Peninsula, Please Shut Up

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I opened The Crimson November 25.

Then I read Christopher Brown's attack on Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes.

Then I threw up.

When I first saw the special double issue of Peninsula two weeks ago, I was upset. I was offended by the shattering pink triangle on the cover.

I was horrified by Peninsula's faulty logic (Homosexuality is bad for the individual. Why? Because homosexuals are unhappy. Why are they unhappy? Because homosexuality is bad for the individual.), by its nonsequiturs (casual sex is bad; therefore, homosexuals are incapable of love), by its misuse of some statistics ("current" AIDS information published in 1983), by its omission of other statistics (the Center for Disease Control report that by the year 2000 AIDS will be as prevalent in the straight community as it is in the gay community), and, in some places, by its sheer idiocy (some of us homosexuals may think we're happy, but we're wrong; we're all really utterly miserable).

But, although I was upset, offended and horrified, I was also cheered because it seemed that the issue was motivated by a genuine desire to help people.

I am not cheered by Brown's editorial. Yes, it was similar in its numerous logical flaws to the Peninsula issue that cheered me. For example, Gomes says a certain use of scripture is illegitimate. Therefore, Brown writes, Gomes doesn't believe we should distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of scripture.

Huh?

If I take my boyfriend out to dinner on his birthday, according to Brown I am low and degraded and immoral. Sure.

Brown's editorial is also similar to the Peninsula issue in that he asserts things that are simply wrong. According to Brown, Gomes says we have "no way of drawing any legitimate precept from the Bible of the Fathers." I don't know whose sermons Brown has been listening to. Certainly not Gomes's. I've heard every sermon preached in Memorial Church this year and I remember quite clearly hearing Gomes say not once but many times that the Bible is the source of moral precepts. The writers of Peninsula cannot both champion the cause of open debate and refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees with them.

What makes Brown's commentary so different from--and so much worse than--the Peninsula issue, though, is that it is motivated not by a desire to help people but by a desire to be cruel. The editorial is not an analysis of what he thinks is wrong with Gomes's talk; it is an opportunity for Chris to use his arrogant sarcasm and pretentious vocabulary ("unregenerately otiose"?) to be as vicious as he possibly can.

Accusing Gomes of filial impiety, murder, adultery, larceny, lying and covetousness, even in jest, doesn't advance Brown's argument; it merely gives him another chance to mock the man. Brown puts himself on such a high and sarcastic pedestal, it seems to me, only to spit on others from it, and that's reprehansible as well as prideful. Brown may be very familiar with St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, but he's forgotten St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians: "Be ye kind."

When the Peninsula came out, I kept my mouth shut, because, even though I was hurt, I believed that its writers really wanted to do good. Now that they seem to have descended into vicious personal attacks, though, I feel that I'm within the bounds of acceptable behavior in asking a favor of them:

Peninsula, please shut up. I'd like to hear your message, but until you figure out how to preach it without resorting to fallacy or cruelty, please shut up. Joel Derfner '95