In his book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University,” Brown University student Kevin Roose writes about his semester as transfer at Liberty University, the Virginia university founded by Jerry Falwell. In an article about that student and this book, AP’s Eric Tucker reports that “A roommate he depicts as aggressively anti-gay — all names are changed in the book is an outcast on the hall, not a role model.”
Even students at Liberty University, like patrons at a New Jersey sports bar, they have no truck for loud-mouthed anti-gay attitudes. Not all young people may support gay marriage, but it does seem that the overwhelming majority are remarkably tolerant of their gay peers, even in socially conservative institutions.
We really have made a lot of progress in the last forty years. And it’s important that we acknowledge it.
Bashing gay people is no longer a parth to gaining favor with one’s peers. It’s just not cool. And that, my friends, is something to cheer.
(H/t Instapundit.)
A lot of progress has been made, but there are still kids committing suicide over anti-gay bully in middle school and high school. It is much more likely that a gay kid will commit suicide vs. their straight counterpart. I personally am still in high school and do deal with being called “fag” and other things of that nature pretty much daily, but really its nothing horrible. It’s just being a teenager. But still for other kids it can be unbearable. Yes lets cheer abut the progress that we have made, but we must also acknowledge that teens are still suffering verbal and physical abuse in school.
Yup,
I remember I was teased for being a ‘geek’ a ‘wallflower’ a ‘band geek’ a ‘drama geek’…
Oh wait, that kind of shoots huge gaping holes in your argument doesn’t it? Unless you’re campainging for the end to social stratification and cliques. Good luck with that.
Thor:
Your comments touched me greatly having gone to a very traditional high school myself.
I won’t sugar-coat this though. In the US, suicide rates for lesbian and gay teens are three to five times that for straight kids. Importantly, in very progressive countries like the Netherlands and Scandinavia, hate speech is monitored zelously (no pesky 1st Amendment) and state-run schools have had a gay-positive curriculum since the late-80’s. Thor, the suicide rate for lesbian and gay teens there is… three to five times that for straight kids. It’s exactly the same. Ditto rates of reported depression.
I wouldn’t presume that you yourself are gay. But if you were, a site like this one is a great first step. Conservative, self-reliance will give you all the tools you need for life. Ah, imagine Thor, those taunting kids will be working for you in a few years and will hustle ahead to get the door for you each morning.
Best wishes,
-MFS
This post intrigued me, in fact it makes me sad that Christians are not always loving and that we need to note when they are. Here are my two cents, whatever they may be worth.
Perhaps that the issue here isn’t that the students are now more “tolerant” of gays, but more that as Christians (one can presume that the majority of students at Liberty are Christians), as Christians, they realize that they are called to love. Even if they believe that homosexuality is wrong, Jesus still called them to love. A person filled with hate, for whomever or for whatever reason, cannot be a Christian leader, and the other students were mature enough in their faith to recognize this.
Obviously, I cannot speak for Jerry Farwell’s soul, but there were a lot of things he said and did with which I disagreed strongly.
I think that the Church has done a horrible job dealing with this issue. I believe that homosexuality is wrong, but even Jesus ate and spent the most time with the people whom the religious authorities deemed the scum of the scum. As a Christian, we are called to love everyone. I can love you or anyone and not condone their actions. We are all sinners, no one is perfect, so whom am I to tell you that your sins are worse than mine?
Please don’t think that I am trying to cause a stir here. I follow your blog fairly regularly, and although I don’t see eye to eye with you on everything, I think that you have some very good opinions and insights. I enjoy your writing and I learn a lot from you and Bruce.
touche’ The Livewire!
OK, if we can imagine a younger generation who is tolerant and supportive of gays, why can’t we imagine a whole century, say the 19th? I think the attitudes of people in the 19th century roughly mirrors youth today–they didn’t care. If we look at cowboy couples, Moby Dick, Walt Whitman, Last of the Mohicans, In Memoriam, etc. etc., we find complete acceptance of loving gay couples. That wonderful era of tolerance ended with Stonewall and the Pride movement when gays brought victimization on themselves. Now, today’s youth are returning to that wonderful era when Uncle John and his dear friend Joe could share a room and go to the opera together. I’m so glad that the brief, unpleasant Stonewall era is finally ending.
Ashpenaz,
While I’ll admit to only having read the ‘condenced classics’ version of Moby Dick (yes, the title alone has more than enough innuendo) and Last of the Mohicians, I never read anything more than friendship (and brotherhood in the case of LotM) into it. Is there something in the original I’m missing, or is it more of the ‘Batman and Robin, nudge nudge wink wink’ style.
