Word: oppenheimers
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While I admire the candor of Noah D. Oppenheim '00 (Column, Apr. 3) regarding his moral issues with "Gaypril" (and his bold decision to print slang variants of "clitoris" in an article decrying the "downright obscene"), I must disagree with his loaded assessment that "[queers] may need to accept that the biological footing of heterosexuality...cannot be overcome...
Furthermore, same-sex desire should not force one to join a new community; there are different gradations between the labels "gay" and "straight." Forcing a person to acknowledge same-sex desire only in certain settings splinters that person's identity. As to Oppenheim's notion that the "foundations" or "biological footing" of our society--families--will be threatened if homosexuality is accepted: many gays and lesbians form happy families; and please let me know when heterosexuality appears to be going extinct...
Another distortion in Oppenheim's column is the comparison between past movements for racial/gender equity and the current pro-queer movement. Oppenheim inherits the subtler arguments of those who would keep women in the kitchen and blacks at the back of the bus because they felt society was not ready. At one point, America looked unready for gender and racial equality; radical activism changed that. If America looks unready for non-heterosexual orientations to be accepted, it is because we are hopefully in the process of moving towards acceptance...
Finally, isn't Oppenheim taking the BGLTSA pro-sex posters a bit too seriously? Didn't he, in a previous column defending the pictures of barely-clad women on his walls, discuss in a public forum a kind of sexuality that others might find objectionable? The BGLTSA's posters opened Gaypril in a funny and upbeat...
...Oppenheim thinks those posters are the sole "consciously constructed image that the queer community on campus wants to project," he should read the long list of serious events being scheduled for Queer Harvard Month, listed on posters around campus, and go to some. REBECCA REIDER '00 April...