“Despite this discomfort, I will continue to press on as one of the last beacons of strength and morality. That may sound too pompous for the rather insignificant matter at hand, but courage on any level is hard to find these days. Political correctness, a weakening morality and lack of courage are suffocating our once-great nation.”
Sounds pretty serious … that is, until one realizes this guy is defending his right to scream “NOT GAY.”
The University of Virginia’s fight song goes:
“We come from old Virginia,
Where all is bright and gay.”
After which the students scream, “NOT GAY!” in a public validation of their heterosexuality. The tradition, a result of the colloquial meaning of “gay,” has been strongly discouraged by the administration at UVA, thanks to the action of minority rights groups on campus.
A first-year student, however, claims the chant is of a “religious” nature, in support of “our natural heterosexuality given to us by God.” I’m really sure he’s thinking about Leviticus 20:13 when downing Nattys at Saturday’s game.
He also doesn’t want to be “written off” as a homophobe, claiming that the liberals running the university are stifling the rights of the Christian majority to express their views. I don’t know what you guys think, but his opinion piece sounds pretty homophobic to me - if it’s so important to him, he ought to seek a less charged, less drunken forum to “express” his “religiously-informed belief that it is wrong to act homosexual.”
Note of course that he says “act” homosexual, not “be” homosexual. Because it’s a choice, right?
I can’t imagine this type of defamatory chant taking place at a Penn event - we love our LGBT population. We don’t blame them for “choosing” the wrong lifestyle. The majority of students here would stand behind any university policy to silence hate speech — which this “NOT GAY” chant truly represents.
I’m proud to be a tolerant Quaker, but I refuse to tolerate hate.
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November 16th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
You know in “Drink A Highball”, the lyrics read, “tonight, let’s all be gay.”
November 16th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
yeah and that’s fine because we don’t all scream NOT GAY afterwards. we accept the original meaning of the term.
November 17th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Of course, one usually hears “let’s all get laid” instead. It’s interesting to see how students at different schools alter the words to their school songs over time.
November 17th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
However tactless, I hope you would agree he still has the right to say it.
November 18th, 2007 at 2:00 am
So Morgan, what you’re saying is, you’re proud to be intolerant of a minority of people who don’t like homosexuals? The question of whether they’re all bigoted or not aside, you cannot legitimately write off all such speech “hate”.
In the end, I think homosexuality is probably innate, but I also think, to a great extent, that one’s environment and social climate can make one more or less inclined toward any type of sexual orientation.
Ultimately, Morgan, you’re saying, “I don’t like that some are callous and/or disparaging about their beliefs, so I’ll label their speech ‘hateful’ and deride them as ignorant.”
What you’re saying here is just as ill informed as the example you highlight of the UVA kids — both they and you are bigoted against a certain belief system.