Your Turn Letters to the Editor

Turn your back on bigotry

At the marriage amendment forum in the Commons on Tuesday, I chose to stand with my back to Delegate Bob Marshall during his three-minute monologue to open the event. Afterward, several people asked me why I did this; I decided to explain my actions.

Delegate Marshall has made a legislative career out of being both a misogynist and a homophobe. I have sat in numerous General Assembly meetings as he introduced legislation to ban everything from gay adoption to gay marriage to gay-straight alliances in public schools. Time and time again, Marshall has argued that gay and lesbian people deserve few, if any, civil and legal rights because he feels we are immoral, unstable, depressed, depraved, or some combination of these qualities. He uses bigoted, incendiary statements to defame gay and lesbian people and to legitimize his mission to make us second-class citizens.

His homophobia not only impedes LGBT people’s ability to raise families, hold jobs and form relationships. It also encourages the efforts of those who would perpetrate violent acts against our community by making us seem inferior. It is my belief that bigots do not deserve the deference of being able to freely spout their homophobia to an audience.

Delegate Marshall needs to know that gay and lesbian people and our straight allies are not going to sit back and take his defamation. We are going to respond boldly and provocatively to those who seek to take away our rights and insult our very identities.

My actions in turning my back on Delegate Marshall as he spoke were also an attempt to turn my back on the bigotry he represents. Bigotry has no place in public policy or public forums. My rights as a gay man are not debatable!

Others joined me on Tuesday in protesting Marshall and those who share his narrow-minded views. A faculty member demanded Marshall respect her lesbian identity by not referring to her as a “homosexual,” a term considered overly clinical and insulting by many lesbian and gay people. Students and community members shouted back, “Yes!” at Pat McSweeney, a conservative VCU adjunct faculty member on the panel, when he rhetorically asked if they thought he was out to discriminate.

LGBT people and our allies are sick and tired of people like Marshall and McSweeney being given a forum from which to discriminate and defame us, and we are doing something about it. This discussion is not finished, and we as LGBT people will not stop turning, shouting and demanding respect until every homophobe like Delegate Marshall realizes there are consequences for their bigoted actions. Please join me on Nov. 7 in turning your back on bigotry and Delegate Marshall by voting “no” on Ballot Question No. 1, the “marriage amendment.”

– Jeremy Kidd

No need to rely on advisers

Referencing the Oct. 23 piece, “Another brick in the wall?” by Huma Riyaz, I think that since the advising situation here at VCU is so poor, it wouldn’t hurt to scrap academic advising altogether. I say this because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what classes you need to take next semester. It would be a lot easier if students just grabbed a copy of the undergraduate bulletin and the academic planning sheets and advised themselves.

That’s not to say that conventional advising should disappear. Advising should still be offered, but it should be limited in scope and available only to those who genuinely want it. In summary then, advising of any form should not be required and students should not have holds placed on their records for not talking to an adviser.

– Steven C. Latimer