The Baylor Lariat, the student newspaper at Baylor University, is criticizing reports of a course listing offered in the school’s sociology department called “Homosexuality as a gateway drug,” decrying the reports as “inaccurate reporting” and “cheap shots.”
The Lariat defends the course as a legitimate field of study and notes that the course is an independent study that is not open to the student body.
“Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues do exist in society,” Lariat news editor Ashley Ohriner wrote. “A sociology thesis exploring the topic is appropriate by any account.”
Studying LGBT issues in a conservative environment is indeed an appropriate topic of study. Titling the study “Homosexuality as a gateway drug” tells us what the conclusions will be.
Patti Fink, a Baylor alum and prominent LGBT activist in Dallas, asked, “Gateway to what? Polygamy? Bestiality? Cocaine?”
Karen Click, director of the Southern Methodist University Women’s Center, said, “I am not aware of a similar course being offered at SMU.”
Noting SMU’s place on the Princeton Review‘s list of the country’s most homophobic schools and the fact that Baylor dropped off the most recent survey, Click said, “Does that fit with Baylor’s ranking?”
As outraged as Baylor Lariat staffers and school officials may be at the “blatant disregard for accurate reporting” that they have seen relating to this independent study, they seem to have no problem with the original thesis comparing sexual orientation to drug use. The article notes that the class name has been changed. But the fact that a faculty member and the sociology department chair approved the title and it got into the course catalog, speaks volumes about the school’s attitude toward its LGBT students, faculty, staff and alumni.
This article is exhibit A for inaccurate and silly reporting. The title of the course tells you nothing about the conclusion of study. Anyone knows that most of these sorts of independent studies allowed for undergraduates are exploratory in nature. Of course SMU doesn’t have the exact same undergrad independent study, they don’t have the exact same undergraduate student who probably proposed the study in the first place. And most educated people know that social scientists such as psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists study all sorts of human groups and behaviors, testing various theories and how they might help explain changes in human behavior. If a social scientist were to study people who like ice cream, it says nothing about the value of ice cream.
Turning one undergrad student’s poorly title independent study into a news story …. really? C’mon, you journalists can do better than that. Why don’t you cover something substantive.
Emma: The idea that homosexuality is a gateway drug is as insulting as calling your school’s CHOICE of religion a gateway drug. Not understanding the bigotry behind the title means it’s a gateway to bigotry. And I called Karen at SMU so she could get a good laugh at your expense. Not only would SMU not be offering a course with this name, they would counsel the student who suggested it. Believe me, her quote was filtered through the laughter.
To be clear, the course title was not turned into a news story, but a blog post, a comment on one more really stupid thing your school has done, brought to my attention by Patti Fink, a Baylor alum who is outraged..
And my complaint isn’t with one student. It’s with the professor and department chair who approved it as well as the atmosphere at your school that would sue its LGBT alumni to keep them from using their school’s name just like other alumni.
Will the University or the Lariat be willing to offering a “Christianity as a gateway drug” independent study course next semester?
Why not “study” something that has some value to it, like perhaps the life cycle of a dandelion? Here’s my take: this course is being offered as a way to recruit innocent, naive young college students into that “lifestyle” we’ve heard so much about (but never witnessed or experienced). What other reasons would the university have for offering this course? (Answer: there are none.)
Again, it’s not actually a course. It’s an independent study that was printed in the course listings. But the question remains why a professor would approve and a department chair would approve something like this. Bigotry. It took an uproar in the media and outrage by LGBT alums to get them to change the title. But ‘gateway drug’ implies that homosexuality leads to something. Hopefully the student will study LGBT Baylor alums and find the one thing more of them have in common than anything else. The student will have to come to the conclusion that homosexuality leads to — advanced degrees including doctorates.
The “gateway drug” certainly led to something for me: a healthy, long-term relationship with my beloved partner. (I already had the advanced degree by that time.) Again, why waste time on something as asinine as this when there are worthwhile causes for which one could expend his energy and resources? Sometimes you just have to shake your head in incredulity (or exasperation, or disgust), rise above it and move on.
I am the Lariat News Editor and the author of the Lariat article in question. I am and always have been pro-LGBT. I agree with Emma that this article exhibits the clear disregard for proper reporting I spoke about in my editorial. If Mr. Taffet had properly cited my original article, he would have told the readers that I wrote that the student did not want to explore the fact that homosexuality is a gateway, but the conservative (and incorrect) belief that pollutes society. We were told the student wanted to take apart the conservative argument in a critical way.
Now, thank you for proving my editorial to be a true depiction of today’s media. I just hope I can be a better representative of journalists after graduation.