Pay attention
November 19, 1997
“Simple logic reveals that something must be wrong with the gay lifestyle,” wrote Ev Cherrington in a letter to the editor for the Daily.
Ev, you are right. Something IS drastically wrong with the Ames gay community. We put up with far too much garbage from bigots like you.
Enough.
What is killing our queer teenagers? You are, Ev Cherrington. You, and everyone like you, and the attitudes you exude. Bigots. Closed-minded, clueless, misinformed, blinded bigots with your blanket bigoted remarks and “simple logic.” Kids realize they may be gay. Then they see you and people like you telling everyone they are terrible.
They are evil. They are “wrong.” Their minds are polluted by the homophobic society in which we live. They can’t find a reason to live. I have been through this, and so have almost all of the gay people I know. Luckily, either we failed at suicide, or we were able to see through the smokescreen of your homophobia to the truth.
I’ll bet you think you don’t know any gays or lesbians. You know what? You work with gay people. You live near gay people. When you go grocery shopping, people in the aisles are gay. When you walk down the street in the afternoon, you walk right past gay people. Members of your family are gay. But you don’t realize it. You know why? Because we are no different than you. This is not a personal attack, this is the truth.
You and your most articulate spokespeople and politicians still claim that homosexuality is “wrong.”
Over the past two months, both sides of this argument have gone back and forth in this newspaper. Where has this got us? Nowhere. You still have your wrong beliefs of homosexuality, which, by the way, is not just a “lifestyle.” God — your God, our God — made us this way, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And we are still meekly trying to defend ourselves, our friends and our families.
Enough.
Folks, we are at a critical juncture. It is essential that we put our differences aside. We must focus not on what divides us — our genders, races, classes, ages, religions, political ideologies — but on the one powerful enemy we all have in common: bigotry.
We will no longer allow you to breed hatred in our school. ENOUGH!
The best weapon we have is visibility. The most dignified, self-respecting action — indeed, the only action — a gay person in the 90s must take is to come out of the closet.
If you take one action for your community and for yourself, the one that is far more important than all of the dollars you can give and all the time you can volunteer is to tell the people around you that you are gay. Let people know the truth! These people vote. If they don’t know that we’re queer — if they think only the most horrible people are queer — they will vote against us.
We have a responsibility to ourselves, to each other and to humanity. We have a responsibility to Ev Cherrington. We must show him there is nothing “wrong” about being gay. Except for what we have put up with for so long.
Enough.
(P.S. Not everyone who signs this letter is queer. Most straight people actually realize there is nothing wrong with gay people. Also, you can see from our supporters across the United States that issues on the ISU campus reach much further than the city limits.)
Curt Lund
Freshman
Graphic design
Jason Gross
Senior
Community and regional planning
Meron Wondwosen
Senior
Political science and French
Angie Chipman
Sophomore
Psychology
Heather C. Martin
St. Norbert College
De Pere, Wisc.
Tom Van Waardhuizen
Sophomore
Botany
Reis Pearson
Graduate student
Interdisciplinary graduate studies
Lynn Wellnitz
Admissions secretary
Lauren Muser
Senior
English
Monica Willemsen
Senior
Sociology and religious studies
Tara Buschow
Junior
Meteorology
Andy Ervin
Senior
Meteorology
Joe Gale
Senior
Meteorology
Sharlene Macatangay
Freshman
Engineering
Allyn Lambertz
Junior
Biochemistry
Tony Sipma
Junior
Electrical engineering
Shawn Schueller
Junior
Forestry
Lauren Muser
Sophomore
Forestry
Bob Mohr
Junior
Architecture
Joel C. Fischer
Senior
Music
Josh Weems
Sophomore
Animal science
John Trevillyan
Ames
Dawn O’Donnell
University of Iowa
Iowa City
Erin Repesh
Moorhead State University
Moorhead, Minn.
Amanda Purington
Moorhead State University
Moorhead, Minn.
Dave Petersen
University of Minnesota-Duluth
Duluth, Minn.
Tanya Ninneman
University of Minnesota-Duluth
Duluth, Minn.
Marti Feller
Moorhead State University
Moorhead, Minn.
Elise Jones
St. Olaf College
Northfield, Minn.
Kate Lee
St. Olaf College
Northfield, Minn.
Travis Hodgdon
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio
Amber Rae Bernhardt
Bismarck State College
Bismarck, No. Dak.
Joey Jalimao-Kessler
Waco, Tex.
Mrs. M. Rex
Chelmsford, Mass.
Jeff Crowder
Los Angeles, Calif.
