Gays at Harvard

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Friday night, August 3 at Phillips Brooks House, the Divinity School Lesbian and Gay Caucus held a dance to raise money for a conference to be held in November. While the dance was held for a good cause, with very good music, and with a fine attendance, the reception in the Harvard community was, to say the least, mixed.

First, literally hundreds of flyers were posted throughout the Harvard Square area, often placed next to a viola de gamba recital announcement. Interestingly, most of the flyers announcing the dance were torn down in a short period of time, often within minutes, while the viola de gamba announcements remained.

Second, on the night of the dance, summer school residents of Stoughton Hall next to Phillips Brooks House yelled "faggots" and "queers" throughout the evening to people attending the dance. Fortunately, they chose no to take their aggression any further than this, and gay people can generally pass off such taunts as ignorance of fear.

On the other side, there were a few people who called themselves heterosexual who managed to come to the dance and enjoy it for what it was. We thank them for their good manners.

Anyone having spent time in the gay and lesbian rights movement will know that destroyed flyers and ignorant taunts are par for the course. Yet it is nevertheless somewhat amazing that Harvard Students, many of whom arrive fresh from superior early education and intelligent, liberal parents, would respond in the crude manner of the residents of Stoughton Hall. Likewise, it is amazing that Cambridge, the center, some say, of liberal education and general enlightment should respond with the tearing down of signs.

Liberal education and enlightment notwithstanding, "straight" people often speak from their liberal heads and act from their fear-ridden guts. This may explain in the final analysis the recent non-discrimination clause regarding sexual preference passed by the Law School, concomitant with the bigoted actions of the residents of Stoughton and Cambridge.

Gay people have waited hundreds of years to be where we are today, and in the flow of things, we tend to take "straight" people in stride. It would be nice though to think that Harvard could truly engender the integrity and morality which "Veritas" would seem to promise. Bradley Prunty   HDS Lesbian and Gay Caucus