Opinion Page

The NR had to put a stop to all the constant bickering that went on in these opinion pages because we were all so sick of the debate that we were throwing up periodically at the mention of it. It got lame and boring.

The year before it was "all white people are inherently racist, and I don’t care what you say about it."

Back and forth, we bickered over white privilege and Europeans and Afrikans and it didn’t accomplish anything, because we were so angry we quit listening to each other.

So I guess it’s our turn - time to bicker over gays and lesbians. Let’s start fighting about gay marriage, AIDS and not letting us be parents/teachers/rabbis/priests and anything else we want.

Let’s just get on with it, so I can start mass producing rebuttal columns.

Lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people (from here on out, I’ll just say LGBT) are here on this campus.

That’s a reality, I can guarantee it.

Look around this week, it’s National Coming Out Week, and here at UC we’re putting on events every day.

If you don’t like it, too bad. I’m sick of sitting back and being nice, smiling and waving and saying "LBGT people are good. We’re friendly."

I’m tired of being friendly. I’m sick of not saying anything when someone makes a homophobic slur or comment or snickers at a same-sex couple on campus. I’ve gotten over the fear, and now it’s time to move on and be mad.

Not all LGBT people feel this way. I’m expressing my views as an individual, not as a spokesperson for the whole lesbian community or the Alliance here on campus. This is how I feel.

So bring it on. Start the ranting and raving about how you don’t want LGBT people teaching your kids, start screaming about how you won’t tolerate something like GAY MARRIAGE! Because for every mean spirited thing, you can say, slur you can yell, or thought you can thing, I’ve got the answer.

For every person that writes in and says we caused the AIDS epidemic, I can show you the statistics and the history that says were the only ones fighting it for a long time, and that it’s not just a gay problem anymore.

For every criminal you name or insinuate, I can tell you 1,000 LGBT people who worked for good and made a positive difference in someone’s life or in the world.

Over time, so many LGBT people have made wonderful contributions to society.

Politicians, actors, actresses, singers, playwrights, poets, athletes, scientists, anthropologists, and educators. Did you know that Eleanor Roosevelt had a female lover for many year?

Don’t forget dedicated members of the US Armed Services, Margarethe Cammermeyer and Leonard Matlovitch, the former airmen said "They gave me a medal for killing a man, but took it away for loving one."

Of course there are the ones we already know, like Ellen DeGeneres and Rupert Everett, all the contemporary LGBT people, including Elton John, Melissa Etheridge, RuPaul and many more.

The point I’m trying to make is that we can fight in the pages of this paper all year long, and nothing will change, except that more and more LGBT people are going to come out of the closet and lead their lives.

Some of those lives will be lives of quiet peacefulness. Some of those lives will be noisy and full of rallies and parades and demonstrations and boycotts, like mine.

Some of them will be in between - some will affect the people around them and change the opinions of many. There is no reason that there should be homophobia on this campus.

We’re all here for a common goal; to educated and be educated. So why don’t you find out about something you don’t know about, whether or not that is LGBT issues, or ethnicity issues, or women’s issues.

This is a huge place, with plenty of opportunity for education outside the classroom.

And this school is about 36,000 students, right? And you know what that means, don’t you?

If the 10% rule is true, there are about 3,600 LGBT people at this school. (Kinsey, the sex researcher approximated that about 10% of the population was gay or lesbian.)

This number has been debated to death, and some people think it’s lower, some higher.

Makes you wonder, maybe you wouldn’t think that LGBT people are invisible if you could just SEE them. Makes me wonder why more people aren’t out and about.

I wish that all of the LGBT people on this campus could come to Alliance meetings.

It would be fantastic if I had to go to scheduling and ask for Nippert Stadium for a meeting. Maybe in the other 11,400 seats we could put the supportive straight people.

Just remember that it hurts you to be a homophobe.