Higher Education LGBT
Articles Digest #142
#1
The Daily Camera, August 25, 2003
1048 Pearl Street, Boulder, CO, 80306
(Fax: 303-442-1508 ) (E-Mail: openforum@dailycamera.com )
( http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc )
http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/city_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2422_2207468,00.
Html
ROTC LESBIAN TELLS, IS DISCHARGED [FROM UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO]
By Amy Hebert, Camera Staff Writer
Being in the military taught Mara Boyd
a sense of integrity, pride
and camaraderie that she wholeheartedly embraced, she says.
She learned the values that define her
after she came to the
University of Colorado in 1998, straight out of high school on a three-year
scholarship from the Air Force ROTC.
But the summer after her sophomore
year, just after graduating with
distinction from ROTC's version of basic training, she discovered another
aspect of her self-definition while hanging out with friends in her home
state of Michigan.
"I started feeling stuff I'd never
felt before," Boyd said. "I
fought it all summer, but I came back to school realizing I was a
lesbian."
After a year of referring to her
girlfriend, Nicole, as "Nick" and
dodging the matchmaking efforts of fellow cadets, she "came out"
to her
commander and was discharged last fall.
She lost an appeal against the
discharge this summer and will have to
pay back $30,990 to the ROTC.
Like an estimated 5 percent to 8
percent of military service members,
Boyd had "served silently" through her junior year, keeping her
homosexuality a secret to abide by the 10-year-old law called "Don't
ask,
don't tell."
But she said the policy - which has
dictated the discharge of nearly
10,000 service members in the past decade - is a torturous double standard
for people ingrained with a sense of honesty.
Boyd, 21, said she struggles to
comprehend that she has lost her
dream of serving in the military. She left CU and is working full-time
as a
gardener to repay her scholarship money.
"It's hard for me to wrap my mind
around such discrimination," she
said. "All of my accomplishments were valid before I said I was a
lesbian,
but five seconds after, I'm not fit to serve."
Boyd knew that's how it would be, but
she hesitates to call her
decision a "choice."
She said she couldn't imagine spending
her career wondering if
someone would find out and she would be fired. She said she couldn't
continue lying and certainly couldn't fathom attending a military send-off
and watching her colleagues hug their spouses while she and Nicole had said
goodbye in secret, miles down the road.
That's exactly how as many as 100,000
members of the U.S. military
live, according to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which provides
free legal services to military personnel affected by "Don't ask, don't
tell."
Supporters of the law say the number of
people serving silently shows
that homosexuals, previously barred from serving at all, now have a choice.
But its opponents counter with evidence of harassment, proactive
investigations into homosexual conduct and the absence of rights for gay
members' partners.
CU's Air Force ROTC program forwarded
questions on the policy to
national headquarters, which deferred comment to the Department of Defense,
whose spokeswoman, Maj. Sandra Burr, would not comment.
"It's a law that we follow,"
she said. "We don't discuss the pros
and cons of a law."
But she e-mailed the Daily Camera a
list of key points behind the
policy, which says "a service member's sexuality is considered a
personal
and private matter."
Steve Ralls, SLDN's director of
communications, said it's not that
simple when investigations into homosexual conduct probe into every aspect
of the subject's life.
He said there have been cases of
parents being questioned about their
children's sexual orientation during discharge investigations. And
military
doctors and psychiatrists have been known to turn in gay service members
after learning of their homosexuality during the course of medical
treatment, Ralls said.
Not only has the military spent more
than $250 million investigating
homosexual conduct, the discharges have cost the military the expertise of
several highly trained professionals, he said. For example, he said,
more
than two dozen linguists trained in Arabic, Farsi and Korean have been
discharged for homosexuality in the past year.
"That's costing the military the
talents of those men and women and
is having a very serious impact on national security," he said.
"These are
helicopter pilots, linguists, doctors - people that the military
needs."
The Department of Defense list points
out that the number of "those
discharged for choosing to violate the policy" has remained steady for
four
years at six-tenths of 1 percent of overall discharge rates.
It says the department tries to
administer the law in a fair and
consistent manner.
"We conduct extensive, recurring
training to eliminate harassment of
all types," it says. "While one case is too many, the
anecdotal evidence
collected by SLDN is not representative of the prevailing climate in the
Armed Forces."
In passing the law, Congress expressed
concern that homosexual
conduct poses a risk to morale, good order, discipline and unit readiness,
the list says.
Ralls and Boyd dismissed that idea,
saying that prejudice against
gays would diminish if they weren't treated as "second-class
citizens."
Boyd said the "hush-hush,
faggot-this, faggot-that" environment would
largely disappear if gays were recognized for their accomplishments and
could stand up against discrimination without fear of being investigated.
She said she never wanted to wear a
rainbow flag on her uniform or
talk to her colleagues about sex - she just wanted to follow the core values
and have job security.
That's not something "Don't ask,
don't tell" allows, she said.
"It's not just we won't ask and
you shouldn't tell," she said. "You
have to lie. You have to deceive. You have to create the
illusion that you
are heterosexual."
. Contact Amy Hebert at heberta@dailycamera.com
or (303) 473-1329.
#2
Arizona Daily Wildcat, August 26, 2003
University of Arizona
Arizona Student Media, 1230 N. Park Ave. Ste. 201, Tucson, AZ 85721
(E-Mail: editor@wildcat.arizona.edu ) ( http://wildcat.arizona.edu )
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/97/2/01_4.html
EQUAL RIGHTS GROUPS PUSH FOR BENEFITS [UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA]
By Ashley Nowe, Arizona Daily Wildcat
For years, gay rights advocates have
pushed administrators to provide
tuition, health, dental and life insurance benefits to same-sex partners.
With a recent string of national and
local gay rights victories,
OUTReach, a UA networking group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
faculty and staff, the Diversity Council, and other campus groups have
decided to reinvigorate the campaign.
"The people working on this have
been patient, quiet and easy, and it
is appropriate for us at this moment to move forward with this," said
Ken
Foster, head of UAPresents and former chair of the Diversity Action Council.
"All the barriers are down now, and there is nothing to stop us."
Earlier this summer, gay rights
advocates approached the
administration with a petition filled with nearly 200 faculty and staff
signatures requesting the same benefits for domestic partners that married
partners receive from the university.
Beyond the normal health and dental
benefits, spouses and children of
UA employees receive a 50 percent reduction in tuition.
