Bold Coming Out Day Posters Draw Protests, Explanations

To the editors:

The greatest injustice against Harvard's homosexuals and their supporters is not being perpetrated by anonymous homophobes scribbling cowardly threats, but by the great lie known as the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance (BGLTSA). This snotty clique of narcissists has overstepped not only the bounds of decency but quite possibly those of legality with Tuesday's obscene barrage of shock propaganda (News, Oct. 12). Supporters of equal rights for all people should be outraged at the attempt by the propagandists to appropriate homosexuals for their own self-serving game of limit-pushing.

I saw only one sign stating that people will love you upon "coming out," yet I saw three signs prominently and gratuitously displaying the word "fuck." Similarly, I observed a 1:3 ratio between memorializing Matthew Shepard and glorifying fellatio. Clearly the propagandists have a set priority, which is not bringing down barriers between Americans. This isn't a political outcry; this is exhibitionism, an apolitical exercise in attention-seeking, excepting that it unfairly claims an entire unwilling group as its constituency.

BGLTSA has personally insulted homosexuals and their supporters at large. But although a great many of us would rather not have children passers-by reading BGLTSA's exhortations to pedophilia or obscure, nauseating references to auto-oral-menstrual-eroticism, I saw no conservatives tear down Tuesday's ubiquitous smut. Imagine my outrage, then, upon seeing an avowed liberal, wearing the "coming out day" sticker, nonchalantly destroy two Republican candidate posters Tuesday evening. This movement must abandon its false pretense of open-mindedness. The increasingly bogus "queer" agenda won no supporters and gained at least this opponent today.

Randall W. Lucas '01

Oct. 13, 1999

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