'Coming Out' in the Wrong Environment

To the editors:

I have been following the coverage in The Crimson of the shrinking membership of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance (BGLTSA) with sympathy for Harvard's gay community and the difficulty it has in promoting gay awareness (News, April 10). When I walked out of my room April 11 to find sexually explicit photographs postered all over the Yard, however, I was disgusted. Everywhere I went, I saw erotic pictures of men and women that left little or nothing to the imagination. Since I saw no other information, such as a person to contact or a time for an upcoming meeting, it took me a while to realize that these posters were part of BGLTSA's "Gaypril" campaign.

Being gay is not about sex; it is about sexual orientation. The designers of many of the posters that were displayed around campus Tuesday morning seem to have lost sight of that concept. Gay awareness should address feelings and preferences rather than sexual acts. A list of rules that the BGLTSA wrote to guide their poster-makers included "No Extreme Profanity" and "No Uncreative Vulgarity"; my question is why the posters required profanity and vulgarity at all, regardless of their creative content. None of the words in BGLTSA's acronym include or imply obscenity in their definitions.

Could the goal of community awareness not be served by promoting legislation in the community? By peaceful demonstrations or fliers handed out in front of the Science Center? Or even by poster campaigns using inoffensive slogans which are intended to educate rather than titillate? The April 11 posters certainly gained the attention of Harvard students, but did nothing to advertise homosexual awareness.

BGLTSA has had many positive effects on the Harvard community in the past. Its response to the homophobic attacks on Mather House resident tutor K. Kyriell Muhammad earlier this year was completely appropriate. The petition signed by Mather House residents to further gay awareness and understanding promoted the cause of the BGLTSA in a non-confrontational way that unified the straight and gay communities of Harvard.

I fail to understand the need to turn to negative and offensive campaigning such as the posters that were displayed April 11. Perhaps the reason why so few Harvard students come out of the closet is because they would rather sort through their conflicting emotions in a nurturing environment than be associated with such a sexually charged organization.

Heather M. Langdon '03

April 12, 2000

Abortion Belongs

in Take Back the Night

To the editors:

In "Take Abortion out of TBTN" (Op-Ed, April 13), Mattie J. Germer '03 and Erin L. Sheley '02 argue that abortion-rights activism should be eliminated from Take Back The Night week because "abortion is not an issue of gender-based violence." Germer and Sheley are correct that not all women at Harvard favor abortion rights, but their argument ignores the intimate connection between support for abortion rights and the ongoing battle against sexual violence.

What makes rape different from other forms of assault is that it involves the alienation of a woman or man from control over her or his own body. The introduction of physical or psychological coercion into sex attacks the very core of bodily determination and the right to control one's sexual, reproductive, and emotional life. The support for abortion rights is predicated on the same principles: women must have the right to control their own bodies and determine when and if they want to become mothers. The battle against sexual violence in this country has always been intimately linked with abortion-rights activism because of the natural affinity between the two positions.

The intense controversy surrounding abortion obviously shows that for many people the issue is about more than bodily determination, and, although I am very strongly in favor of abortion rights, I agree that there are other important considerations in the debate. There are legitimate reasons for people to disagree on this issue. But anti-abortion activism, which strips women of the right to control their bodies, has no place in a week of events to highlight the dangers of sexual violence. Abortion-rights action, on the contrary, belongs at the center of any discussion of bodily control and gendered behavior.

David B. Orr '01

April 13, 2000

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TBTN Forgot Guns

To the editors:

I commend the organizers of Harvard's Take Back the Night week for their noble efforts in combating rape and other crimes against women. I would also like to take this opportunity, in keeping with the theme of last week's events, to encourage handgun ownership and carrying among American women.

Sexist assertions by anti-gun activists tell women to fear guns. Arguments that an attacker (presumably male) would wrest a gun from a woman's control or that a woman with a gun would be more likely to hurt a family member than a criminal are clear sexist fallacies that attempt to rob women of agency, suggesting that they have no control over their own actions. Both are insults to the intelligence and independence of women.

Firearms are used by men and women hundreds of thousands of times each year to thwart crime. In states where citizens carry concealed handguns, violent crime rates decline. Women serious about stopping rape--both on an immediate level and on a societal level--should carry handguns, not whistles. As an added bonus, the high rate of repeat offenders in sex crimes means that rapists stopped by justifiable homicide will be unable to repeat their crimes; in this way, women carrying handguns protect not only themselves, but the whole of society.

R. W. Lucas '01

April 11, 2000

Preserve Pudding Decor

To the editors:

The Hasty Pudding, like all buildings, is made up of more than just walls and a roof: It has a distinct character, something overlooked in all the jubilation at its takeover by the University (Editorial, April 12). As we use the new space we should strive to keep the building as colorful as ever; maintaining its present faded glory would be infinitely preferable to giving it the shiny new feel of other recent renovations.