These efforts come on the heels of the
repeal of anti-sodomy laws by
the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this summer, said Fenton Johnson, professor
of creative writing and member of OUTReach.
In addition, in late June, Gov. Janet
Napolitano issued an executive
order that bars state job discrimination based on sexual orientation.
One week later the Tucson City Council
adopted a domestic partner
registry, a highly symbolic gesture that gives gay couples the right to be
recognized as a family for purposes of hospital visitation and city
services.
The city provides domestic partner
benefits for all its employees,
said Neal Dorschel, organizational consultant for the UA human resources
department.
"The university is putting itself
at a major disadvantage," Johnson
said. "If we don't offer benefits the university won't be able to
recruit
and retain employees."
Domestic partner benefits are not a
rarity, with six out of the 10
universities in the Pacific-10 Conference offering them to employees.
Several private companies in Tucson,
such as Raytheon, also provide
these benefits, Dorschel added.
"We are standing alone out
here," Dorschel said. "It is really
affecting our recruiting capability."
The UA has a non-discriminatory policy
based on the sexual
orientation of its employees, but many feel that the absence of benefits is
in violation of this policy.
"There is still a gap between what
they say and what they do," said
Miranda Joseph, associate professor of women's studies and member of the
Diversity Coalition.
This affects how gays and lesbians
working in higher education view
the university when looking for employment, Johnson said.
"When I was offered a job at the
UA, the first step was to see if the
UA included gays and lesbians in its non-discriminatory policy,"
Johnson
said. "It was there but the protections are meaningless unless
implemented."
President Peter Likins said that the UA
is in compliance with its
non-discriminatory policy.
Although he would like to provide
benefits, he said his hands are
tied by the state, which does not recognize same-sex marriages.
The implementation of domestic partner
health benefits would most
likely require the state legislature's approval because as a public
university, UA receives its funding from the state, Likins said.
"If same-sex marriages were
permissible, benefits would follow
automatically," Likins said.
If the UA were to give benefits to
domestic partners, it would cost
approximately $255,000 annually and would include approximately 85 to 100 UA
employees, Dorschel said.
Likins said that the lack of domestic
partner benefits does put the
UA at a disadvantage and would like to see domestic partner benefits move
forward.
In fact, in the Diversity Action Plan,
released by Likins last year,
providing domestic partner benefits was listed as a long-term step to help
make the UA a more diverse campus.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgendered (LGBT) supporters,
including Gov. Janet Napalitano, hope to ask the Arizona Department of
Administration to change its definition of dependents to include domestic
partners.
Changing the definition allows for
domestic partners to receive the
same benefits as married couples without seeking the approval of a
conservative legislature, said Dorschel.
Despite all the potential obstacles,
Likins said that he would like
to see tuition reimbursement for domestic partners come within the next year
because administrators recently received more authority from the Arizona
Board of Regents to determine who receives tuition waivers, Likins said.
"The year that lies ahead is the
year that we should attempt to get
tuition benefits for domestic partners," Likins said. "This
is only half
the battle, but it is a very successful step."
However in order to give tuition
benefits, Likins said the UA would
face the dilemma of defining who qualifies as a domestic partner, which
worries those who believe that a lax definition would open the door to
fraud.
"We can't give benefits to people
who are just living with their
girlfriends," Likins said.
The administration plans to meet with
LGBT supporters next week to
discuss a change in the definition of a dependent.
"This issue is really out of our
hands at this point," Dorschel said.
"We encourage the administration to get this to move ahead."
#3
Daily Illini, August 26, 2003
University of Illinois, Box 677, Champaign, IL, 61824-0677
(E-Mail: letters@dailyillini.com ) ( http://www.dailyillini.com )
http://www.dailyillini.com/aug03/aug26/news/stories/news_story02.shtml
REPRESENTATIVE DENOUNCES SAME-SEX PARTNER BENEFITS [FOR UNIVERSITY OF
ILLINOIS]
ByTiffany Witte, Assistant news editor
The University followed the trend of
thousands of colleges,
governmental bodies and corporations on July 17 when the Board of Trustees
approved health and dental insurance benefits for same-sex partners of
University faculty and staff.
But since that time, several state
politicians and conservative
groups have begun petitions asking the University to reconsider, and
encouraging Gov. Rod Blagojevich to intervene.
Reps. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, and Bill
Mitchell, R-Forsyth, delivered
a letter last Tuesday to the board, signed by 23 politicians.
Rose said the board should not have
approved the benefits in the
midst of a University budget crisis.
"Regardless of their moral
position, everyone should realize that
this is bad timing," he said.
Rose said the $400,000 being used to
fund same-sex partner benefits
would have been enough money to restore two-thirds of University classes
that were cut as a result of budget problems.
"We're looking at the fact that
(the University) cut 506 classes,
fired 167 employees and the next day found $400,000 for this," he said.
In a letter dated Aug. 8, Rose called
on Blagojevich to use his
authority as an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees to intervene
"on
behalf of the students and University employees."
Curt McKay, co-director of the Office
of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgendered Concerns, said the group has been asking lawmakers since the
mid-1990s to approve benefits for same-sex partners and is saddened, but not
surprised, that legislators are working to reverse the board's decision.
"The state legislature has had the
opportunity to (offer the
benefits) for years and has not done so - in fact they have actively opposed
doing so," he said.
He said although it's unfortunate that
the benefits will come at a
time when the University is having budget problems, it's not a sufficient
reason to "treat a whole group of people inequitably."
"It's a matter of good business in
terms of being able to attract and
retain staff," he said.
Rep. Mitchell said he is against
offering the benefits at any time
because heterosexual couples in unmarried relationships don't receive the
same benefits.
"I would vote against it if it
came to the (Illinois) house floor,
whether in a good or bad economic time," he said.
Rose said he has received several
e-mails from unmarried heterosexual
couples who are upset because they don't have the benefits now offered to
gay and lesbian couples, but McKay said he hopes that in time, the benefits
will be extended to those couples as well as students.
Lidia Downs, executive director of the
Illinois Center Right
Coalition, said the group is also in the process of contacting trustees and
asking for a reversal of the decision. Downs said the group's
opposition to
open homosexuality is a major factor in its position on the issue.
"I think this is just a door
opening," she said. "This is eroding
the traditional idea of a marriage ... we have a mandate as a society to
protect that tradition."
