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ALTERNATIVE
January 1991 ▼ Volume 6, Number 1 W Serving The Baltimore /Washington, D.C. Community Since 1986
Unrest In
FROM COLLEGE CAMPUSES TO THE PERSIAN GULF, GAYS FACE CHALLENGES
ON CAMPUS
Harassment
Policies
BY MUBARAK S. DAHIR
SPECIAL TO THE ALTERNATIVE
Flyers announcing the founding of the Anti-Homosexual
and Feminist League surfaced this Fall on the
Georgetown University campus. In 1988, the Sigma Chi
fraternity of George Washington University threw a “Straights
Only” theme party, complete with pink triangles engulfed in
universal “not allowed” symbols, coinciding with the
Northern Lesbian and Gay Student Union Conference being
hosted there. And during Gay Pride Week at the University of
Maryland, a poster advertising Pride events was ripped from
the gay and lesbian student office, replaced with the message:
“Stop AIDS, Kill Faggots.”
According to The National Institute Against Prejudice and
Violence in Baltimore, in the past three years more than 175
universities have reported serious incidents of harassment on
campus. It is not surprising that a large number of these cases
involve homophobia since, as a 1987 report by the National
Institute of Justice states, "homosexuals are probably the most
frequent victims of hate-motivated crimes.”
In response, many campuses have moved to tighten their
policies on harassment, among them the University of
Wisconsin, the University of Connecticut, and Emory
University in Atlanta. The entire University of California sys¬
tem now considers “fighting words" a form of harassment,
following a definition given in the 1942 Supreme Court case
of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, as words that “incite an
immediate breach of the peace.”
But the new statutes have sparked a heated national debate
regarding where universities can and should be drawing the
fine and often fuzzy boundary lines separating harassment
from free speech.
A University of Michigan policy was struck down in 1989
by a federal district judge who found the wording so vague
that “persons of common intelligence must guess at its mean¬
ing.” Last spring a similar suit was filed against the University
of Wisconsin, and legal deliberation is expected to commence
there in January.
Opponents of the policies fear such restrictions could create
an atmosphere for the repression of unpopular ideas.
“A great quiet descends upon a place where debate is cen¬
sored,” says Scott Burris, a lawyer with the American Civil
Liberties Union.
See CAMPUS, page 8
IN THE PERSIAN GULF
Gay Warriors in the Sands
One way or another
No one will be spared
I call out to my brothers
Does anybody care?
— Michael Callen
The Flirtations
“ Living in Wartime”
BY JOHN ZEH _
THE ALTERNATIVE
WASHINGTON— Protests
against American policy in
the Persian Gulf and the
threat of war escalated last month
with actions on campuses, rallies at
the White House and elsewhere,
arrests at the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial, and opening of the first
toll-free hotline for peace.
Gay and lesbian leaders of student
groups here expressed fear that their
peers may believe war is not an
important issue because homosexu¬
als are exempt from military service.
Hundreds of people — as many as
1500 according to one estimate —
marched from Lafayette Park across
from Bush’s residence to the Lincoln
and Vietnam war monuments.
Fifty people who blocked traffic
were arrested in the culmination of
an afternoon-long protest against
President George Bush’s handling of
Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
“I don’t want us in a war,” said
Eve Faber of Oppression Under
Target! (OUT!), DC’s premier les¬
bian and gay direct action group that
recruited 15-20 rally participants."
There are a lot of good reasons
why gay men and lesbians want not
to fight — problems of the military’s
discrimination, and gay and lesbian
victims of war in Arab countries,”
she said. “But the bottom line is, we
shouldn’t go to war.”
See GULF, page 9
