never had a problem talking about it or being out. I’ve never ever felt like I should hide it from anybody in my fraternity.”

In fact, Rudebeck, who is the only gay man in his chapter, says he’s not even really conscious of the difference in sexual orientation between himself and his brothers: “I don’t think of myself as being a gay person in a fraternity,” he says.

Rudebeck added that he feels totally supported by his Theta Chi brothers. “It’s nice to know that there are people who really, really have my back,” he says.

That’s exactly the kind of experience that author Windmeyer is hoping for. Windmeyer says he hopes his work on college campuses will not only impact the lives of gay and lesbian members of Greek life, but of straight members as well.

“I’m working for a tomorrow where you can…be who you are without fear of being beaten up because there are straight people who learned in college that that was wrong and that they’re not going to tolerate that,” he says. “If we can get tomorrow’s leaders in fraternities and sororities today to…be allies to LGBT people, then we’re changing the hearts and minds of tomorrow.”

At the end of each school year, seniors in my sorority embarked on what we called Senior Clue Week. Graduating seniors followed a trail of clues that lead them around campus to bars, fraternity houses, and dorm rooms where various girly drinks awaited them. My senior year was no different.

One night, in the spring of 1998, my sisters and I set out to follow a series of clues that led us to lemon drops at the Sig Ep house, peppermint patty shots at Sigma Chi, and…yeah, I’m not going to lie. That’s about all I can remember. I think at one point I played a ukulele. The rest of the drinking is a blur.

What is not blurry is the end of the evening. As we stumbled back to the sorority house one of my sisters announced that we should all kiss each other. While it would be a few more years before I fully identified as a lesbian, I knew enough by senior year to be nervous about this proposition. I declined to participate, worried that something about the way I kissed might accidentally convey some kind of sincere interest in kissing women. My friends teased me about my unwillingness to engage, but I feigned prudishness and refused to kiss any of them.

I worried I might kiss a bit too eagerly and reveal myself.

Ten years later, Rudebeck says he would have no qualms about bringing a boyfriend to a Theta Chi formal. And if he doesn’t happen to have a boyfriend? Well, then he feels totally comfortable dancing with a guy at fraternity party. Even a party where guys from other fraternities besides his own are present.

And if anyone has a problem with that? “A couple of [my brothers] have said that if anyone bothers me they’ll kick their ass,” Rudebeck says.

If that’s not brotherhood, I don’t know what is.