Rose said he doubts the governor will
step in and try to reverse the
decision, due in part to strong democratic support of the benefits.
"I won't hold my breath," he
said.
Abby Ottenhoff, a spokesperson for the
governor, said Blagojevich
supports same-sex partner benefits and doesn't have plans to intervene at
this time.
University employees and their same-sex
partners who are now eligible
for benefits will complete forms that are being distributed through the
human resources office, said Michele Thompson, secretary of the Board of
Trustees.
#4
The State News, August 26, 2003
Michigan State University
343 Student Services Bldg., East Lansing, MI, 48824
(Fax: 517-353-2599 ) (E-Mail: opinion@statenews.com )
( http://www.statenews.com/ )
http://www.statenews.com/article.phtml?pk=18602
REP. WORKS TO RESTRICT SEXUALITY CURRICULUM [AT MICHIGAN STATE
UNIVERSITY]
By Brian Charlton, The State News
Nine MSU classes could be up for close
examination in the Michigan
Legislature this fall after a state representative compiled a list of
courses he says aren't suitable for taxpayer dollars.
State Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Kalamazoo,
plans to introduce a bill
next month that could give the state Legislature the ability to not fund
classes it decides are inappropriate for university education.
The Michigan Constitution gives
legislators the power to decide how
much money is appropriated to each public university but allows universities
to decide how money is spent.
The debate stems from Hoogendyk's
disapproval of a University of
Michigan English and Literature class titled "How To Be Gay: Male
Homosexuality and Initiation."
"I think by and large that money
is well spent and I think taxpayers
agree, but many taxpayers are questioning if all these schools are using
money wisely," Hoogendyk said.
Hoogendyk has compiled a list of nearly
60 classes at Michigan's 15
publicly funded universities that he said require greater scrutiny.
He says the list will continue to grow
and has cited nearly 20
classes at U-M and more at other institutions in the state. The list
does
not include classes at Lake Superior State University or Western Michigan
University, which is located in the district Hoogendyk represents.
The classes at MSU range from Family
and Child Ecology 145: The
Individual, Marriage and the Family, to Linguistics 800U: Language and
Sexuality.
Five of the classes come from the
College of Arts and Letters, three
are from the College of Social Science and one is from the College of Human
Medicine. Three of the MSU classes on Hoogendyk's list are being
taught
this fall.
Hoogendyk says it's one thing to study
cultural history or cultural
practices, but he has a problem when classes are about encouraging
"indoctrination or initiation or putting forward an agenda."
The bill, which would require a
constitutional change, would also
require public universities to submit a listing of classes to the
Legislature with detailed descriptions of class content.
The bill would also allow the
Legislature with a two-thirds vote not
to fund a specific class. With a majority vote, the Legislature could
withhold funding from a public university that doesn't comply with the
review structure.
Steve Webster, MSU vice president for
governmental affairs, said he
will wait to read the bill before commenting.
Henry Silverman, president of the
Lansing branch of the American
Civil Liberties Union, said the bill is being used as a publicity stunt that
violates censorship and takes away universities' rights.
"It's a total inappropriate roll
[sic] for the Legislature,"
Silverman said. "They are unqualified for those kinds of
judgments. It
would be a sad day for public universities."
Hoogendyk said he wants to spark
conversation about government
oversight in school funding.
MSU Trustee David Porteous said he will
have to review the bill
before taking an official stance on the issue. He said the way public
universities have been funded has worked well since the Michigan
Constitution was drawn up in 1963.
Porteous added that MSU has an
extensive process to approve classes
but said he isn't against reviewing the system if there are problems or
issues.
"MSU has been a school of higher
education for 150 years and by and
large the way classes are developed works pretty well and has withstood the
test of time," Porteous said.
. Brian Charlton can be reached at charlt10@msu.edu.
#5
The Tribune, August 26, 2003
P. O. Box 112, San Luis Obispo, CA, 93406
(Fax: 805-781-7905) (E-Mail: bmorem@thetribunenews.com )
( http://www.thetribunenews.com )
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispotribune/6618987.htm
[CAL POLY SAN LUIS OBISPO] EGG THROWERS TO PAY FINE, SERVE COMMUNITY
By Ryan Huff, The Tribune
The egging of a Cal Poly gay club booth
in February will cost each of
the two throwers $300 and 100 hours of community service.
Poly alumnus William Bugenig, 22, and
Cuesta College student Nicolas
Taliaferro, 20, pleaded no contest on Aug. 19 to misdemeanor civil rights
and vandalism violations.
While the District Attorney's Office
has not called the act a hate
crime, the civil rights charge is listed in the state Penal Code for
knowingly causing property damage for reasons such as a person's sexual
orientation or race.
Judge Christopher Money sentenced the
men to 18 months of probation
and required them to each pay a $300 fine and perform 100 hours of community
service for the AIDS Support Network.
Bugenig, Taliaferro and prosecutor
Jackie Duffy could not be reached
for comment Monday. In a previous interview with The Tribune, Bugenig
expressed remorse for the incident.
"I didn't mean any harm to
anybody," said Bugenig, who graduated from
Cal Poly in July. "Anyone that was there, I totally apologize for
it. I
know I was in the wrong."
Bugenig and Taliaferro each threw two
eggs at a Gays, Lesbians and
Bisexuals United booth set up along the perimeter of Dexter Lawn on Feb. 13,
according to court and police records.
Two eggs hit the booth - and
subsequently did more than $500 in
damage to the structure - while the other two landed near the booth, Cal
Poly police said.
The men were standing behind a hedge
about 150 feet away when they
threw the eggs, and five women were sitting behind the booth eating lunch.
Bugenig and Taliaferro egged the booth
about 45 minutes after a march
was held to celebrate Same-Sex Handholding Day. During the march,
participants began and ended their walk along Inner Perimeter Road at Dexter
Lawn.
#6
International Herald Tribune, August 27, 2003
181, Avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92521 Neuilly Cedex, France
(Fax: (33) 1 41 43 93 38) (E-Mail: iht@iht.com )
( http://www.iht.com )
http://www.iht.com/articles/107794.html
TO BE [BAYARD RUSTIN] BLACK, GAY AND CRYING 'FREEDOM'
By Paul Berman
At the 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom, the Reverend
Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed his dream of a future in which everyone,
no matter who, would be able to cry: "Free at last! Free at last!
Thank
God almighty, we are free at last!"