One thing I hate about some LotR fans is they seem to think the Frodo/Samwise slash fiction was JRR’s original intent.
Complete acceptance in the 19th Century? This was a period in which people (in Anglo Saxon cultures in particular) rarely discussed sexual matters; in fact, such repression of sexuality and oppression of homosexuality (see British anti-homosexuality and anti-sodomy laws — for many years punishable by death, American anti-sodomy laws, etc.) was regarded as an instrument of social cohesion — that keeping vice out of polite society would diminish its occurrence generally. We should bear in mind that a lack of explicit writings, statements, and noted activity don’t mean “complete acceptance”. It’s easy to cherry pick historical figures to support a thesis (and build a romanticized view of a bygone era), but for every Melville there is a Wilde and many, many others who remain nameless to us moderns. It’s just as easy — and dishonest — to state that homosexuality was completely repressed until Stonewall, as some activists would have us believe.
Notwithstanding 1 or 2 of my fellow commentors who deny there was ever a problem 😉
although I was born in ’62 I do have friends who passed through the Lavendar Scare of the 50’s. . .
The Lavender Scare refers to the fear and persecution of homosexuals in the fifties that paralleled the anti-communist Red Scare. Because the psychiatric community regarded homosexuality as a mental illness, gay men and lesbians were considered susceptible to blackmail, thus constituting a “security risk.†In 1950, the same year that Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed 205 communists were hiding in the State Department, John Puerifory, the Undersecretary of state claimed that there was a “homosexual underground” in the State Department, so[1] the government fired 91 homosexual employees for security reasons.[2] [3] Because most homosexuals in the 1950s were not “out” and some were married, McCarthey assumed that communists would blackmail homosexuals in the federal government and force them into giving secret information on the US government.
Ironically (but not publicly known until decades later), McCarthy hired as chief counsel of his Congressional subcommittee a closeted homosexual, Roy Cohn. Together, McCarthy and Cohn were responsible for the firing of scores of gay men from government employment, some of whom lost their homes and their families; some even committed suicide.
Several causes for the Lavender Scare have been suggested, including the growing visibility of homosexuality, shifts in conspiracy thinking, a perceived crisis in American masculinity, and political efforts to root out New Deal conservatives. They also considered homosexuality as immoral as communism. Because homosexuals were so secretive and would hang out in closed groups they were tagged as being equal and as shameful as communist partisans.
The term for this persecution was popularized by David K. Johnson based on the association of the color lavender with homosexuality,and is used in his book The Lavender Scare: the Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. wiki
Thanks for posting this. I have been trying to say this for over a decade now. I became a Christian in ’92 and I would say that things really started changing around early to mid ’90’s (or maybe I was just discovering it?)
All I know is that it is a far different world today than in 1982.
#3 MFS notes:
I wonder how this statistic is known. Rulings beyond suicide are very rare. That is to say, most suicides are not assigned an “official” reason, because the reason is unknowable. In the event a note is left, it is normally treated with the confidentiality of a medical record. If a known gay commits suicide, we can not assume or even verify that he did so because of his sexuality.
I can understand this “statistic” being guessed at by those who wish to amplify the difficulties of being gay in a “hostile” society. But I would rather see the data that underlies the statement.
Yes, things have changed for the better. For those out there who long for the “good old days” of the closet: the United States will go back to that era only if there is a sudden wave of repression that even you couldn’t comprehend & will be impossible in a democratic & free society. In short, no matter what political persuasion dominates in Washington at a given moment, by staying out of the closet & putting a human face to the issue, the truly homophobic will just wither away. That’s a GOOD thing.
I wonder how this statistic is known.
Probably the same way it is “known” that Superbowl Sunday is the biggest day of the year for Violence Against Women.
… Or that the phrase “rule of thumb” refers to beating your wife.
I gotta go with Beverly. I’m fairly certain that the pride parades and Southern Decadence had nothing to do with it and that acceptance has come despite those activities. Nor do I think victimhood and whining for special treatment had much to do with it.
I’m curious how views changed during the time Mr. Falwell was alive and if he had anything to do with it. I’m not sure about the full credibility of these mega church university anyway – keep in mind that during his lifetime, Falwell made claims such as Jesus would support strong military defense or that people who got into financial problems did so because they weren’t tithing to his church. Can only that intolerance of anti-gay bigotry can only help the folks there realize a lot of other things their founder said were wrong as well.