Higher Education LGBT
Articles Digest #140
2. VILLAGE VOICE Homos 101: Premier Black College [Howard] Is a Study in Anti-Gay Discrimination
3. GAY.COM U.K. Study from Oxford Ph.D. zoologist says gay people are the "pinnacle of evolution"
#1
Chronicle of Higher Education, August 13, 2003
1255 23rd St. N.W., Suite 700
Washington, D.C. 20037
Phone: 202-466-1000, Fax: (202) 452-1033
E-mail letters: to opinion@chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/08/2003081302n.htm
LETTER TO COLLEGES FROM EDUCATION DEPARTMENT SAYS ANTI-HARASSMENT RULES
SHOULD RESPECT FREE SPEECH
By Jeffrey R. Young
Colleges may not violate the U.S. Constitution's free-speech guarantees in an effort to bar harassment on their campuses, according to a letter sent last week by the Education Department to colleges and universities across the country.
The letter states that the department's regulations "do not require or prescribe speech, conduct, or harassment codes that impair the exercise of rights protected under the First Amendment." Department officials say the document only clarifies existing policy and does not set new policy.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a national advocacy group for free speech, was one of the groups that had asked the Education Department to clarify the issue. The group's leaders see the government's memorandum as a victory in the foundation's campaign to rid colleges of what it sees as overly restrictive speech codes. The group posted a copy of the letter on its Web site this week.
"We really do think that this is going to make a big difference in the fight against speech codes," said Greg Lukianoff, director of legal and public advocacy for FIRE. He said that several colleges had argued that their anti-harassment policies -- which FIRE contends violate free-speech rights -- are required to satisfy federal law protecting students from harassment.
According to the letter, which was sent by the department's Office for Civil Rights, "Some colleges and universities have interpreted OCR's prohibition of 'harassment' as encompassing all offensive speech regarding sex, disability, race, or other classifications. Harassment, however, to be prohibited by the statutes within OCR's jurisdiction, must include something beyond the mere expression of views, words, symbols, or thoughts that some person finds offensive."
That policy is nothing new, said Susan Aspey, the department's deputy press secretary.
"There is no conflict between the civil-rights laws that this office enforces and the civil liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment," she said. "There's no new information contained in this letter -- it's simply a reiteration of what OCR does or does not require."
Robert O'Neil, founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression and a professor of law at the University of Virginia, said that the policy stated in the letter should come as no surprise to most college officials.
"I don't see it as a policy shift or a major breakthrough -- it's incrementally helpful," he said. "I don't think it is likely to be seen as a source of change."
#2
Village Voice, August 13-19, 2003
36 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003
(E-Mail: editor@villagevoice.com ) ( http://www.villagevoice.com )
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0333/lee.php
HOMOS 101: PREMIER BLACK [MOREHOUSE] COLLEGE IS A STUDY IN ANTI-GAY
DISCRIMINATION
by Chanel Lee
In retrospect,
Gregory Love's only mistake may have been leaving his glasses in his dorm
room.
On the morning of November 3, the
Morehouse College junior entered the unlit first-floor bathroom of Brazeal
Hall to shower before church. Heading for the last stall, he glanced into
one occupied by sophomore Aaron Price. Love, who is nearsighted, would
later testify that he at first thought Price was his roommate and started to
say hello. According to him, the underclassman shouted, "I hate
Morehouse and I hate all these faggots!"
Realizing his mistake, Love apologized
and took the next stall. Only those two men know exactly what happened
next.
According to published reports, Price
left and came back minutes later with a 26-inch baseball bat, bashed Love at
least seven times on the head, back, and shoulders, and left him on the
floor. After searching briefly for pieces of his four chipped teeth,
Love somehow made his way to the campus infirmary, in the basement. He
would later undergo emergency brain surgery to remove a near fatal blood
clot, and he left the hospital with a seven-inch scar along the left side of
his head and the likelihood of a lifetime suffering headaches, seizures, and
possible memory loss.