Among King's followers, no one doubted
what kind of freedom he had in
mind. It was freedom from racist laws and the social customs of Jim
Crow
segregation - a legal and social freedom for millions of black Americans who
had never experienced anything of the sort.
But something odd and unpredicted took
place. Once the issue of
freedom had been successfully raised, all kinds of people, black and
nonblack, began to cast an inquisitive eye on laws and customs that had
nothing to do with racism or Jim Crow, and began to identify other sorts of
oppressions. The subsequent outpouring of fresh understandings and
novel
insights about rights and freedom - for gays, women, the disabled and more -
has dominated American thinking for 40 years. And among those many
fresh
understandings and insights has come a new retrospective understanding of
the 1963 march itself.
The chief organizer of the Washington
march was Bayard Rustin, who
was duly applauded at the time for the efficiency of his labors. And
yet,
Rustin, who died in 1987 at 75, played a much larger role in organizing both
the march and the wider civil rights movement than most people ever
suspected at the time. Two new books, one a biography and the other a
collection of Rustin's papers, now turn a brighter light on his life and his
role, explaining how his homosexuality forced his contribution to be
obscured.
Rustin was a Quaker and a pacifist,
Gandhi-style - which meant being
a fighter, though without violence. By 1963, Rustin had been fighting
a
long time. In the 1940's, he had worked as an assistant to A. Philip
Randolph, the Harlem-based labor leader, and helped organize a campaign
against racial discrimination in war-related jobs - a successful campaign,
all in all, which played a role in integrating the armed forces, eventually.
But, for all his success at Randolph's side, Rustin did not glide from
triumph to triumph.
In World War II, he refused the draft,
and, in his pacifist zeal,
refused even to accept a conscientious observer status. Instead, he
spent
28 months in federal prisons, a gruesome experience - though even there,
unstoppable, he campaigned to end racial segregation in the prison dining
hall.
In December 1955, the black citizens of
Montgomery, Alabama, led by
King, launched a boycott of the city buses, in protest against the Jim Crow
seating rules. King was brilliant, but he was only 26 and did not
always
know what to do. Rustin did. He went to Montgomery, met King,
visited his
home - and was dismayed to discover guns in the living room. Rustin
spoke,
and King listened. Rustin was less than popular among some of the
other
leaders of the Montgomery boycott, but King and the others dutifully put
away their guns, and agreed to be arrested in a Gandhian spirit of
nonviolence and spiritual superiority, which was Rustin's advice, exactly.
Rustin proposed a strategy of reaching
out to black churches
elsewhere in the South, to broaden the boycott's base of support. And
he
offered King a larger coalition still, which was organized by Randolph and
the handful of New York pacifists. They called on friends and allies
in the
labor movement, on good-hearted politicians, on singers and actors and on
wealthy liberals with money to donate. And so the young King, from his
pulpit in Alabama, found himself at the head of a fledgling national
coalition. And the coalition grew until by 1963, with 250,000 people
attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, it proved to be a
national power.
King was the leader of that gigantic
coalition. But Rustin was the
principal strategist.
Yet there was the question of Rustin's
homosexuality, and his
sometimes desperate promiscuity. On a couple of occasions, he was
arrested
in parks, and, in Pasadena, California, in 1953, for having sex with two men
in a parked car, an incident that sent him back to jail for 60 days.
The
Pasadena arrest devastated his political career. That was why, during
the
Montgomery boycott, Rustin had to operate virtually as a secret agent,
whispering his advice to King, and why, in Washington in 1963, he had to
conceal the full extent of his leadership. He was all too vulnerable
to
political attacks, and there was nothing he could do about it.
John D'Emilio, in his biography,
"Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of
Bayard Rustin," published by Free Press, has provided the fullest
description so far of the awful depth of Rustin's agony over these matters.
It is heartbreaking to read about this - heartbreaking to recall that, in
the 1950's and 60's, the question of sexual orientation could not even be
broached in public, except as an accusation.
But the civil rights campaign gave
birth to many newer inspirations,
one of which turned out to be the movement for gay rights.
D'Emilio's book shows, in its frank and
sympathetic discussion of
Rustin's homosexuality, just how great the progress has been. The same
forward step can be seen in the volume of Rustin's writings and interviews,
"A Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin,"
that has
been assembled by Devon Carbado and Donald Wiese. Here you can read
the
appreciative comments that Rustin began to make, during his last years in
the 1980's, on the gay movement.
And so Americans are finally able to
see Rustin as he was - see him
in his sexuality and in his sufferings, and see the monumental scale of his
achievement. But does this mean that at last the Washington march can
be
understood, with no more hidden aspects? The answer must be no, not
really.
Thanks to the gay movement and to
scholars like D'Emilio, it is
possible today to speak about homosexuality with cool frankness. But
it is
not so easy to talk about a very different but equally pertinent theme,
which is American socialism.
A. Philip Randolph was one of the grand
old men of American
socialism, and Rustin followed in Randolph's footsteps, though with a
Christian style of his own. Rustin as a young man briefly enrolled in
the
Young Communist League, but then withdrew and repudiated the communist
movement. Socialism, for both Rustin and Randolph, was a democratic
idea,
therefore an anti-communist idea. Rustin taught King some aspects of
that
idea - though King kept away from the old left style that clung so naturally
to Randolph and Rustin.
Even so, socialism figured as one
element of the 1963 march, and not
a small one, either. Why, after all, did the march call for
"Jobs" as well
as "Freedom"? The word jobs might sound today like political
boilerplate,
filling space and meaning nothing. But the word jobs said, in effect,
that
securing rights was only half the program - that America's economy needed to
be reorganized, as well. In the first years after the march, when some
of
the main legislative goals of the civil rights movement congealed into
federal law, Rustin came up with the idea, which he attributed to Randolph,
of steering their carefully constructed national coalition in a new
direction, toward the economic reorganization of society.
#7
Cavalier Daily, August 28, 2003
University of Virginia, Newcomb Hall, Charlottesville, VA, 22901
(E-Mail: cavdaily@cavalierdaily.com )
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=16390&pid=1029
EDITORIAL: EQUALITY IN GRANTING BENEFITS
The University of Illinois system voted
earlier this week to extend
benefits, such as health and dental plans, to the domestic partners of gay
and lesbian employees. The Illinois system is in good company - they
join
the group of 188 colleges, universities and university systems that
currently provide such benefits. Our University, however, is one of
the few
top-tier schools that still does not provide such benefits.
