Oh, the plight of the poor heterosexual male. How uprooted you all must feel, losing your heterosexual privilege to a “Singled Out” night. All these groups these days, gettin’ special rights. Women gettin’ the right to vote and own property, even! Non-Christians allowed to worship as they choose! Who knows? In a few years, gays and lesbians might actually have the right to keep their jobs and their homes, have due process of law, and even have their union recognized! It’s a crazy world, I tell ya… Those pesky homosexuals, always wanting crazy things like…equal representation…equal rights…Okay, so you don’t agree. Fine. But that doesn’t make you homophobic. Of course not. “Some of my best friends are gay.” What we have here, though, is a clear case of homophobia. Not the “I’m-afraid-of-homosexuals” type, (’cause gosh, you’re just too manly for that); but more the “I’m-afraid-of-losing-my-heterosexual-privilege” type. You see, when one group gains equal rights, another group loses special rights. When women gained the equal privilege of voting, men lost the special privilege of electing a candidate themselves. And contrary to the propaganda put out by the Religious Reich, gays and lesbians are not searching for “special rights.” The term “special rights” would assume that gays and straights were of equal standing. That’s a nice thought, but unfortunately today gays and lesbians are consistently forced out of jobs, homes, and places of worship without any laws to protect them. Homosexuals are denied access to the military, ROTC, and they are unable to marry a partner of their choosing. Does that sound like equal standing to you? So that “reverse discrimination” just doesn’t fly here. To actively discriminate, one group must be in a position of power over another group. So if you have a problem with your group giving funding to an Awareness Week, don’t misdirect your anger. Gays and lesbians only ask for education and equal rights, it’s really your fellow students – who are obviously more informed than yourself – who are bringing down civilization as we know it. The difference between funding a “Singled Out” evening and funding an Awareness Week is that one is entertainment and the other is education. Entertainment focusing only on the heterosexual “lifestyle choice” is in fact heterosexist. It’s again placing heterosexuality as the center, with any others told to “have your own event.” Awareness Week, however, is planned for people just like you and everyone else who are obviously grossly misinformed about gay people. Apparently, not everyone feels like their rights have been stripped. Over half of the members of your (mainly) heterosexual council members voted down the proposal for “Singled Out” and agreed to fund the GLBT Awareness Week program. It’s unfortunate that not all of them have the time or the weekly column in order to express why they felt this was a worthwhile program. Most likely, they were well informed enough to know that the GLBT Awareness Week program was the most inclusive of the programs, because it is there to educate the OSU community as a whole. At this point, I’m convinced more than ever that such education is solely needed.No Michael, we can’t have our cake and eat it, too. But at this point no one is offering us cake. We don’t even have a place at the table.
Andy Scahill[email protected]
