Date: 10 Mar 94 02:13:10 EST Subject: Pro-Gay University History From: anon@queernet.org (Anonymous Sender) The Atlanta Constitution January 2, 1994 copied with permission from the Journal/Constitution New Brunswick, N.J. -- There are many places where gay rights laws are anathema, where gay literature ignites bitter controversy, where gay meeting places are banished to the shadows. And then there's Rutgers University. At the New Jersey school, students can live in a gay dorm. An assistant dean looks after gay students. Student fees go to groups promoting gay concerns. Rutgers has a gay alumni association and gay archives. The school is committed to rooting out gay-bashing in any form and promoting tolerance. ``It seems like the community is doing all it can to help them fit in and not be a freak of nature,'' says Matthew Klain, a 20-year-old mathematics major. ``Just like, `It's OK.' '' Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, is not some lone gay oasis on the American academic scene. Far from it. Rutgers is among hundreds of schools -- public and private, secular and religious -- that are introducing homosexuality to academic discourse and making their campuses hospitable to homosexuals. Colleges often serve as incubators for changes churning American society at large. In this case, it's part of the shift from ostracizing to accepting homosexuals -- a shift that seems to be moving forward, despite organized opposition from the religious right and other sectors. At Rutgers and elsewhere, even the language for homosexuals has changed. Now it's ``lesbian, gay and bisexual.'' Or lesbian-gay-bi. Or LGB, for short. And ``queer theory'' is no insult. It's a scholarly pursuit for the meaning of sexual desire and gender in society, and the language used to talk about it. ``The whole flowering effervescence of gay and lesbian studies is a part of the development of our notions of gender and sexuality,'' said San Francisco State University psychology professor John DeCecco. DeCecco, 68, who edits The Journal of Homosexuality, inaugurated his university's 2- year-old minor in Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Studies and runs its human sexuality studies program. He estimates that 200 students enroll in those program courses at any one time on the campus of 25,000. ``We once believed gender and sexuality were physical, for making babies or for pleasure, in a limited sense,'' said DeCecco. ``We're now realizing it has other dimensions: psychological and erotic, historical and cultural.'' Even aside from studies, college campuses are throwing an ivy cloak around those who once lived in hiding or confusion and fear of being found out. ``I wish I was in college now, instead of when I was,'' said Curtis Shepard, 37, campus organizer for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. ``We're clearly making progress.'' His Washington-based organization lists more than 500 campuses as hospitable to gays. Proliferating only recently, many of these programs and services evolved over years of persistence by students and faculty. Rutgers dates its origins as a gay-friendly campus to 1970, when the Rutgers Student Homophile League issued a manifesto calling for candor and equality for homosexuals, and an end to anti-sodomy laws and police brutality. The league itself grew in the embryonic gay liberation movement that followed the 1969 Stonewall Riots, when police raided a gay bar in Greenwich Village and gays fought back. But it was not until the late 1980s that the university addressed gays and their needs as part of a larger effort to foster tolerance and diversity. Today, Shepard and others point to Rutgers as exemplary. And people like Shorne Lawrence, a 21- year-old senior in English and African studies, testify to the effects of the university's gay- inclusive policies. Loyal to lessons learned in his Newark boyhood, when he threw stones at transvestites, until lately Lawrence had nothing good to say about gays. His policy was simple: ``Get them away from me.'' Then one day about a year ago, his literature instructor got the class talking about homosexuals. That's when Lawrence learned he was homophobic. And then he changed. ``The class, conversing and bringing up issues made me realize they're people too,'' Lawrence said. ``I know for a fact, if I wasn't exposed to Rutgers, my thinking would have been more narrow- minded.'' But not everyone regards these developments as enlightening. Critics say so much attention to homosexuals squelches honest discourse, that it's an oppressive fad of the politically correct. ``The cause of gays and lesbians is the cause `du jour,' and so everyone is showing their sensitivity to gays,'' said Oron Strauss, a junior at Dartmouth College and editor in chief of the conservative weekly, The Dartmouth Review.