In the cases of other universities who
have extended such benefits,
they can either be done specifically for homosexual couples who meet
conditions for domestic partnership, or apply to both homosexual and
heterosexual couples who are not married, but maintain some sort of domestic
relationship. The benefits in question can include health and dental
insurance, family leave, death benefits, housing rights and tuition
reduction. In short, extending these benefits is the right thing for
the
University to do.
However, the problem arises because the
administration was advised by
the University General Counsel's office that they do not have the authority
to do so. The administration cannot just ignore this advice. The
General
Counsel's office reports to the attorney general, Jerry Kilgore (who has
repeatedly shown himself hostile to any advances in civil rights). As
such,
the University cannot act against the advice of the General Counsel's
office.
However, there are compelling arguments
that the University does have
the authority to extend employee benefits to same-sex couples. The
Commonwealth has consistently defeated proposals by municipalities to
establish partnership benefits for its employees. However, the legal
tenet
of Virginia law that mandates that state agencies and municipalities not
deviate from state guidelines (more commonly known as Dillon's Rule),
specifically does not apply to colleges and universities. In this
respect,
the University has more authority to expand upon state guidelines than state
agencies or municipalities.
Likewise, other state entities have
demonstrated the authority to
establish their own guidelines in these areas. In July, the Virginia
Housing Development Authority, which oversees the distribution of
state-funded low-interest home financing loans, eliminated a restriction on
joint borrowing that was deemed the "family rule." Under
that rule, only
those related by "blood, marriage, or adoption" were able to
receive
jointly-borrowed state loans for housing. With the elimination of that
restriction, citizens not considered related by Virginia law - most notably,
same-sex couples - can now apply for such joint loans from the Commonwealth.
Besides the fact that it's the right
thing to do, the University does
have legitimate and serious interests in extending employee benefits to
same-sex couples. The University is one of only three of the top 25
national universities that does not award these benefits, and the other
two - Georgetown and Notre Dame - answer to the Catholic Church. When
trying to attract high-caliber faculty, we should offer our employees the
same benefits competing universities do. Not to mention the fact that
it
certainly doesn't reflect well on the University when we offer benefits to
heterosexual employees that we don't offer to homosexuals.
Many public universities from states
that do not have domestic
partnership registries (including state flagship universities in Iowa,
Michigan, New Mexico and Washington state, to name but a few), still extend
partnership benefits to same-sex couples. The University can't
disregard
the General Counsel's office when they say that we don't have the legal
authority to extend benefits. However, the University's situation is
so
unclear that the least the administration should do is ask for more opinions
on the issue, preferably from someone who doesn't need to report to Jerry
Kilgore.
This isn't an easy issue for the
administration, and if they did
pursue an extension of employee benefits, the General Assembly would all but
declare war on the University. However, simply asking for a second
opinion
on an issue this difficult and complex would go a long way in establishing
the administration's credibility on equal rights.
#8
WWMT-TV (Kalamazoo, MI), August 27, 2003 - 6:03PM
http://www.wwmt.com/engine.pl?station=wwmt&id=3361&template=pagesearch.html
CONTROVERSIAL COLLEGE COURSES: SHOULD LANSING DECIDE?
KALAMAZOO (NEWS 3) - As classes get underway at universities across
Michigan, one Kalamazoo lawmaker is questioning whether some courses should
be supported with public tax dollars.
Representative Jack Hoogendyk (R-Kalamazoo) has assembled a list of 60
courses taught at Michigan universities that, according to him, need closer
scrutiny. "The question is," says Hoogendyk, "where do we
draw the line of
what is study of a certain issue and what is indoctrination?"
His biggest concern is a course at the University of Michigan entitled,
"How
to be Gay."
There are others from various schools on his questionable list including
courses titled, "Women, Crime and Deviance", "The Rhetoric of
Hate and
Fear", "Gender and Society" and "Culture and
Sexuality."
Gary Mathews, who heads up the union representing Western Michigan
University faculty, says courses already undergo an extensive approval
process. "You can't allow a subtraction of freedoms even when the
content of
a course might be controversial or not liked by a majority of people,"
he
says.
WMU President Judith Bailey says she and Hoogendyk have agreed to disagree
on the issue. "It's faculty's responsibility to represent a broad range
of
ideas, thoughts, philosophies and facts around issues wide-ranging from
science to gender," she says.
Hoogendyk is proposing legislation that would require universities to submit
class lists to the legislature for approval. Lawmakers could decide to
prohibit the teaching of any of the classes.
"I think it's incumbent on me as a representative of the people,
someone
responsible for tax money, to ask some of the questions," says
Hoogendyk.
#9
MSNBC, Aug. 18, 2003
"Scarborough Country" transcript
http://www.msnbc.com/news/954459.asp
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, CLASS ENTITLED "HOW TO BE GAY: MALE
HOMOSEXUALITY AND INITIATION."
Host: Joe Scarborough. Guests: John Corvino, Lenny Goldberg, Tom
McClintock, Wesley Clark
[cut]
SCARBOROUGH: Welcome back. [from commercial break]
The University of Michigan, a public
university, offers an English class entitled-quote-"How to be Gay: Male
Homosexuality and Initiation." The syllabus explains the rationale for
the course this way.
It says: "Just because you happen
to be a gay man doesn't mean that you don't have to learn how to become one.
Gay men do some of that learning on their own, but, often, we learn how to
be gay from others."
Now, the obvious question is, should
Michigan taxpayers be paying for a course on gay initiation?
John Corvino, the professor of
philosophy at the Wayne State University and the writer of "The
Independent Gay Forum," who also teaches a course called "The
Philosophy of Sex," is with us tonight.
Thank you for being with us.
And, Professor, let me begin by asking
you that question straight out. Should Michigan taxpayers be paying their
taxes to indoctrinate students on the fine art of being gay?
JOHN CORVINO, PROFESSOR, WAYNE STATE
UNIVERSITY: Well, if you put it in terms of indoctrinating students, then I
would say no. But I think thatís a real misunderstanding of the course.
SCARBOROUGH: The syllabus says that,
though. It says the word indoctrination in the syllabus.
CORVINO: Well, indoctrination is a word
that gets tossed around. And one of the things the Professor Halperin wants
to do is to talk about the various ways people are influenced culturally,
socially with regard to sexual orientation.
