Wednesday’s march of same-sex couples in honor of National Coming Out Day was undoubtedly a resounding success. As Queer Student Alliance Co-Chairwoman Alexis Ruby-Howe told the Daily Pennsylvanian, the march met with very few, if any, openly negative reactions. Penn’s campus has certainly progressed tremendously since the jaw-dropping and blatant staring of the October 2001 Coming Out Day.

(daytonlgbtcenter.com)

Thankfully, this positive reaction was somewhat predictable. Penn is very socially liberal. If you’re brave enough to admit you don’t like same-sex couples holding hands and marching down Locust Walk, then you better be gracious enough to wait until after they’re done. We’re not perfect, but we’ve got class.

Unfortunately, not all universities are so lucky. Yale’s National Coming Out Day festivities started off on a sour note when students checked their e-mail Wednesday morning. Many of them found an anonymous anti-gay message sent from what appeared to be a Yale e-mail account.

Sent under the alias “Yale LGBTTQQQQ…(et al.),” the message was signed by a fake group calling itself the “National Organization to Gain Acceptance for Your Sins,” or “N.O.G.A.Y.S.” Along with comparing LGBTQ students to racists and Nazis, the e-mail also proclaimed that “there’s no shame in being who you are. Just remember, admitting it doesn’t make it right.”

Corresponding flyers also appeared around campus, one of which featured a picture of Paris Hilton and the words, “Paris is coming out as a whore… Admitting it doesn’t make it right.”

I’m so thrilled to find out that some Yalies are putting their Ivy League education to good use by covering their campus with this prejudiced garbage. Hatred is never acceptable, and it’s definitely not okay to voice it on a day that is geared toward celebrating those who were brave enough to stand up and say to their entire campus, “This is who I am.”

It’s important to remember that no matter how much progress we’ve made, there are always new obstacles. It’s great that we go to a school where at least relative acceptance of those who might be different from us is common place. But we need to remember that this isn’t the case everywhere. And because Yale is widely known as very welcoming toward the LGBTQ community, this should serve as a wake-up call that prejudice can be found anywhere, even here at Penn.

And to the geniuses behind N.O.G.A.Y.S.: If you’re going to force everyone to listen to your hateful rhetoric, please at least have the guts to sign your name.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.