COLUMN: B-GLAD It's Only Two Weeks

From Marc Teillon's "The Public Pillory," Fall '95 From Marc Teillon's "The Public Pillory," Fall '95When campus is flooded with sun-baked bodies and braided hair, you know spring is upon the University of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the return of sun and fun to West Philadelphia is always accompanied by an event where the sexual misfits on campus reek havoc for two weeks at a time. The Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian Awareness Days -- a.k.a. B-GLAD -- is once again upon us. What appears as a simple threat is actually a promise. But what the queer students will prove the next two weeks is not how "natural" sodomy is or how homosexuals are just like the rest of us. Instead, the homosexuals are showing Penn's campus just how desperate they are to legitimize their bedroom behavior. In the "Straight" Facts section of yesterday's DP supplement, the LGBA members confronted the only important issues in the homosexuality debate in four tiny paragraphs -- the one-in-ten statistic and the "naturalness" of homosexuality as a gauge for acceptability. They started off the section with the typical claim of last year's edition. "If you know 10 people, then the odds strongly favor your knowing someone who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Studies and current estimates indicate that at least ten percent of the population can be classified as bisexual or homosexual." Just like that. No proof, no names, just the ten percent figure taken as fact. But everyone knows the editors are referring to the famous Kinsey report since they don't specify otherwise. Alfred Kinsey, contrary to homosexual belief, is not a hero or a scientist. He is merely the leading vote-getter for the Dirty Old Man award. Science was his implement to legitimize his own deviant behavior. In "Sexual Behavior in the American Male," Kinsey padded his statistical pool with known deviants and ex-convicts. He himself was an avowed practitioner of anal intercourse and even performed research to prove little children "sought adult sexual attention naturally and that they were generally unharmed by adult and child sexual acts." To gain this data, Dr. Judith Reisman shows us that the Kinsey research team included nine men with histories of sexual abuse. He also subjected 317 children to "repeated" sexual stimulation (three for 24 hours straight) and spent 700 hours interviewing a single sado-masochist. His conclusions are biased and even the sympathetic New York Times and The Advocate, the dominate gay periodical, do not subscribe to Kinsey's skewed statistics. The popularly-published data today now hovers around one to three percent. As one magazine states, three percent is more an eccentricity than a minority. The editors from the LGBA then moved on to tells us that "much evidence points to the idea that homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. "Homosexuality occurs all over the globe, in every culture, in every race. We also have a long and proud history reaching all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome. Thus, the idea that homosexuality is caused by certain circumstances or that it is a psychological disorder seems doubtful." You see, as long as something has been done throughout the annals of history, it is natural and thus is legitimate and acceptable behavior. Then how about bestiality? This bizarre practice has been going on since the beginning of time. It's denounced in the Old Testament, brought to court in William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation and even has its own section in the XXX video stores. Since this practice is so prevalent and natural, is this just as acceptable as sexual intercourse between two human beings? What about adult-child sexual activity. The "proud history" of Sparta includes an enforced system of pederasty (if you don't know what it means, look it up). The glorious Agesilaus was Lysander's catamite (look it up). In America, we have the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Sexual intercourse with children is "in every culture, in every race." Since fifty-year-old men devouring six-year-old boys has a history, it must be natural. And since its natural, it must be an acceptable practice in society. Well, the B-GLAD editors weren't finished. They made an even more ludicrous statement. "Furthermore, if animals are considered more 'natural' than humans, it is interesting to note that explicit homosexual behavior and bonding has been documented among many animal groups in the wild." What an insult to mankind! Animals have no sexual constraint and no sense of right or wrong. For wild beasts, instinct is the only gauge of behavior. Reaction is natural. Your dog may not poop on your rug, but he does this because he fears a swift kick to the ribs, not because of any inherent ethical standard. Men, I hope, are more than mere animals. We have a thought process that allows us to be reasonable and exhibit self-control when our "natural instincts" say otherwise. Human beings have the ability to stop any one activity from becoming their only defining characteristic and to keep intimate activities private, not something to be performed in the front yard or the forest. Though we may stray from the norm because of weakness and profligacy, human nature is not a reason to forsake the norms and values handed down from generation to generation because "nobody knows conclusively what causes" one behavior over another. Norms exist to specifically sanction certain impulses that seem so natural and even normal. So for the next two weeks, non-homosexuals at Penn should be glad their own sexuality has not reached such a preoccupying state that they feel a need to parade it around Locust Walk. They should also be glad that even though some activities may seem natural, morality and civilized society has determined a set of cultural norms to gauge acceptable behavior. The homosexual movement realizes this and is not out and about to stop gay-bashing and housing discrimination. They are trying to include sodomy in the behavioral norms to finally legitimize their bizarre fetishes. Next Wednesday, March 22, is Gay Blue Jeans Day. "So don't forget to wear your denim to show your solidarity with or your support of Penn's lesbian, gay and bisexual community." I'll be wearing khakis.

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