Hate Crime

By Barry Levey

Celebrate Black Leech on Society Month. Celebrate Take More Women in the Night.

I fail to see how either of these hypothetical anonymous notices could be said to encourage "debate." I do not believe that students who tore down such illegally-postered notices would be accused of imagining the "threat to minorities" such notices represent (Letter to the Editor, YDN, 4/2/99).

SARA EDWARD-CORBETT/YH

Yet when a group of queer Yalies celebrating Pride Week removed unsigned posters "Celebrating Gay Gluttony Week" and similar messages last week, the Yale student community didn't express outrage at the cowardice and danger represented by a well-organized, anonymous group inciting hatred. Instead, it condemned the queer students who tore the posters down.

Majority opinion somehow declared an attack on homosexuals to be proof that campus homophobia is imaginary. The arguments in defense of the posters represent a more insidious, unconscious homophobia operating on campus than anyone could have previously imagined. This isn't an issue of free speech; calling it one is a veiled way for the entire campus to join with the bigots.

The argument that these posters were valid expressions of opinion ignores several crucial facts. First of all, they were postered in violation of all Yale University advertising guidelines. They did not advertise an event, did not include a date or time to discuss the opinion expressed, and did not name a sponsoring organization. Therefore, the a YDN editorial's warped logic that the posters were somehow protected by an Executive Committee decision of 1986 in favor of bigot Wayne Dick, DC '88, is indefensible.

More than violating postering guidelines, the anti-gay notices forfeited their claims to free speech protection by inciting violence. Their lack of attribution insinuates the existence of a secret terrorist group, while the suggestion that straights "celebrate gay gluttony week" encourages them to commit acts to hinder displays of gay pride. The danger in these messages is clear: they qualify as hate speech, not free speech. To imagine they represented an invitation to discourse is to imagine that an anti-Semite who calls someone a "kike" wants an invitation to a seder.

It's true that minority groups must champion every group's right to responsible expression—thus the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) supported the Ku Klux Klan's right to march peacefully through the town of Skokie, Ill., which has a large population of Holocaust survivors. But this doesn't mean the ADL supports anonymous and violent expressions of anti-Semitism.

Unconscious homophobia rears its ugly head when gays are blamed for their own victimization. The YDN editorial's claim that the queer students behaved irresponsibly because "homophobia is certainly not condoned on campus, but neither is it effectively challenged [by gays]" reveals the real ideology behind the "free speech" argument. Apparently, when gays speak about homophobia, they exaggerate it; when they stay silent, they condone it. Homophobia has become insidious when a homophobic act is used as evidence that prejudice doesn't exist and gays are to blame if it does.

Homophobia exists at Yale. More than one-third of hate crimes reported to the Yale Police since 1992 have been against gays. In the past two years, members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Cooperative have spoken out about unreported cases of death threats, beatings, and thefts against gay students. One student testified that his residential college dean declared a hate crime unfit to be pursued.

I can think of no more appropriate action to inaugurate a celebration of identity, equality, and, free expression, than to rid the campus of illegal, irresponsible emblems of hate. If campus had been plastered with signs about "Black Leeches on Society" in February, I hope we would have celebrated Black History Month the same way.

Barry Levey is a senior in Davenport.

Graphic by Sara Edward-Corbett.

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