Word: defeatism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Greatly assisted by three grossly misleading Crimson articles, which treated the incident as a straightforward occurrence of homophobic violence and implied that Mather House was thus divided only between enlightened citizens and petty bigots, Defeat Homophobia was able to turn a bizarre and unresolved charge of gay-on-straight harassment into a moral crusade, its alleged perpetrator into a martyr and the Mather debate into a purge of alleged homophobes: anyone who felt the incident to be an inappropriate cause celebre for even the most worthy cause...
...community's simultaneous exploitation of the Sunday incident and efforts to distract Mather discourse from any discussion of it raised serious questions about Defeat Homophobia's judgement, if not its true dedication to tolerance and education. In trying to raise our consciousness, it wounded and alienated a large group of Mather students, the friends of the visiting 17-year-old harassee. The tone of the debate at the ensuing Mather House meeting revealed a callous, mean-spirited side of what should be a caring, empathetic desire for tolerance and understanding in campus life. Their thoughtless handling of the situation...
...present anti-homophobe crusade at Mather would not have happened without the catalyst of 19 February: Defeat Homophobia explicitly cited it at the Kiss-in and manipulated it to turn the subsequent Mather House meeting into a soapbox for speeches against the harassment of homosexuals. Defeat Homophobia talks out of both sides of its mouth: at Mather, the incident on that Sunday and more general concerns about homophobia are "completely unrelated" (as they should be), but for outside consumption the incident of "homophobic violence" that night is the rallying-point for community outrage. In as many days, three Crimson pieces...
...Defeat Homophobia is right when it insists (at least to Mather students) that the harassment of homosexuals and the as yet unresolved incident should be separate issues. But for the present, at Mather, they cannot be. Defeat Homophobia did everything in its power to ensure this. As long as they are not separate issues, they should not be pushed further--for the sake of the very cause Defeat Homophobia espouses. Now it is time for the gay community to show the bit of understanding they correctly urge upon the rest of society: to realize that what will most help...
First, there was the "kiss-in," staged by members of Defeat Homophobia in the Mather dining hall last Friday. That protest, the outgrowth of an alleged harassment of a gay student the Sunday before, resulted in a Saturday house meeting during which students argued over the appropriateness of the dining hall kiss...