Same-sex marriage wasn’t the only gay rights cause up for debate in this election. Sure, voters in eleven states were presented with ballot initiatives that would amend state constitutions to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and all eleven adopted the amendments by large percentages. But the literature promoting the initiatives makes it clear that marriage is not really the issue at stake. The debate focused on whether homosexuality was acceptable, in wedlock or out of it. That paints the new amendments as an even more major defeat, and calls for a new strategy for advocating gay rights. Harvard students in particular have a chance to make a real impact on issues of sexuality in their home states, but they need to take a new approach.

The Montana Voter Guide’s official statement from the proponents of the marriage amendment warned of dire consequences if the initiative failed: “Every public school in Montana would be required to teach your children that same-sex marriage and homosexuality are perfectly normal. Natural marriage is extremely important for future generations. Men and women are distinctly different. Each gender brings vitally important, and unique, elements to a child’s development. Saying that children don’t necessarily need fathers or mothers is saying that one gender or the other is unnecessary. A loving and compassionate society always aids motherless and fatherless families. Compassionate societies never intentionally create families without mothers or fathers, which is exactly what same-sex homes do.”

The opponents of same sex marriage are engaged in a debate that takes place throughout the country, where people still discuss whether homosexuality is a choice that might be un-made, whether “gay” is nothing more than a code word for godless promiscuity or whether it might be a natural defect that must be borne but not celebrated by the individual unlucky enough to be afflicted with it.

It is very easy to write off the people who hold these positions as unchangeably ignorant bigots, and same-sex advocacy organizations often unwittingly do just that. For instance, the Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Nov. 3 press release emphasized that marriage amendments failed in urban areas, even if they were eventually passed on the strength of rural votes. The Task Force dangerously implies that rural bumpkins could not be dissuaded from their prejudice, and gives them up for lost. Harvard students were wont to take this position after the election in every conceivable forum, such as when Former Harvard Professor Brian C.W. Palmer ’86 held a Mather roundtable which was characterized by self-reinforcing group think, leading discussion toward condescending oversimplifications about people of faith.

This sort of stance can only perpetuate the very attitudes it finds problematic. Stereotypes about “New England liberals” that President Bush brought so memorably into play during the debates have a great deal of currency in some parts of the country. If students from socially conservative areas absorb the type of rhetoric they hear at Harvard and take it home, they will confirm the notion that Ivy Leaguers are a bunch of leftists who will not deign to even consider opposing positions as anything but ignorant. This lexicon of alienation can take many forms. For one thing, the academy simply doesn’t speak the same language as most Americans, for whom “gender” glosses as “biological sex” and “queer” isn’t a word to throw around in polite company. But the stronger trap lies in the temptation to apply unsubstantiated categories. Dismissing the statements of relatives and friends as “homophobic,” even if they are, deprives students of the opportunity to advance substantive arguments that might have reached their target if they had been framed as a point open for discussion and not a pronouncement from on high.

Harvard students have cultural connections that they could use to establish same-sex relationships as positive—much more subtly than pictures in textbooks ever could. Abstract discussions of politics seldom change people’s positions on issues of sexuality and often produce fiestas of misunderstanding and scorn. It is far more effective to give homosexuality a face. Small things like offhandedly mentioning a friend your mother met while visiting is gay or watching the occasional movie with a positively depicted gay character can go a long way toward eroding the impersonal concept of the “gay movement,” with all of the images of an incomprehensible, radical culture that phrase can evoke.

These small gestures turn “homosexual” from a concept into a person, and lay the groundwork for a more abstract discussion that doesn’t have to take the form of clashing ideologies or religious beliefs. Marriage amendments brought issues of sexuality to the table. Harvard students can and should use natural conversational openings to have engaged and engaging discussions with tangible impact on ideas about sexuality—so long as they resist the impulse to treat other positions as stupid.

Kate A. Tiskus ’06, a Crimson editor and history concentrator in Mather House, is editor-in-chief of the Harvard Salient.