To the editors:

National Coming Out Day is intended to counter the risk and pain that accompanies revealing sexual preference. It is a day for these students to share their identity in a safe environment and to take pride in being queer. The "conservative coming out dinner" held at Hillel (News, Feb. 25) represents a mocking appropriation of this experience.

Throughout the article, both the writer and the conservative students interviewed used phrases and metaphors commonly associated with being queer, while never admitting the connection. Anne L. Berry '00 asserted the dinner was not "a statement about other groups commonly associated with coming out events." What "other groups" might those be? Coming out has become equated with the experience of homosexuality or transgenderism, but Berry refuses to come out and say it. It is impossible to divide such a metaphor from its common usage; to use the term coming out so irresponsibly is to do harm to the youth and adults brave enough to live their lives in the open.

Similarly, Michael G. Housman '02 does not think anyone should "feel intimidated to share his or her political beliefs." Berry and Housman do not acknowledge that we still belong to a nation in which Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) asserts that homosexuals are sinful and Rev. Jerry Falwell goes into a rage about a purple children's show character. These are the figures associated with conservatism; are these the figures of which Berry is proud? The majority of the nation hangs on to the status quo.

While conservatives on this campus might be stereotyped or sneered at, there are real consequences to coming out as gay, bisexual, lesbian or transgendered that do not accompany openly discussing conservative political beliefs. Queer youth are thrown out by their parents; they are often forced to live in isolation from families that want no contact with them; and they are at risk of the kind of violence that ended the lives of Matthew Shepard and Rita Hester. "Coming out" as a conservative holds no such risks, and last Thursday's event appropriates that pain without taking responsibility for it. NICOLE L. DEBLOST '99 March 2, 1999 The author is the co-chair of the BGLTSA.