A day for support
National Coming Out Day an inspiration, should be respected by entire community
- ■F*
Yesterday was an important day for
some folks. Some gay and lesbian
folks to be exact.
Oct. 11 may not mean much to the
majority of society, but to the bent
crowd, it’s a holiday to behold.
Sortie people want it not to be
beheld.
It bums me out that KETV would
n’t sponsor its planned interview with
Linda Richenberg on the National
Coming Out Day festivities.
This just goes to show that it hasn’t
become easier over the years for homo
sexuals to find a voice that others can
hear on a wider scale than their three
closest friends.
RoseAnn Shannon said that
KETV’s “policy” for interviews was
that the event being promoted must not
be controversial.
It seems that KETV must never
have interviews on its broadcast unless
they’re focused on the ideals Shannon
believes in. These would be uncontro
versial just because she says so.
She couldn’t even respond with a
legitimate answer when asked what
controversy National Coming Out Day
caused, saying that she wouldn’t “go
down that road.”
To me, if you don’t have controver
sy (which is virtually inconceivable),
you don’t have mental stimulation,
which leads to understanding.
What I want people to Tealize is
that National Coming Out Day is not
only a holiday for those already out,
but it is an inspiration for those of you
who have been hiding something for a
long time.
I know how it feels to he to yourself
and those closest to you - I’ve been
there.
We’ve all been there in some way
or another. Maybe you grew up an
Orthodox Jew but secretly you were a
flaming Trinity United Methodist.
I remember my coming out day two
years ago.
I wanted it to be memorable.
I wanted it to be encoded in peo
ple’s minds.
I wanted it to be a complete shock
to my brother that his little sister was a
homo.
And it was a shock to him.
/was surprised that he had no idea
that I was into girls, to tell you the truth.
I thought for sure that he was onto me
when I kept asking for his girlfriend’s
phone number.
1 m only kidding, because 1 kept
my true feelings a secret for a very long
time.
I thought I could change my sexual
orientation by dating a man for a year
in college.
I did love him, but I knew I was har
boring feelings for girls, girls, girls.
The hardest thing that I have ever
done in my lifetime was to look him in
the eyes and say that the only way this
could work was if he put on a skirt and
grew his hair a bit longer.
He couldn’t agree to it, so I flew the
coop with another lady.
Believe me, I will always have
guilt for screwing him over for the rest
of my life.
I think about him often, but he has
since found someone who completes
him while I still search to iron out my
kinks.
One day he thought I was the best
thing since Fruit by the Foot, and the
next he was wondering what the hell
happened that made me leave him for
another woman.
Leaving him for a woman may
seem heartless to many of you, but it
was the best thing I’ve ever done,
although I didn’t think so at the time.
Ben and I got along staggeringly
.well, like two peas in a pod. Only one
of the peas wasn’t hot for the other.
I couldn’t keep lying to him and
making myself miserable. So I made
him feel miserable.
That’s the way the cards were dealt.
The prospect of telling my parents,
then, was as pleasing as slowly dying
under 10 feet of snow after being
caught in a nasty avalanche while
snowboarding.
I kept forgetting that I had to let
everyone else in on the discovery
because it was so hard to discover for
myself.
I was mentally exhausted, and I
didn’t want to tell anyone. I was
happy just being with my brand
new, shiny, 1977 Caucasian ^
female. I shouldn’t compare her
to a car, but I’m going to anyway.
So ha!
It does get better, however,
and there is another side to the
rainbow. No pun intended. I
You slowly realize that "
some people understand, |
and the others will be dis
tanced from a friend or a
family member. We just b
don’t need help from
television stations to
spread the intoler
ance.
Times for
Shannon are
changing for the
sake of shel
tering peo
ple, not for
opening
their minds.
It’s unfortu
nate that she
waited until
Carol Kloss
(who original
ly set up the
interview)
was out of
town to make
this executive decision.
The executive decision is for the
good of mankind, because lord knows
that Americans in the late ’90s see way
too many television interviews con
cerning issues of homosexuality.
I am being facetious.
I’ve never seen a complete bom
bardment of gay issues, even on
National Coming Out Day, a gay holi
day.
And it’s people like Shannon who
are responsible for this.
National Coming Out Day
becomes more of a controversy when
certain people exhaust themselves try
ing to shut down a holiday rather than
letting the gay community have its one
day to speak out to the people
who do want to hear what
has to be said.
Right now we
aren’t asking for a week or a month to
get together and raise issues to the
community, but just one day.
Maybe people don’t think all the
media attention will help someone
who is hiding his or her sexuality, but it
can’t hurt.
Letting those in the closet know
there is a day to gather and rejoice
together in perfect gay harmony is bet
ter than sitting in your residence hall
room feeling isolated because you are
unsure if there are others questioning
their sexual preference.
Even if you’re not in support of
National Coming Out Day (Johanns),
you don’t have to put forth energy to
try and stop the day (Shannon). Just let
it slip by like the rest of your week.
You probably won’t lose your job,
but you’ll lose a certain respect from a
small, yet mighty population.
Megan Cody/DN
Karen Brown is a junior English andfilm studies major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.
