A Call for Tolerance

AFTER an incident of alleged harassment of a homosexual, Defeat Homophobia staged a kiss-in two weeks ago during dinner in the Mather House dining hall. The incident and the kiss-in have provoked widespread debate in Mather House and throughout the Harvard community, which has in fact proved what Defeat Homophobia expected it would--that a great deal of prejudice against homosexuals exists on this campus.

The response of many people on campus has been that the gay, lesbian and bisexual community should stop causing trouble and let everyone return to the `peaceful co-existence' that the entire Harvard community shared before this series of incidents. But the lesson of the past few weeks should be that that peace was only a comfortable illusion for those students who feel little connection to or sympathy for the gay community.

The incident at the Mather dance on February 19 is only part of the issue. Whether a gay student was pushing too hard for another man to dance with him or whether the other men involved were oversensitive and ended up harassing the gay student, the reaction to the incident shows how much underlying tension exists about homosexuality on campus.

Last year when gay students tabled in dining halls, asking students to sign a petition and answer questionnaires about attitudes on campus, they received several highly homophobic and even hateful responses. One student was even reported as saying, "I wouldn't sign the petition because I'm all in favor of homophobia on campus."

As gay students have pointed out, they are consistently made to feel unwelcome in this community, as well as in the world outside Harvard. Everything, from the common language such as "straight" to acceptable forms of behavior, implies that homosexuality is abnormal. There is no question that homophobia exists on this campus, and that it must be replaced by tolerance.

THIS implication of abnormality has pervaded the Harvard community's reaction to the events in Mather House. Many students who do not want to discuss the larger question of homophobia on campus have insisted on debating only what occurred in the initial harassment case.

Yet this case was only the most recent in a long series of homophobic incidents, which happened to be used as a jumping-off point for making the gay community message about discrimination known. The merits of the specific case should be seen as having little to do with the merits of the gay community's claims.

Students also protested the kiss-in as offensive to those members of the community who were not ready to be confronted with such a graphic display of homosexuality. But the kiss-in in fact clearly showed the limits of most students' allegiance to the cause of tolerance for another way of life.

One student described the kiss-in by saying that, "The students were shoving it in the face of people who are not ready to deal with it. That's what bothered me." But there should be no problem with students holding hands or kissing one another, and if it had been heterosexual couples doing so, the reaction would certainly have been different.

Two days later, Mather students entered their dining hall to see "Harvard faggots die" scrawled on a blackboard.

When about 100 Mather students last week took pink triangles to hang in their windows in order to show support for the gay community, other students said that the show was poorly timed because the Mather community was already upset by the earlier events and debates that had occured in the house. But shouldn't those who support gay rights take advantage of the existing dialogue in order to make their position known?

And at its Sunday night meeting the Undergraduate Council amended a resolution calling on house masters to hold discussions about homophobia to include the topic of "rights of heterosexual students" and sexual harassment in the resolution's introduction. The amendment clearly dilutes the original intent of these discussions as a way of continuing across campus the important discussions prompted by the events at Mather House.

THE past few weeks, then, have shown the deplorable limits of tolerance on this campus. Gay students should be treated the same as any other Harvard student. They should be able to discuss their sexual identity, walk arm-in-arm in public and ask someone of the same sex to dance. If this community of presumably enlightened students cannot overcome the oppressive conventions of society, how will the society at large ever be able to change?

The word homophobia implies fear of homosexuality, and it is definitely fear--combined with ignorance--that has characterized many students' reactions thus far. But gay students deserve to be treated with respect, not with fear or hatred. And it is only through true tolerance, exchange of ideas and open-minded acceptance of the validity of other lifestyles that this fear can ever be dispelled in this community.