Price was arrested the next day, and
the Atlanta college expelled him. In June he was sentenced to a pair
of 10-year sentences, to be served concurrently, for aggravated assault and
battery. Love, who couldn't be reached for comment, has testified that
he's straight; the jury found Price not guilty of a hate crime.
"I was scared," Price told the court. "I was
embarrassed because I was naked and he was looking at me." On
July 2, his lawyers filed a motion for a new trial, saying the evidence did
not support the verdict.
The incident may have shocked some at
the nation's only all-male predominantly African American college, but it
was no surprise to gay students there. For them, taunting and the
threat of physical violence are part of everyday life. In the months
to come, they would discover that not even such a brutal assault could open
the eyes of the vast majority of students, faculty, and administrators.
On April 7, after months of student
forums and blue-ribbon panels on the issue, the Morehouse College Task Force
on Tolerance and Diversity turned to alumni for guidance, e-mailing
graduates a questionnaire titled "Survey of Attitudes and Behaviors
Toward Homosexuality." An accompanying letter from President
Walter Massey said the college wanted to find ways to "ensure a safe
and supportive environment for all students-straight and gay."
The questions themselves - now posted
at New York author Keith Boykin's website (keithboykin.com) - suggest
otherwise:
"How far should Morehouse go to
separate heterosexuals and homosexuals in the residence halls?"
"To what degree do you think
homosexuality is immoral?"
"How much does Morehouse's
reputation for enrolling homosexual men affect your pride in the
College?"
"How much should Morehouse allow
students to be open about their homosexuality on campus?"
For a historically black school with a
reputation for attracting gay students to raise the specters of segregation
and the closet was almost more shocking than the original assault. The
questionnaire results were originally expected in June, but college
officials wouldn't say when the information will be ready, nor would Massey
provide any comment. That's not surprising, considering the uproar the
survey has caused.
"It's sad in that they had an
opportunity, as an educational institution, to bring about healing,"
says William Peters, former executive director of the national group Gay Men
of African Descent. "To separate [straight and gay students],
like a quarantine? It almost smacks of that."
Other HBCUs (historically black
colleges and universities) have wrestled with the problem of students being
attacked or harassed for their sexual orientation - real or imagined - but
with very different results.
Following an attack on a gay student by
members of the Howard University marching band
in September, campus police at the Washington, D.C., school initiated
training to help its officers identify possible hate crimes. Two
campus cops were appointed to serve as liaisons, and they have been regular
visitors to LGBT campus meetings. In April, school administrators
named the LGBT organization as student organization of the year.
Morehouse has its own fledgling LGBT
group, Safe Space, started last year as a response to the attack; efforts to
launch a similar collective several years before met with resistance from
college administrators.
Peters says Morehouse needs to
recognize that many of its students are in fact gay and do in fact live up
to the school's stated objective - to produce strong black men.
"I don't think the black community is any more homophobic than
another," he says. "I really don't. But it is the last
acceptable form of discrimination. You can't go around saying nigger,
wop, stuff like that, at least not in public. But you can go around
calling people faggot, and it's accepted."
Sometimes the harassment extends beyond
mere words. At Johnson C. Smith University, the African American
Alliance for Gay & Lesbian Education (also known as A3) is one of the
most active and vocal groups. That did not stop a student from
threatening to shoot A3's founder as he walked on the Charlotte, North
Carolina, campus with his boyfriend.
Morehouse College, along with
neighboring all-female Spelman College, is considered the crème de la crème
of HBCUs, counting such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee,
former surgeon general David Satcher, and former Atlanta mayor Maynard
Jackson among its alumni. Founded in Augusta, Georgia, in 1867 to
prepare young men for careers in the ministry and in education, the school
prides itself, as the school's online viewbook states, on molding raw talent
into the "Morehouse Man," grooming him to "exemplify personal
integrity as well as outstanding scholarship . . . to stand as a model of
leadership built on personal initiative, ethics, and service."