But I think it's easy to take a kind of
sophomoric misunderstanding of the title, "How to be Gay," as if
the course involved "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" coming in and
redecorating the dorm room. That's not the point of the course. The point of
the course is to explore the various ways in which society and culture
shapes our understanding of the gay identity. And that's something that we
might do with gay identity, with straight identity, with any of the various
identities people have.
If we want to talk about whether
taxpayers should support that, then I think the question is whether
taxpayers want to support the free exchange of ideas. If we believe in
public education, including university education, that means that some
professors are going to have some courses that we don't all agree with. But
thatís part of a free exchange of ideas.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, free exchange of
ideas is fine. And I'll read you what the professor said, defending his
course.
He said-quote- "It does not teach
students to be homosexual. Rather, it examines critically the odd notion
that there are right and wrong ways to be gay, that homosexuality is not
just a sexual practice or desire, but a set of specific tastes in music,
movies, and other cultural forms."
Now, John, last week, we followed up on
a "New York Times" story that showed how a Michigan student lost
all of her public financing and aid for taking classes in theology. So isn't
it fair to ask, why is it OK to take a course that teaches you how to be
gay, but not a course on Christian or Jewish theology?
CORVINO: Well, I don't know the
background of the theology case. But as someone who supports the free
exchange of ideas, in principle, I'd have no problem with people studying
religion and other aspects of human experience. I think any aspect of human
experience is worth studying carefully. The question is whether Professor
Halperin's course does that well or does it badly. And reports that I've
heard on the course suggest that he does it very well.
SCARBOROUGH: Again, you talk about the
free exchange of ideas. But you've got to admit, when you have a course
that's entitled "How to be Gay," teaching people how to be gay, it
talks about the indoctrination, it's not just a straightforward study of
American gayness in the 21st century.
CORVINO: Well, it may be that. It may
be a provocative title.
I know David Halperin. I know that he
likes to catch people's attention with things like this. But I also know
that he's a serious scholar. And from what I know of the course, from what
I've seen of the syllabus, his reading list and so on, it sounds like he
takes the issue very seriously.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, now, I want to read
again-and I had a full screen before talking about what the course included.
But the professor talked about
homosexuality being not just a sexual practice or a desire, but a set of
specific tastes in music, movies and other cultural forms. Now, what if I,
as a straight guy, said, these are the type of movies that gay people like
to watch; this is the type of music that gay people like to watch; and I
want you, as a gay taxpayer, to pay me to teach that to students? I'd be
crucified.
CORVINO: But, you see, I do that as a
gay taxpayer. Taxpayers pay for all kinds of courses that they don't
necessarily support or agree with.
One of the things about, again- I've
said this phrase before-a free exchange of ideas means that we support a
public university where we value a diverse forum. And that's going to
include things that I might not be interested in, I might not even like.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, Professor, you know
what? I agree with you in the free marketplace of ideas. That's what Thomas
Jefferson talked about. I'm not afraid of what other people believe.
Again, what galls me is the fact that,
if some people that support programs that would be seen on the left like
these gay study programs are stopped from doing it, then it's somehow
bigotry, but, on the right, if you want to study evangelicals, if you want
to study Christian theology, again, you've got the state of Michigan coming
in, saying, we're going to take away all your public aid.
So you and I agree that, again, there
should be a free exchange of ideas, not only for gay lifestyles, but also
for Christian evangelical lifestyles.
CORVINO: Yes.
I suppose if somebody wanted to teach a
course on how to be an evangelical that got into the evangelical mind and
that course were talk seriously and it wasn't about indoctrination-because,
as I said, that's not what David Halperin's course is about-I think it could
be a worthwhile course, in principle.
SCARBOROUGH: All right, thank you,
Professor. We appreciate you being with us tonight.
And I've got to tell you again-and I've
said it all along-treat everybody equally, treat everybody the same. If
those P.C. police that stop students from studying theology also allow other
students to study a course called "How to be Gay," that's
just-that's just discrimination. It's completely wrong. It's political
correctness run amuck. [cut]
#10
Ottawa Daily Times, August 29, 2003
110 W. Jefferson St., Ottawa, IL, 61350
(Fax: 815-433-1639 ) (E-Mail: newsroom@ottawadailytimes.com )
( http://www.ottawadailytimes.com )
http://www.ottawadailytimes.com/news/story.php?storyid=9002311
LAWMAKER QUESTIONS [UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS'] SAME-SEX BENEFITS DECISION
By Stephanie Sievers, Daily Times Springfield Bureau
SPRINGFIELD - The University of
Illinois will begin offering health
insurance benefits for the same-sex partners of its employees on Sept. 1 and
the decision is causing a backlash from some state lawmakers.
"These folks are in an ivory tower
and have no idea about life in
Main Street Illinois," said Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth.
Faced with a $58 million cut in state
funding this year, the
university in July announced it was cutting more than 500 course sections
and laying off 167 employees.
Mitchell, who thinks expanding benefits
couldn't have come at a worse
time, said he'll push legislation requiring the university's board of
trustees to be elected, as it was until 1995, rather than appointed by the
governor.
He's not overly optimistic of the
bill's chances, but thinks it does
send the message that trustees should be more accountable for their
decisions.
When the U of I board voted last month
to offer health and dental
insurance benefits to the domestic partners of homosexual faculty and staff
at its three universities, Robert Vickrey, of Peru, was one of two trustees
voting no.
Vickrey, who has served on the board
since 2001, had concerns with
the proposal including the feeling that trustees were legislating from an
appointed position and that taxpayer money could be better spent on the
university's core purpose - education.
Vickrey also thought that if health
insurance was to be extended to
homosexual couples it was only fair to give it to unmarried, heterosexual
couples as well. He tried to amend the proposal to say as much, but
failed.
The U of I will be the state's first
public university to offer
same-sex health coverage, but such benefits are already being offered at
many private companies and colleges throughout the rest of the country.
If the U of I is going to be able to
continue to recruit and retain
quality faculty and staff, regardless of sexual preference, it was an
important change to make, said Thomas Hardy, spokesman for the university's
administration.
The push to extend health insurance
benefits isn't something new, but
a reconfigured board with four new trustees and the lack of action in
Springfield on a gay rights bill, pushed the issue to the forefront this
summer, Hardy said.
