GUEST COLUMN: "Happy Hatecoming Weekend"

Halloween tries to be the scariest time of the year. Yet, among the men and women in drag, the Barney the Dinosaur costumes, the blood and the gore of the holiday, I never experience true fear. Instead, it is a fun celebration of creative minds and lots of candy. However, I anticipate the upcoming weekend with real dread. On Saturday, November 6, I will come face-to-face with the darkest, most evil forces on this Earth. Pure hatred will be personified in fascist skinheads, Neo-Nazis, and white supremacists. That day they will descend on the charming town of New Hope, in Bucks county, for a parade and rally titled "Gaybash '93." The United States Nationalist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Christian Posse Comitatus have chosen homosexuals as their latest prey. I guess "queers, perverts, and deviants" are an easy target. People of color and people from other countries do not arouse as much ire as they once did in the average American bigot's mind. Society, if only on the most basic level, acknowledges that hatred towards people with a different color of skin or different backgrounds and traditions is not acceptable. Apparently, racism and xenophobia have been placed on the back burner by right-wing groups in favor of homophobia, heterosexism, and if I may propose a new term, "homo-hatred." Don't get me wrong. Racism and intolerance still thrive in America. The bigotry that makes up what we call our country's history is ever present, and most recently the hate has been re-focused on sexual minorities. For example, upon seeing the majority of our nation's opposition to its ideology, the religious right's anti-choice, anti-abortion, and anti-woman Operation Rescue decided last spring to redirect their energy to attack equal rights for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, in addition to their usual attack on the rights of women. Is it any surprise that we (yes, I am one of those "queers.") are the oppressed du jour? We have always been condemned by someone, be it religion, government, medicine, psychology, social sciences, or family and "friends." Consider America's history of sanctioning homophobia as well as all of the other "-isms." Look at today's institutionalized discrimination in the armed forced and the University's own ROTC program. In the past months, in two separate cases, mothers have been robbed of their children because a judge saw loving someone of the same sex to be enough reason to render a person an unfit parent. The right decries the breakdown of the family, yet they are the one destroying people's lives and families. When did Pat Robertson become so wise as to be able to claim family values to belong uniquely to straight, married Christians? Is it possible that chosen families are just as valid, if not better than, biological families? Sexual minorities remain the last minority for which it is still acceptable and encouraged to deny equal rights, marginalize and despise on all levels. We need to discover the underlying connections between the fights to end heterosexism, racism, sexism, and classism. We all have vested interest in each other's causes. Equality cannot be achieved unless it is achieved on all fronts. Every sound-minded person should be enraged by the conglomeration of fascist groups marching this Saturday. "Gaybash '93" is not just about me, a queer Penn junior. It is not just about African-Americans who were lynched by the KKK. It is not just about Jewish, gay, and lesbian people who died in the Holocaust. It is about every queer, straight, in-between, African-American, Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Atheist, Asian, European, Caucasian, Latino, male, female person in the whole wide world, no matter your color beliefs, or background. I invite anyone who believes in ending intolerance and hatred to join me this Saturday in New Hope. My call to arms goes out to all students, graduate or undergraduate, from any school, all faculty, staff, administration, and everyone who reads this. Buses will be leaving from 30th Street Station in the morning and returning in the afternoon. Call the LGBA office to reserve a seat and for more information at 898-5270. I would like to see the haters out-numbered five to one. This type of bigotry cannot go unchecked. It must be confronted! Saying you care and acting on those feelings are two separate things. It's time we all stood up for what we believe in. And maybe, upon returning from this trip, aftr seeing such a clear and dried example of discrimination and intolerance, it can enable us to see the more subtle issues at stake on campus. Penn may not have skinheads parading up and down Locust Walk, but we do have problems of just as serious magnitude: bomb threats, a lack of diversity on the Walk, harassment, a disciminatory ROTC, and a community in need of strengthening. The solution does not lie in only looking at certain kinds of racism while ignoring discrimination and sexism. It is not as simple as black and white. It affects us all, majority or minority. It is all too easy to divert attention away from our real problems and cry out that one's First Amendment rights have been violated. Nothing will be achieved if we rely only on committees, commissions, and task forces. We must act. Stop pointing the finger, the responsibility lies within us, within me, within you. I'll see you in New Hope. Stephen Houghton is a College junior from Rockledge, PA. He is a member of QUIP and the co-chairperson of the LGBA.