Many decades ago, a ‘great awakening’ swept through our country, an awakening that radically altered the political and cultural landscape. The changes, including the mitigation of discrimination at home and awareness of the horrors of the Vietnam War abroad, were of a positive nature. The recent suicide of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old student attending Rutgers University shows us that in many ways, we still have progress to make in regards to the way that our society views and treats homosexuals.
For those who haven’t yet heard, Clementi was a gifted young student and accomplished violinist in his freshman year at Rutgers University. He was also gay. His roommate, Dharum Ravi, and a friend, Molly Wei, secretly broadcasted Clementi on the Internet having a sexual encounter. This was most likely the event that led to the young student’s suicide a few days later. Coming out of the closet can be difficult considering the fact that the young gay person risks being shunned and rejected by a large portion of the population and possibly even his or her own family.
The actions of the two students were despicable, but they were not the sole source of distress facing a young gay student upon entering college. The equal rights protests of the past 50 years have created a massive backlash movement. Despite our best efforts to bring American culture and civilization into the 21st century, there are segments of the population that would rather live in a world that is not governed by reason and civility. They pine for an age before scientific investigation, an age that was characterized by waves of delusion and mass hysteria.
The major stumbling block to social and cultural progress for the last millennia or so has been the two largest Abrahamic religions. It makes no difference whether the believers are Muslim or Christian, when it comes to attitudes towards women and homosexuals, both groups are equally backwards. Their most fervent adherents believe that homosexuality is a choice, and that gay people are sinners.
The recent debate over Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage initiative, is instructive. In spite of their very best efforts at deception, the argument put forward by proponents of the measure is basically a religious argument. The tragedy of Proposition 8 and other such forms of hate speech, is that it actively seeks to persecute a specific demographic of the population, while providing no justice or relief to any other group. The only people affected by such measures are homosexuals who choose to marry. Marriage for straight people will remain as it always has, regardless of the legal status of homosexual marriage.
For some reason, religious conservatives seem to feel threatened by the very existence of people who think and practice differently than they do. It is just such attitudes that lead to a culture of intolerance for minority populations.
It is against this backdrop that we often see tragic events like the suicide of a young gay student.
Sterling Harris a graduate student in electrical engineering and a columnist for the Daily 49er.
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