A crime is a crime
Demographics should be left out of determining penalties for breaking the law
Matthew Shepard died one year
ago today.
Shepard, a 21-year-old student at
the University ofWyoming, was pistol
whipped, lashed to a wooden fence and
left to die on a cold Wyoming night in a
pasture outside of Laramie.
Matthew Shepard was a gay man. It
was quickly determined that his homo
sexuality was the main motive in his
murderers’ hellish deeds.
One of the assailants, Russell
Henderson, has since been sentenced
to two consecutive life sentences. He
avoided the death penalty in a plea bar
gain orchestrated by his attorney.
The trial of Aaron McKinney, the
killer considered by many to be the
instigator of die crime, got under way
Monday in Laramie.
McKinney, if justice prevails, will
receive the death penalty.
Both of these cretins deserve to die
for their*crimes.
- What they did shocked the nation
and understandably so. Outpourings of
grief and public rage swept across the
land.
In the aftermath of this tragedy, a
new one developed. An assortment of
politicians and activists began to use
the publicity surrounding Shepard’s
brutal death for their own gain.
Shepard’s plight was exploited and
cheapened by those who, for years, had
been hell-bent on expanding and
strengthening federal hate crimes leg
islation.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act,
which Would extend the existing law to
include sexual orientation, gender and
disability to the existing race, religion
and color classifications has cleared
the Senate and is yet to be voted on by
the House.
The ideas behind hate crime legis
lation seem to be chock-full of good
intentions. But too many times in our
society today, we accept things for the
sake of political correctness without
first examining their legitimacy and
worth.
McKinney and Henderson deserve
to die not because they killed a gay man
or a white man or a Christian man, they
deserve the punishment of death
because they killed a man, a fellow
human being.
Additionally, the premise behind
hate crimes often seems just plain silly.
How are we to label crimes not
considered to be “hate crimes”? If a
straight white man kills another
straight white man, is that somehow
not a crime stemming from hate?
Years ago, a man injected his 11
month-old son with HIV so he would
n’t have to pay child support. His son is
now 7 years old and slowly dying of
AIDS.
This crime was not labeled a “hate”
crime.
So what was it?
A love crime?
A crime is a crime is a crime. There
shouldn’t be varying levels of punish
ment based on the victim’s skin color,
gender or sexual orientation. That’s not
how our legal system is meant to work.
Margaret Carlson wrote in an
October issue of Time last year that
many critics of hate crime legislation
rightfully consider these laws “codi
fied redundancies that cause unneces
sary complications for real-world
courtrooms already saddled with the
heavy demands of proof.”
I’d have to say I agree with these
critics.
We have laws on the books that, if
given their full authority and properly
executed, will sufficiently punish crim
inals for their crimes. We do not need to
tie up the already incredibly slothful
court system with the responsibility of
determining motive in each case pre
sented.
UCLA law Professor James Q.
Wilson points out in an essay printed in
a September 1999 issue of National
Review that showing intent, not
motive, is essential in court.
As an example, he writes: “It usual
ly makes no difference whether an
intentional killing was motivated by a
desire to get rich, to kill immigrants or
to prove one’s toughness. They are all
premeditated murder.”
In further outlining his opposition
to hate-crime legislation, Wilson
66
If a straight white man kills another straight
white man, is that somehow not a crime
stemming from hate?
claims, “There are only two ways to
think about violence: Either we penal
ize all violence more than we now do or
we convert the homicide and assault
statutes into some combination of
affirmative-action quotas and
Americans with Disabilities Act bene
fits.”
Hate-crime legislation has become
more of a ceremonial tool of identity
politics than any kind of effective sys
tem of administering justice.
If Shepard had not been gay, would
his killers deserve lesser punishments?
Wilson addresses this in his essay:
“Can you think of any group that
does not deserve special protection? If
not, every group should be covered by
the law - which is just another way of
saying that the existing criminal penal
ties are too weak.”
With hate-crime legislation, not
only are the defendant’s actions and
intentions on trial, but so are his
thought processes.
Are we going to have psychologists
acting as lawyers?
We have to face it There are igno
rant racists and bigots out there, but we
cannot prosecute them for holding
their racist and bigoted beliefs. It is
their right, however misinformed they
may be, to hold any views they wish.
What we can prosecute them for is
the crimes they commit.
If a white man kills a black man, he
should be punished to fullest extent of
the law, as should a black man who kills
a white man.
Another problem that arises in the
hate-crime debate is the reality of the
double standards that accompany it.
Did you hear any mention of hate
crimes after the school shootings in
Colorado? Even after it was apparent
that the killers seemed to be specifical
ly targeting members of some groups -
specifically Christians and athletes?
How about the recent church shoot
ing in Texas and the numerous church
burnings in the past couple of years?
After these events, where was the
media frenzy over an epidemic of anti
Christian hate crimes?
It was nonexistent. It seems that if
you happen to be white and Christian, it
is impossible for you to be a victim of a
hate crime.
We should swiftly and justly punish
the criminal for the crime he commits,
regardless of the demographics of the
victim.
Josh Moenning is an advertising major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.