The U of I estimates that about 80 to
100 people will take advantage
of the new coverage. The cost shouldn't exceed $400,000 per year and
the
additional spending won't come out of the state's funding for the
university, Hardy said.
But Rep. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, thinks
the U of I's decision will be
much more far-reaching and expensive than that. Illinois' other public
universities may follow the U of I's lead and other state employees might
decide that they should have the same coverage as well, he said.
"They were more concerned with
making a social statement than they
were about the state's bottom dollar," Rose says in his criticism of
the U
of I.
Rose has forwarded a petition with the
signatures of about 30 state
lawmakers to the U of I asking that the university reconsider its decision.
#11
Scripps Howard News Service, August 30, 2003
http://www.naplesnews.com/03/08/neapolitan/d980957a.htm
ON RELIGION: UNIVERSITIES SHOULD HONESTLY PROMOTE TOLERANCE OF VIEWS
By Terry Mattingly, Scripps Howard News Service
It took a few minutes for leaders of
the Bisexual, Gay & Lesbian
Alliance at Rutgers University to realize something was wrong at their
back-to-school meeting.
The hall was full of unfamiliar
students wanting to become members.
Most were carrying Bibles with markers in the first chapter of St. Paul's
Epistle to the Romans. They also had copies of the campus policy
forbidding
discrimination on the basis of "race, religion, color, national origin,
ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, marital or veteran
status."
Truth is, this scene hasn't happened at
Rutgers or anywhere else - so
far.
What if it did? What if
conservative Christians tried to rush a
gay-rights group and elect new leaders? What if, when told they
couldn't
join because they rejected its core beliefs, evangelicals cited cases in
which Christian groups were punished for refusing leadership roles to
homosexuals? What if, when jeered by angry homosexuals, evangelicals
called
this verbal violence rooted in religious bigotry and, thus, harassment?
"No, no, no. I have never
heard of a case in which conservative
Catholics, Protestants or Jews tried to turn the tables in this
fashion,"
said historian Alan Charles Kors, president of the Philadelphia-based
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) "That would
never
happen. There is an inherent meekness ... among students of faith on
all
these campuses. It's so ironic that people call them intolerant and
offensive. Most of these religious students are among the last people
who
would ever go where they are not wanted. All they want is to be free
to
express their beliefs."
But there have been a growing number of
cases in which traditional
religious groups have been attacked because their "intolerant"
beliefs and
policies offend modern academia. Almost all of these cases are
collisions
between ancient moral doctrines and campus policies that defend and promote
the sexual revolution.
The bottom line, according to recent
FIRE legal guides, is that
almost all campus policies that inhibit religious practices also inhibit the
constitutional rights of free speech, association and assembly. Public
colleges and universities are not supposed to make doctrinal decisions that
deny privileges to some religious groups that are then extended to other
secular or religious groups.
Yet that is what is happening.
"Religious liberty is now center
stage in the battle for freedom on
campus," according to David French, a Harvard Law School graduate who
wrote
the manual covering disputes over faith issues. "Religious
students are
particularly convenient targets. After all, they think and behave in
ways
that many other students don't understand; they tend to be small minorities
on most campuses; and - by religious conviction - they often resist even the
most heavy-handed repression."
For all of their talk about
"diversity" and "tolerance," French is
convinced many academic leaders think that "the fewer 'fanatics' - of
the
'wrong' kind - the better."
While these campus disputes are often
described in terms of "left"
and "right," the FIRE project (www.thefireguides.org) has been
endorsed by a
diverse coalition of activists ranging from Edwin Meese III, attorney
general in the Reagan administration, to American Civil Liberties Union
President Nadine Strossen.
The key is that academic leaders must
be honest, said French.
Leaders at state schools are quickly learning that their work is covered by
explicit laws that ban any "viewpoint discrimination" that blesses
some
believers and curses others. Religious schools, meanwhile, are allowed
to
require particular beliefs and practices - mandatory chapel, moral codes,
doctrinal statements for faculty - if these rules are clearly stated in
writing.
Right now, the toughest battles are at
some of America's most
prestigious private colleges and universities. These secular schools
once
encouraged fierce debates and proudly tolerated dissent. But now, it
seems
that some world views are created more equal than others.
Many religious believers do not
discover this reality until they
arrive on campus and receive copies of the all-powerful student handbook.
"Students must be told the
truth," said French. "They should not be
duped into believing that they have enrolled in a school that respects their
beliefs and their freedom to express viewpoints that are out of the
so-called mainstream. These secular schools must be more honest in
their
recruiting materials and catalogs. This is a truth-in-advertising
issue."
. Terry Mattingly (www.tmatt.net)
teaches at Palm Beach Atlantic
University and is senior fellow for journalism at the Council for Christian
Colleges & Universities.
#12
New York Times, August 31, 2003
229 W. 43rd Street, New York, NY, 10036
(Fax: 212-556-3622 ) (E-Mail: letters@nytimes.com )
( http://www.nytimes.com )
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/31/books/review/31HARRIST.html
PATRICIA HIGHSMITH'S WELL OF LONELINESS
By Elise Harris
. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of
Patricia Highsmith; By Andrew Wilson;
Illustrated. 534 pp. New York: Bloomsbury. $32.50.
. Highsmith: A Romance of the
1950s; By Marijane Meaker, 207 pp. San
Francisco: Cleis Press. Paper, $14.95
Since the 1999 film adaptation of her
novel ''The Talented Mr.
Ripley,'' Patricia Highsmith has been gaining posthumous celebrity.
American fame evaded her during her lifetime. Her uncomfortable,
slightly
repellent novels of passivity, humiliation, delusion and futility skitter in
a border zone between serious literature, pulp fiction, comic book and
psychiatric case study. Charting Highsmith's inner life is a difficult
job
for a biographer; it seemed to baffle Highsmith herself. She often
felt
blank, unmoored and frightened. In her diary in 1951, she wrote: ''O
who am
I? Reflections only in the eyes of those who love me.'' The prospect
of a
biographer prompted anxiety and dread. She asked two friends to steer
off
the wrong ones. In ''Beautiful Shadow,'' Andrew Wilson achieves the
detachment required to document Highsmith's bizarre personal habits
(carrying a purse full of snails, obsessing over human waste disposal) while
still appreciating the intellectual and emotional insights she had to give.
