Straight-up Political Correctness

When was the last time you talked about sharing a room with someone who is gay? If sexual orientation has come up lately, it was more likely over dinner, when you and your friends analyzed the political implications of a policy on gays in the military.

Don't ask, don't tell. The attitudes towards homosexuality in the public sphere have trickled down, all the way down to the neatly-trimmed lawns of liberal Harvard. In this age of randomized multiculturalism, we all like to consider ourselves politically correct.

Yet we subscribe to a very passive and uncontroversial mode of political correctness, glossing over rather than engaging and debating different opinions.

In the past two months, Mather, Winthrop and Adams House residents have joined the ranks of the many gay Americans who have been victims of homophobic hate crimes. The crimes have ranged from vandalization of posters to destruction of personal property.

The reactions of the House and school communities have varied. Some reacted with indignation; most notably, the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance (BGLTSA) organized a well-attended rally this past Tuesday on the steps of Memorial Church. Mather House students created a creed of tolerance, circulating a petition beseeching House residents: can't we all just get along? Mostly, though, the disinterested student response is the same as our reaction to any current event. Coup in Pakistan, too bad. Democratic primary debate, that's nice. Attack on my downstairs' neighbor, what a shame.

All ready, I know you want to stop reading this column. You are sick of people preaching to you about tolerance (towards gays or Hindus or short people, for that matter) and feel that the words that follow would be a waste of your precious Friday morning, falling on the ears of the already converted. Yeah, I know you consider yourself enlightened and accepting and I know that most of you have no problems with homosexuality.

But the recent homophobic incidents as well as most students' apathetic reaction should sound an alarm that all is not well in the beautiful rainbow-colored world of political correctness.

First, we like talking abstractly about tolerance without using dirty words like "queer." In response to the multiple attacks targeted against the beloved Mather tutor, students circulated a pledge refusing "to consider hostile, cowardly, and criminal acts to be reasonable elements of discourse."

This is the typical reaction; sanitizing our indignation with buzz-words like "discourse" and "zero tolerance" makes us feel warm and fuzzy. But there seems to be no inclination to sit down and openly discuss discomfort with homosexuality.

Second, the mainstream University culture stigmatizes racist, homophobic and sexist discrimination or behavior. Thank goodness for that or else many of us would not be here. A hundred years ago, Harvard did not treat the "other" so kindly. Some former Harvard presidents would turn over in their graves if they saw who eats in the Faculty Club these days.

Whether or not you recognize it as your legitimate representative government, the Undergraduate Council has just spoken on our behalf when it passed a series of anti-homophobic bills last week. The University will now have to think again about its automatic policy of switching students out of their suites because they experience discomfort with the sexual orientation of their roommates.

Ironically, though, it is just this liberal acceptance that dangerously provokes those who harbor hate or prejudice to lash out violently. Homophobes are feeling pretty out of the loop these days.

Luckily, we all benefit from a liberal mainstream which marginalizes intolerance. But, yet, it is just this assumption that the guy next to you in section is as comfortable as you are with differences that precludes actually asking him. Discussion and debate would be a far more constructive way to express homophobia than violent attacks.

Especially in this era of House randomization, I am sure you could find someone in your entryway who holds less-open views. Would you then have the guts to hear her out and debate her, instead of rolling your eyes and walking away, muttering "bigot?"

At the protest rally on Tuesday, BGLTSA co-chair Michael K. T. Tan '01 implored members of the Harvard community to serve as "straight allies," defending gay rights even if they themselves were not affected.

Tan understands the difficulty of this request. Individual tolerance and open-mindedness just won't be enough to combat homophobia; rather, straight students must make the "empathetic leap," in order to care about rights denied but deserved by others.

What all this boils down too is that passive political correctness alone cannot protect our community from crimes born of hate and ignorance. Instead, we need to build a new identity politics, where the identities in question are not always our own.