The University ought to invite student and faculty input not only on building use but architectural matters. When University Hall is renovated this summer, will those wonderful great round-headed doors on the first floor remain? Will wooden floors across campus be carpeted over as has happened in the Barker center? (You can hear tantalizing creaks beneath your feet in the English department.) To some degree, the honest, dated feel of the Science Center is preferable to the sanitized feel of Harvard Hall which tries to be all things to all people but only succeeds in feeling endlessly renovated. For better or worse, the Pudding building was occupied for more than a century by its namesake; it should bear some trace of this and of its antiquity.

Rick DuPuy '03

April 12, 2000

Jesus Week Promotes Unity Despite Diversity

To the editors:

We feel that the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Students Association (CSA) was misrepresented in "Christian Groups United But Torn by Upcoming 'Jesus Week'" (News, April 12). The Catholic Students Association is united with other Christian organization on campus in organizing and participating in Jesus Week, and we do not agree that there is a lack of unity between the CSA and other Christian groups in this project.

We find it quite difficult to speak for the entire Catholic community at Harvard. There are a great number of Catholics at Harvard, and with this large number comes a large diversity. Would some of the events and posters connected with Jesus Week make more than a few Catholics uncomfortable? It certainly is possible, but one must realize that even some of the events that the CSA runs make more than a few Catholics uncomfortable as well.

Many of these Catholics, however, are active in the CSA in other ways. To claim, then, that there is some sort of rift or a lack of unity in the Catholic community is not exactly true. There is a diversity, but not a lack of unity--we are all Catholic. The same is true for the Christian groups planning and participating in Jesus Week--there is diversity of belief and practice, but we are all Christian.

While we recognize that there are substantial differences in the types of Christianity that are professed and practiced by the various groups, and even various individuals in these groups, we do not feel that means that the groups are torn in regards to Jesus Week. We may, and do, hold different views of Christ, of the Bible, of the Church, of evangelization, and of many issues in Christian theology, but we are united in Jesus Week and in informing the Harvard campus about Christianity and its diversity here, as well as building Christian unity.

Moreover, we do feel that every effort has been made to include all Christians in Jesus Week. There is no intention on the part of any group involved of proselytizing or seeking to win converts as a byproduct of Jesus Week. We simply seek to engage the campus in a dialogue about Christianity here, hoping to erase stereotypes and to allow people to learn about what it is that we believe.

There are indeed differences between Catholics and Protestants, but we doubt that that is news to anybody. What is important is recognizing that both Catholics and Protestants are working together.

Chris L. Pierce '02

Lisa J. Wilde '01

Matt S. Vogel '01

April 13, 2000

Chris L. Pierce '02 and Lisa J. Wilde '02 are co-chairs of the Interfaith Committee of the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Students Association. Matt S. Vogel '01 is president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Students Association.

UHS Abortion Refund is Ethical

To the editors:

The Crimson's staff editorial, "Eliminate the Abortion Refund" (Editorial, April 13) is a masterpiece of muddled thinking and deceptive rhetoric. The editors claim to recognize the "strong moral objections to abortion," but then proceed to the dubious argument that such objections must take a back seat to the decisions of the nebulous "experts" who allocate UHS funding. These experts are apparently infallible, since we are informed, without evidence, that their decisions cannot be subjected to an "external moral, political, or religious debate." For The Crimson, apparently, ethics have a place in the sweatshop debate, but must never be applied to medicine.

The editors then proceed to equate opposition to abortion with the beliefs of Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses concerning the morality of receiving medical care. This argument obscures the fact that for pro-lifers, abortion is not merely a private sin (as, say, eating meat on Fridays in Lent is for Catholics) but a public crime: the deliberate taking of human life. And opposition to abortion is not a peculiar tenet of a single Denomination--rather, it is common to nearly all orthodox western religions, ranging from Missouri Synod Lutheranism to Shi'ite and Sunni Islam, and from Russian Orthodoxy to Orthodox Judaism. In suggesting that subsidizing abortion is morally unimportant, The Crimson is effectively offering a slap in the face to the entire western religious tradition.

By cavalierly dismissing abortion as just another "medical procedure"--an unscientific and illogical canard of the pro-choice movement for decades--and capping their intolerant argument with a pat, predictable appeal to "diversity," the Crimson does a grave disservice both to intellectual rigor and to the journalistic standards that it claims to uphold.

Ross G. Douthat '02

April 13, 2000

The writer is editor of the Harvard Salient.