Its 3,000 students certainly look the
part, often dressing for classes in business suits and calling elders
"sir" and "ma'am." This is an old-fashioned
campus, but students acknowledge they're in a new era. "Times are
a lot different now - there are many different ways to be a Morehouse
Man," recent graduate Malik Ali says. "The classic
conception of the Morehouse Man is of these distinguished men who are the
black version of the all-American man - the leaders of the world, the cream
of the crop - and I'm not sure how homosexuality fits into that.
"When people look at the
all-American man, they don't see a homosexual there," he continues.
"When you see an all-American man, you see a family, you see a
wife." Then again, he muses, "When you see an
all-American man, you don't see a black person there, either."
Morehouse's deeply Southern and
fundamentalist tradition could be what keeps it from any meaningful dialogue
about homosexuality. Stories of constant
persecution of gay students at the hands of their classmates abound.
One about a glee club member pulling a gun in response to a perceived
come-on has achieved near mythic status. Justin Holland, a gay
student, says he sought help from faculty members and was told, "If you
don't walk or talk in a certain way, you won't have any problems."
During his freshman year, Holland was
sitting in a dorm room with five friends when a group of students burst in,
drew crosses on the gay students' foreheads in anointing oil, and began
singing hymns and speaking
in tongues, praying and begging the Lord to save their souls. Ian
Harris, a straight student, says that in speech class his peers with a
"gay-sounding" tone of voice are harassed until they drop the
course. Harris had a gay roommate and soon became the target of
harassment from dormitory staff. The Southern Voice, a gay newspaper
in Atlanta, reports that a history professor stood up in the middle of a
student forum and said, "I'm disappointed that the
morality of homoerotic acts have not been addressed here, because these acts
are sinful. . . . Christianity will never condone homosexual
acts."
As recently as June 23, in what has
been called an "act of resistance," a gay student allegedly being
picked on near the cafeteria brandished a toy gun, presumably in hopes his
antagonists would think it was real and leave him alone. One was
charged with disorderly conduct, as was the student who drew the toy pistol;
the latter also faces an additional charge of making terrorist threats.
The atmosphere for gay students has
never been friendly. Then-sophomore Mubarak Guy may have said it best when,
weeks after the attack on Gregory Love, he told the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, "A lot of people believe that [Love] deserved to
get beaten up if he was looking in the shower stall. . . . but everyone
thinks the bat was a little extreme."
"It was like the biggest joke on
campus coming true," says Harris, who was completing his final semester
at Morehouse when the beating occurred. "We would always say we'd
take a bat to someone's head if somebody did something like that to me, and
everybody would laugh. It was obvious that it was being said in jest,
but that there was a lot of disdain for gay people in general under the
surface." Harris was not at all surprised by Guy's mindset:
"People accepted it and didn't say anything about it."
"It's not how I personally feel
and it's not how I think everyone feels, but that thinking is kind of
pervasive," says Ali. "That element is pretty small, but
it's pretty vocal."
"It's unbelievable how bad it
is," laments Holland, a rising senior. "I came in with six
friends, and all of them have transferred except one." Holland came to
Morehouse from Manhattan's Lower East Side with a full scholarship - no
small thing at a college where tuition, fees, room, board, and assorted fees
run to $22,728 - but found himself on the verge of losing it his freshman
year. Seeking refuge from harassment by fellow students, he fled to
friends' apartments off campus, missing classes for a week or two at
a time.
"I just didn't want to be
bothered," he says. "We pay too much money to deal with
this."
Immediately following the attack on
Love, President Massey announced plans to form an advisory task force on
tolerance and diversity issues on campus as well as a blue-ribbon panel.
The campus held student forums and invited guest speakers for special
lectures. The dorms began holding mandatory training sessions dealing
with harassment, anger management, diversity, and homophobia.
"I am committed to fostering an
environment at Morehouse where no act of violence - regardless of its
motivation - is tolerated," Massey said at the time, in a written
statement. "The College will devote the high level of resources
this issue deserves." The press release added that under Massey,
"the College is adhering to its long-standing institutional values,
which include civility, community, compassion, and respect for diversity in
all its manifestations."
