When was the last time you talked about sharing a room with someone who is gay? If sexual orientation has come up lately, it was more likely over dinner, when you and your friends analyzed the political implications of a policy on gays in the military.

Don't ask, don't tell. The attitudes towards homosexuality in the public sphere have trickled down, all the way down to the neatly-trimmed lawns of liberal Harvard. In this age of randomized multiculturalism, we all like to consider ourselves politically correct.

Yet we subscribe to a very passive and uncontroversial mode of political correctness, glossing over rather than engaging and debating different opinions.

In the past two months, Mather, Winthrop and Adams House residents have joined the ranks of the many gay Americans who have been victims of homophobic hate crimes. The crimes have ranged from vandalization of posters to destruction of personal property.

The reactions of the House and school communities have varied. Some reacted with indignation; most notably, the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance (BGLTSA) organized a well-attended rally this past Tuesday on the steps of Memorial Church. Mather House students created a creed of tolerance, circulating a petition beseeching House residents: can't we all just get along? Mostly, though, the disinterested student response is the same as our reaction to any current event. Coup in Pakistan, too bad. Democratic primary debate, that's nice. Attack on my downstairs' neighbor, what a shame.

All ready, I know you want to stop reading this column. You are sick of people preaching to you about tolerance (towards gays or Hindus or short people, for that matter) and feel that the words that follow would be a waste of your precious Friday morning, falling on the ears of the already converted. Yeah, I know you consider yourself enlightened and accepting and I know that most of you have no problems with homosexuality.

But the recent homophobic incidents as well as most students' apathetic reaction should sound an alarm that all is not well in the beautiful rainbow-colored world of political correctness.

First, we like talking abstractly about tolerance without using dirty words like "queer." In response to the multiple attacks targeted against the beloved Mather tutor, students circulated a pledge refusing "to consider hostile, cowardly, and criminal acts to be reasonable elements of discourse."