Attacks on Magazine Are Unreasonable

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The current controversy over the most recent issue of the Peninsula surprised me beyond measure. The attacks of "bigotry" and "hatred" on the magazine are certainly unfounded.

As a soreign observer to whom debates between advocates of liberal and conservative causes are largely irrelevant (except as an amusing intellectual challenge), I'm generally as disinclined to read the Peninsula as I am to read any of the liberal publications on campus. Quite frankly, their journalism stinks.

When I peeked into the copy of Peninsula that was distributed to my door, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see rational, logical treatments of a controversial subject in a magazine from which I had come to expect nothing but mind-numbing propagandist talk.

The issue on homosexuality is filled with arguments that take sociological, religious or biological standpoints, all certainly more rational and logical than the overwhelmingly political arguments one sees in the liberal press.

I also fail to see the "bigotry" in articles that stress the equality of homosexuals to all other people, and the consequent need to treat them as no different from other people. Moreover, the solutions that the Peninsula offered to people grappling with their homosexuality seemed a good deal more productive than the "queer" lifestyle advocated by some of the gay and lesbian groups on campus.

The Peninsula's proposals--religious counseling, the choice not to practice homosexuality in spite of the urge to do so--are just as viable an alternative to homosexuals in deciding the kind of lifestyle they want to lead as the proposals of open homosexuality from liberal groups.

It is also interesting to note the hatred, narrow-mindedness and intolerance with which liberal groups such as the BGLSA have attacked the Peninsula's intellectual standpoints and proposals. For a group that claims to know the burden of persecution and claims to be actively opposed to it, their harassment of Peninsula editors indicates an ironic hypocrisy.

Moreover, The Crimson's coverage of the controversy has been singularly one-sided: Objective accounts of the Peninsula's contents are curiously absent, as are statements in support of the magazine to counter liberal attacks.

I would urge the members of the Harvard community to examine the object of derision for themselves, and make up their monds on their own. Personally. I can attest to the magazine's general integrity and, in fact, to its tolerance, in spite of my long-standing lack of respect for it and its liberal counterparts. Thomas Lembong '94