Taking Jason Young’s article from Dec. 10 entitled “Gay Men Unite for Coming Out On Fraternity Row” at face value, it is apparently the case that hostility was experienced by gay men who intentionally sought to deceive their “fellow” brothers by actively concealing “who they were.”

It could be the case that the hostility experienced by this subset of gay men could have been a reaction to their deceit rather than their sexual orientation. These gay men actually evoked and cultivated an atmosphere of confusion, where they would eventually be singled out, confronted and would not be “a safe place anymore.”

Evidence of this appeared in the article where another gay man, who was open about “who he was,” was not only welcomed into the fraternity but throughout his residency, “sexuality was not an issue” and “there were no hostile reactions” toward him. These were two very different experiences with both “gay men” in a straight fraternity.

In these and many other cases, anger or hostility can be more logically ascribed to the act of deceit, rather than to one’s sexual orientation. Not everyone is a homophobe. All of us hate to be deceived.

Many times the victim mentality only promotes one to see how he or she was victimized when, in many instances, more complex relationships are evident and other more viable and more logical explanations exist.

Jeff Cheney

Graduate student

Human development and family studies