Lat Accepts Gay Stereotypes

I don't blame David B. Lat for questioning whether the Undergrduate Council and the office for the Arts should allocate their admittedly scarce grant funds to the Association for the Absence of Rabid Moralism ("The Absence of rational Minds," Feb. 10, 1994). it's a legitimate question.

Nor do I faulty him for describing AFARM as "One big joke by Harvard gays," or for concluding that the group's attempts at humor and irreverence are "lame" and "infantile." His opinion is his prerogative.

I do question Lat's own effort to be humorous, however. Borrowings a line from "Ferries Bulla's Day Off," Lat ends his piece by suggesting that AFARM adopt the motto, "We fight morality with lots of puck, 'cause we're some students who like to.."

Perhaps Lat found this line sardonically satirical, maybe even "irreverent and vaguely humorous." But I find it offensive, Because it is typical of the homophobic instance on characterizing gays and lesbians as abnormally promiscuous sexual deviants.

Lat might have bolstered his argument by offering evidence to support his suggestion that homosexuals " like to..." any more than do heterosexuals.

There is little logic to Lat's apparent assumption that men who love men or women who love women are any more--or less--motivated by sexual impulses than men and women who love each other.

By describing the gay membership of AFARM solely in terms of what he imagines to be their bedroom behavior, Lat caters to the bigoted notion that homosexuality is a purely libidinal matter.

Like so many other who condemn homosexuality as "shameful" or "vile," lat focuses on sex to the exclusion of other, oftern more important, aspects of homosexual relation ships or heterosexual ones,. for that matter--love, mutual attraction, support and self-sacrifice, to name just a few.

Lat criticizes AFARM for rejecting "rational and intelligent discourse" in favor of ill-conceived humor. Unfortunately, by caricaturing homosexuals as promiscuous perverts, Lat himself as promiscuous perverts, Lat himself sacrifices reason and intelligence in a weak effort at writing a clever rhyme. Jordan Schreiber '95