The Queer Resource Center of the Claremont Colleges recently distributed a student climate survey to determine student attitudes toward "LGBT" issues on campus. This survey, however, is insulting and demeaning.
Section 7 lists several Yes or No statements about "LGBT" students and issues. One of these statements reads, "Being LGBT is a choice, and an LGBT person could choose to be heterosexual if he or she wanted to." In this statement, the QRC is artificially conflating group identification with personal attraction. Such conflation is deceptive and manipulative, and the QRC's failure to recognize such a basic distinction significantly weakens their credibility as a constructive influence on campus.
What QRC is basically saying in this statement is, "If you are a woman and are attracted to other women, you are lesbian. You are one of us. You belong at QRC and not at Christian Fellowship." Their deceptive conflation of "LGBT" group identity with non-heterosexual personal attraction is manipulative toward orthodox Jewish and Christian students and the student body at large: either we accept the ethics of QRC, renounce our own, and label "LGBT" identity as good and necessary (check "No"), or we abandon common sense and assert that sexual inclination is a conscious choice (check "Yes"). While orthodox Christians and any clear-thinking people admit that group identification is a choice, I know of no reasonable person who believes that anyone, homosexual or heterosexual, can "choose" their temptations away. Yet this survey presupposes such belief on the part of anyone who asserts the first half of the statement, "Being LGBT is a choice." The Queer Resource Center is deceiving students about their pro-family peers and manipulating them into agreement with QRC.
Claremont students, "LGBT" or not, should be outraged at the Queer Resource Center's lack of sincerity in this operation. If the QRC really cared about "LGBT" students and creating a safe environment for them, it would be seeking to unite the student body around common values, NOT ostracizing the orthodox for our philosophical differences. If you are "LGBT" and concerned for your safety, your best allies are the people who believe, regardless of any peripheral qualities, that your human essence makes you valuable and worthy of protection.
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7 comments:
I've been wondering about the status of this debate. Just under a decade ago, a professor of Ethnic and Gender Studies told me that the LGBT movement wanted to get away from the idea that one is born with certain sexual preferences because they feared a eugenics renaissance.
I've yet to see this message catch on, but the statement in question, here, seems to be in line with it.
That is a fascinating subject. With the survey itself, though, I'm not even concerned about theories of causality...mainly just the implicit assumption that homosexual youth necessarily have to line up with the "LGBT" movement. And the further implication that to oppose anyone lining up with the "LGBT" movement and identity, as Orthodoxy demands, is as backwards as believing that "LGBT" people can "choose" their inclinations away.
So... you think their human essence isn't protected if they identify themselves as gay?
That's exactly the opposite of what I said. You have human dignity simply because you are a human being.
For the record, the survey was distributed by AQUA (Alliance for Queer Understanding and Appreciation), the queer group on campus, not by the QRC.
Get your facts straight before you write.
oh! and just because you identify as Queer does not pit you against the religious. There are plenty of religious Queer people....even orthodox ones.
No one said being "queer" pits you against the religious.
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