By decrying even moderate conservatives as fascists and making no place in their world view for us--by demanding that we accept rather than tolerate homosexuals--BGLSA, Queer Nation and their allies have helped make co-existence well-nigh impossible. This weekend, ACT-UP displayed a poster which depicted Pope John Paul II and a condom and asked, "which is a dick and which is a condom?" This is blatantly offensive and deliberately inflammatory. Imagine the outcry if AALARM stooped to such a level.

Asking that conservatives unequivocally accept homosexuality while refusing to grant the most basic civilities in return is rank hypocrisy. In such an atmosphere, is it any wonder that conservatives resort to reactionary provocation? The blue square campaign is about the only way for conservatives to shake the campus out of a complacency that stifles criticism of gay activism.

So long as liberals refuse to listen to a muted, reasonable conservative voice, stunts such as AALARM's will surely follow. And in the meantime, the chasm opens, and we begin to view each other not as human beings, but as demonized enemies.

For those who attempt to tolerate opposing views, this is a difficult time to be a Harvard student. Demonizing one's opponents feeds into an even greater isolation and forces groups to take drastic action to be heard at all.

Those conservatives or liberals who fraternize with the enemy are progressively more uncomfortable having friends who disagree with their other friends. Conservatives sometimes take too literally Jesus' saying, "He who is not for me is against me." Liberals go equally overboard applying the 1960s radical slogan, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

How are we to carry on any constructive discourse when everyone has decided from the outset that the other side can say nothing worth listening to?

Gay-bashing and violence against gays should have no place in a true conservative's heart--and AALARM has been derelict in making this point clear. Similarly, campus gay groups should extend the same tolerance and charity to conservatives that they themselves demand.

Harvard is a lonely place for conservatives, and the more liberals attempt to silence us, or exclude us from the campus debate by name-calling and diabolization, the more shrill will our rhetoric have to become.

And the less hospitable Harvard will be to productive discourse.