Dear Editor,
I am appalled at the fact that you took students’ social media posts and made them out to be homophobic. Coming from a lesbian girl, there isn’t a single homophobic student here at SMU. I hate you for portraying SMU as “Nazis” and taking social media posts and quoting them out of context.
A friend of mine, Sarah Gimbel, was interviewed and expressed her intelligent and well thought-out comments on why she voted no, but you left all of that out and used her quote out of context to show support for your article. Those “faggot” posts mean nothing.
As the great Louis CK once said, “I’m fine to see two guys sucking dicks, but if one take it out and says ‘people from Phoenix are Phoenicians’ I would say ‘quit being a faggot and suck that dick.’” I demand you run a retraction article and apologize to the students of SMU.
Name on file
Dear Editor,
I read, with interest, your article regarding the second defeat of a vote that would have included an LGBT on the student Senate. The article troubled me, but I think it is representative of the apathy that I see growing in the gay community. I put most of the blame on social media.
I have lived in Dallas since 1978. There were no such things as Twitter, Facebook, cellphones or computers. People talked to each other, and incidents got noticed by word of mouth.
The first time I ever took any kind of political action was against a Dallas judge named Jack Hampton. He gave a lighter sentence to the killers of gay men because he said, basically, that the victims brought it on themselves by cruising in the parks.
That lit a match under a lot of us, and I would guess there were about 200 of us picketing at City Hall soon after that was printed in the paper. I remember the March On Washington, when the first George Bush was president, when we ascended on Washington D.C., by the thousands, displayed our beautiful quilt, had a candlelight vigil and shook our fists in defiance as the president took off (or landed — can’t recall which) in his helicopter from/to the White House. We were united, and we were defiant, and we were Larry Kramer-like angry.
Then the cell phone, computer, Twitter and Facebook come along. With it, came the ability to post things anonymously and viciously. With it came, what I would call, a fragmentation of outlets for people’s thoughts and actions. For example, now, when there is some petition going around, an easy example would be about something outrageous that Rick Perry said, it is simply sent to everyone on the mailing list in the form of a letter that just has to be signed and forwarded. That’s it — end of story.
Correct me if I am wrong, but when was the last time that the gay community in Dallas made a concerted, organized effort to protest something — ANYTHING? What about Exxon and their absolute refusal to acknowledge the LGBT community as equals in all aspects of employment? What about when The First Baptist Church put up a sign saying “GAY IS NOT OK”? Where have the marches on Austin gone? When we protested so many anti-gay policies of this state?
The pro-choice people have rallied by the thousands in support of the courage of Wendy Davis. Now, it seems as if the gay community couldn’t care less. And the most troubling aspect of this is that it is young people — the same demographic that seems to overwhelmingly support gay marriage and gay rights in general.
So apparently these supposed “intellects” (I mean, lets face it, SMU is not easy to get in to), are being influenced by anonymous, hateful Twitter messages and allowing it to influence their vote. Quite frankly, I am surprised they voted at all, but the fact that they did, in higher numbers than in the first election, shows that the time for sitting back and allowing this to happen without any kind of public reaction is just plain wrong. Granted, this is an SMU issue. I am hopeful that there are enough students and professors on campus who will rally to try and educate students about the effects of discrimination.
The fact that this vote ended up going against an LGBT representative is, in my opinion, the continued influence that previous generations still have on our young people.
The people who wrote the hateful tweets had to learn that line of thinking somewhere, and it has to be from their parents or from the parents of their friends.
I am still very hopeful that as the older generations fade away, the younger ones will see the errors of their ways. Until then, we must not continue to sit at our computers and hope someone else has the courage to stand up for what is right. We must all come together, once again, to assist in forwarding the message that discrimination in any form is wrong.
Name on file
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 9, 2014.
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