Although Massey's initiatives seemed
encouraging, the actions of the administration would prove to be far less
so. Before the attack occurred, Morehouse students had been planning
their own Forum on Homophobia, organized by the Morehouse student government
association and Omega Psi Phi fraternity. But after the attack, when
they gathered for the event, they were told by the administration that it
had been canceled.
"Students . . . were told they
could not host a forum on homophobia," explained Kevin Bynes, a member
of ASSEFA (A Safe Space Everywhere for All), a group of local collegians
that formed in response to the assault.
Officials said the students would still
be allowed to meet, but made clear that any group daring to allow open
discussion of the crime would have its charter revoked. When the
students insisted on talking about the beating, the Campus Life department
revoked the charter of both the student-government association and Omega Psi
Phi. Although Massey reinstated them a
day later, the message had been sent.
A few months later, in April, the
alumni got a message of their own when Massey's task force sent out the list
of 22 questions about homosexuality on campus. "How comfortable
are you with homosexuals that you know?" the college asked, along with
queries like "How much should homosexuals and heterosexuals be treated
the same?" and "How much have you experienced negative encounters
with people who are homosexual?"
How prejudiced can you be, people
wanted to ask the school. "There's an attitude problem at
Morehouse," says Boykin, the writer and activist who received the
survey from an alumnus and put it online. "I've met dozens upon
dozens of black gay men that graduated from Morehouse, and they say there is
a denial of homosexuality.
"Morehouse is supposed to be a
leader of the black community," he adds. "It doesn't want to
be known as a place that educates black gay men."
Historically black colleges and
universities have a responsibility to educate all their students, free of
harassment, Boykin says, and to set an example for African American society
at large. Instead, they're almost following behind. "We
need the Morehouses, the Spelmans, the Howards, to lead the black community
in the right direction," he says. "We need them to be
harbingers of change."
Bynes, of ASSEFA, says an institution
like Morehouse should know better. "To call yourself part of the
Black Ivy League, to be the top college for black men in the country, and to
have such Neanderthal values is
laughable," he says.
For these deeply entrenched values to
change, many say, the culture at Morehouse would need a seismic shift.
"The real change is going to come from the students," Bynes says.
"The administration has shown time and time again that they are
apathetic to the needs of LGBT students. The change will come when the
students organize and hold the school accountable."
Unfortunately, some gay students may no
longer have the heart to continue the struggle for acceptance. "I
want my degree to say 'Morehouse' on it," says Holland, who hopes to
graduate this spring. "I stayed because people are needed to stay
and fight the fight, but I don't feel like it's worth my time."
Or life.
"Something cataclysmic would have
had to happen" for Morehouse officials to really address the problem,
says Harris.
More cataclysmic than the brutal attack
on Love? Harris's answer chills in its succinctness:
"He would have had to die."
#3
Gay.com U.K., 15 August 2003
http://uk.gay.com/headlines/4882
GAY PEOPLE THE "PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION", STUDY SAYS
At a time when religious and
conservative right wing groups are attempting to dismiss homosexuality as
"unnatural", a leading zoologist has said gay people could be seen
as the "pinnacle of evolution".
Speaking at the Edinburgh Book
Festival, Clive Bromhall said that mankind's evolution has resulted in a
present state of "infantilism", where we break the primate mould
by being playful, creative and child-like right
into adulthood.
"From men's obsession with swollen
breasts to our constant search for a pseudo-parental God, everything about
the human species is infantile," Bromhall said in a lecture.
"Like baby chimps we have soft
downy bodies, flat faces and large rounded heads. Like them, we too want to
be kissed, cuddled and stroked, and we remain playful, compliant and
comparatively mild-mannered for the whole of our lives," he added.
Bromhall claims that this is rejected
by straight people as they age, and that by remaining in same sex
relationships, gay men and women are actually displaying a superiority over
their peers.
"We've known for years that
homosexuality is linked to a playful, creative character," he said.
"Homosexuals excel as artists,
thespians and other playful, mimetic professions. Being playful is at
the heart of being human. It's something that should be celebrated.
You could say that homosexuals are at the
pinnacle of human evolution."
Bromhall was speaking to promote his
new book The Eternal Child at
the festival.