Both her intimate life and literary
career followed an arc of rapid
early rise and slow painful decline. Highsmith, born in Fort Worth in
1921
and raised in New York, was a beauty in her youth; she preferred women
sexually, although she preferred men in all other ways. For six months
in
1949 she made a futile effort to analyze and ''cure'' herself for her
fiancé, the novelist Marc Brandel. As it turned out, her private life
would
be a sexual picaresque. Among her American lovers Wilson names
Virginia,
Helen, Mary, Allela, Chloe, Natica, another Virginia, Ann, Kathryn, Lynn,
Ellen, Mary, Marijane and Daisy.
Her early hopes for love are mirrored
in ''The Price of Salt,'' her
1952 lesbian romance, published under a pseudonym. The elegant Carol,
in
mid-divorce, falls for a nervous shopgirl, Therese. They take a
cross-country road trip. A private detective hired by Carol's husband
bugs
their hotel rooms. Forced to choose between custody of her daughter
and her
relationship with Therese, Carol chooses Therese. Carol incarnates
Highsmith's romantic ideal - dominant, slightly menacing, challenging, but
nurturing enough to make Therese a cup of hot milk and put her to bed.
Marijane Meaker is best known for
young-adult novels, written as M.
E. Kerr, but also for thrillers (''Come Destroy Me'') and steamy lesbian
romances, and a confessional style animates ''Highsmith,'' her sincere
account of their relationship, which took place between 1959 and 1961.
Highsmith is introduced drinking in a lesbian bar, looking ''like a
combination of Prince Valiant and Rudolf Nureyev.'' She is 38 years
old and
published in cloth editions, not pulpy paperbacks - a blue-chip stock in New
York's chic lesbian circles. They sit down together. Meaker has
read
Highsmith's work; Highsmith has not read Meaker's. Meaker ditches her
girlfriend, and they set up shop. Highsmith goes on book tour.
The pair
dines with Janet Flanner, novels are written and alcohol is consumed.
For
six months the two live together near New Hope, Pa. Highsmith is a
lovely
girlfriend: she squeezes orange juice in the morning and leaves a book
of
poetry on Meaker's desk, bookmarked by a leaf. This awkward, insecure
alcoholic is not, however, the Prince Valiant whom Meaker expected.
Meaker
is frequently critical, disappointed, jealous and hostile. Finally
Highsmith moves out.
Highsmith, who admitted to a strong
masochistic streak, gravitated to
a dark type - older, dominating and belittling. Wilson reports that
one
lover, a fierce and punishingly superior sociologist named Ellen Hill,
bossed her around like a governess. Highsmith always managed to
extricate
herself from these martinets but could never change her ideal.
Highsmith moved to Europe in 1963, in
thrall to an Englishwoman. The
shift cut her off from the elaborate social networks of New York's gay and
literary worlds. She had a few love affairs: Madeleine, Marion and
Monique.
But in her last years, Highsmith switched to completely unrequited crushes
on movie stars and, finally, Tabea Blumenschein, a 25-year-old actress in
German experimental films, with whom Highsmith was obsessed for years after
their brief fling in 1978. She was left entirely to her own devices
for the
last 30 years of her life, until her death in 1995. She ate sparsely
and
drank epic quantities, marking her Scotch bottle each morning to monitor her
consumption. She became so stingy that she lugged an old pile of
firewood
from home to home, and drove 60 miles to buy cheaper spaghetti.
Wilson is less confident about
Highsmith's creative life than her
emotional one. She wrote 22 novels, beginning in 1950 with ''Strangers
on a
Train,'' memorably filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. (In 1961, he bought the
rights to ''This Sweet Sickness,'' her painful novel about obsessive
imaginary love.) She started writing because it helped purge anxiety
and
organize her vulnerable psyche. She continued out of her ambition to
become
a novelist of psychic conflict; her great hero was Dostoyevsky. Her
books
take hostility, guilt, anxiety and resentment, exaggerate them and project
them into the world. Many of her protagonists tap us on the shoulder,
reintroducing situations and emotions we would rather not admit knowing:
David insists that he is loved when he is not; Howard can't decide whether
he is responsible for someone's death, or whether he cares if he is.
Some
of her murderers (notably Guy in ''Strangers on a Train'') have guilt-ridden
moral lives, but others (notably Tom Ripley) are blithely indifferent.
Her early, most chaotic and
blood-soaked novels had cinematic
locations and plotted thrills and chills yet showed subtle psychological
insight. Highsmith empathized with the weak and humiliated and
understood
their attraction to violence. (She would dedicate novels to the
Palestinians.) Later, she tried to capture the everyday psychic
disarray of
more balanced characters. The idea behind ''Edith's Diary'' (1977) is
compelling and frightening: the horror lies in the punishing inertness
of
an abandoned housewife's disappointing life. Edith embodies
self-protective
delusions. After her husband leaves her, the timid woman begins to
disintegrate. She keeps a secret diary in which she pretends that her
son,
a dateless, jobless jerk, is a Princeton-educated engineer with a wife and
child. Highsmith buries the reader under descriptions of old coffee
grounds, frozen macaroni and cheese, prescription bottles, newspaper
clippings and dirty socks. Yet the characterization is thin. The
novel is
relentless and deadening but falls short of being affecting.
Increasingly depressed herself,
Highsmith churned out four
second-rate Ripley sequels and seven volumes of foul-tempered stories that
were frightening only in terms of quality. American editors rejected
her
books. In an interview, she claimed that ''the nitty-gritty'' of life
is
''anger and a sense of injustice.'' Previously a thoughtful, morally
serious woman, she increasingly became a vocal racist and anti-Semite.
(Highsmith read a negative review and wrote Meaker, ''If this is East Coast
Jews hitting back, I can be only flattered.'') One friend claims that
she
found an equilibrium in writing: she could write increasingly bleak
novels
of disappointment and horrific stories of violent revenge. In the last
years of her life, the current revival began - The New Yorker published an
appreciation of her work and the editor Gary Fisketjon took her on - but the
enthusiasm was for work that was 30 years old.
Wilson implies that while Highsmith's
life was not perhaps joyous or
exemplary, it had its own logic. But in the end, Highsmith seems a sad
figure, a disappointment to herself. Resentment seeped out of her -
she
hated Jews, women, taxes, literary agents and her mother's nursing-home
bills - yet she never exploded as her characters did. Her biography
shows
that hostility, frustration and loneliness can lead to a crushing life as
well as a cathartic one.
. Elise Harris is writing a book on
intellectual history and romantic
love.