Editorial

Gay rights battle

If anything, Jayce’s Cox speech Saturday—in which he detailed his physical torture at the hands of the Mormon church—should remind us that the battle for gay rights is not over.

Indeed, anti-gay remarks even reared their ugly head last week on Capitol Hill. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), third in line for the Republican leadership, likened homosexuality to incest, bigamy and polygamy. He went on to say that homosexuality, feminism and liberalism are all threats to the American family.

On Tuesday, the AP released the full text of Santorum’s interview. While discussing the constitutional right to privacy, he said, “That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing … the idea is that the state doesn’t have the right to limit individuals’ wants and passions. I disagree with that.”

“And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home,” he continued, “then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery.”

Santorum has refused to apologize. Gay rights activists have called for him to relinquish his leadership post within the party.

It’s admirable that Queers and Allies of Faith brought Cox to campus. But the general complacency towards gay activism is disheartening. Thirteen states still have laws on their books that criminalize consensual homosexual sex. Under Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule, the military has discharged more gay service members than under the previous Bush and Reagan administrations.

The deeper pestilence, though, is a culture where gay teens are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers, where gay partners are penalized under the tax codes, where even in Oberlin students walking along Route 58 continue to be harassed by passing cars.

And as Carmen Vazquez, a lesbian activist, remarked last week, “If we think funding for HIV/AIDS won’t be severely impacted by the costs to fight this war and occupy Iraq, we are delusional.”

The Supreme Court is now considering the case of two Texas men who were fined $200 for consensual sex in their own home. If their verdict is not overturned, it will imperil the mens’ future, branding them as convicts and sexual offenders.

Take action. Visit the Human Rights Campaign, www.hrc.org — contacting your state and federal officials is easier than ever. Redressing human rights violations begins at home.

Rude food

Campus Dining Services is to be applauded for seeking to please more students more of the time.

But the need for so many changes — revamping DeCafe, closing down Talcott — speaks to a larger problem: students still don’t really want to eat on campus.

Until recently, it wasn’t all that uncommon for students to get married — or enter into faux civil partnerships — just to get off board. Of course, this practice may still continue in quiet corners of the Oberlin student body. Accurate statistics are hard to come by.

And it’s important to note that not everyone feels this way. Many students actually like eating at CDS; and for those receiving financial aid, well, turns out there is such a thing as a free lunch.

But a rough survey of Review staff and their acquaintances indicates that most students who pay their own way would rather eat off board. Those students who eat five meals per week end up paying an average of $14.50 per meal — roughly the cost of two Buffalo Shistawouks and a pint of Guinness at the Feve.

And most of those contacted in this same informal survey felt they’d rather have the shistawouks and beer than dine at Stevenson.

A lunch cart in the Science Center is certainly a step in the right direction. Similarly, moving fourth meal to Dascomb has met with general plaudits from the students.

And yet the tradition of getting dropped off board on the student’s 23rd birthday remains. What’s the right approach, then, to making CDS more approachable?

The Administration has taken the right approach to adding new housing in coming years — mimicking, to the extent possible, the options available to students off campus. Campus Dining Services’ proper goal must be to compete with town dining options. If it can, CDS will truly be a contender in the Oberlin dining arena.

Editorials are the responsibility of the Review editorial board—the Editors in Chief, Managing Editor and Commentary Editor—and do not necessarily reflect the view of the staff of the Review.