I’m glad I never start these columns by saying “I am not gay, but …” Quite frankly, I’ve never really understood why people feel the need to let everyone know in advance they are straight when supporting their gay friends. I don’t care if people get suspicious because I support gay rights or not. If you are curious, you can stay that way.

Frankly, I wish I wasn’t so damn butch all the time. In my line of work, it can be a drawback. I get offended when people say they don’t think there is any way I could be mistaken for gay. What the hell is THAT all about? I could be, you don’t know. A lot of really brilliant people are gay. I think Oscar Wilde was gay. Alexander the Great. My mom’s friend Fran.

I think it should be an insult in our society to tell someone there is no way they could be mistaken for gay. It’s like saying, “There is no way you could be mistaken for intelligent or creative,” because so many of the great minds in history were gay ones.

Still, some things in life are a virtual guarantee. It won’t rain all the time; you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need; you’re gonna die; letters attacking the homosexual “lifestyle” will always appear in the Daily.

At least they will until they are no longer needed.

You see, this is because there are still a lot of crackers out there who are basically cavemen. They hate homosexuals, probably because of some defect in their own personality. They cannot contain it. It boils to the surface in the most embarrassing of places— like the letters section.

They want to know, why does the Daily have to run stories about homosexuals? Maybe that is good question deserving a legitimate answer. Let me answer that question with another question.

Why did we feel compelled to run stories about the civil rights movement of the ’60s? Why did we run stories about apartheid? Why did we run stories about the moon landing and the Gulf War?

Because we are in the business of disseminating news. When a group of Americans feels it is not getting equal treatment under the law and seeks to create awareness of those issues, it’s news regardless of what any sloped forehead thinks.

We don’t do news stories about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender students because we want to make the vast majority of campus deal with something they don’t want to deal with.

We do it because right now in this time and place, LGBT students are asserting themselves and attempting to have equal treatment under the law and in the eyes of the society, which is theirs by right.

I don’t apologize for this. I’m proud of the fact that we know what is going on in our time and place, the direction the wind is blowing and, most importantly, right from wrong.

One cracker had this to say earlier in the week, “A newspaper should report news that people are concerned about.” Uh, no, a newspaper should report the news; not everyone is “concerned” about the same things. If it only reports things that people WANT to hear about, it ceases to be news and turns into FoxNews, O.J. coverage and infotainment.

“I go to the Daily for news relevant to me and my community, not to see a platform for a controversial lifestyle.” Here is some news relevant to you and your community pal: if it happens on campus, it’s your community. If it happens in Ames, it is your community. Likewise, Iowa, the Midwest and the United States.

“A large majority of the Iowa State population has no interest in seeing such controversial, irrelevant material in their paper.” God gave you fingers for something besides sniffing, turn the page.

Hell, if you go by the numbers, a large majority of Iowa State probably doesn’t care about farming, faculty and staff news or greek affairs. This is news by the vast majority, it’s news for everybody, and we get to everybody eventually.

What exactly freaks these people out, anyway? You see a couple of guys kissing, and you are so disgusted that you just can’t turn away? People who complain about images of gayness are almost always people with a secret.

You complain loudly about gays so everyone can see you really hate them. Who are you trying to convince? You or us?

Letter writers can assert all they want that we are trying to shove unpleasant images in their faces, but then similar letters ran in college newspaper across the country when the subject was sit-ins and equal rights for black Americans who had been too long denied their basic rights.

I have the honor of reading all of the letters to the editor and picking the ones that get in and the ones that never see the light of day. I do not choose letters that only show us in a good light, nor do I ever choose not to run a letter that might make us look bad.

Everything being equal, if the prominent browridge crowd want, to take the time to write a letter and spout off about how much they hate LGBT students and the Daily for covering their events, I will run it gladly. One or two jokers write the typical “I hate queers, so don’t remind me they exist” letter and try to justify it with a few half-hearted attempts at logic. Let them try.

They do more to increase support for LGBT issues than I can ever do by trying to convince everyone to be open-minded.

Hate turns people off, so keep those letters coming. Those people on the fence read your little hate-filled epistles and say to themselves, “I don’t want to be mistaken for that nimrod.”

It only goes to show how wrong they are it suggest there is no interest in these stories when hordes of people respond to contrary.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.