ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602160080
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
I DON'T know whether the writer is a he or a she. The letter about homosexuality I got last week was unsigned. For the sake of argument, based on the handwriting, and with apologies if I am wrong, let's call him a he.
"I accidentally saw your editorial of Sat. 27 of Jan.," his letter begins. "This is the reason I don't take The Roanoke Times."
Well, now. Though we may on occasion write editorials by accident, I'm not sure how they can be read that way. I assume the letter writer means to disavow any notion that he might normally or habitually give attention to our opinions, much less subscribe to the newspaper.
He encountered the editorial, it seems, as one might inadvertently catch sight of a sex scene while flipping through cable channels. He lingered on the page, we can be sure, only in disgust and amazement.
(Maybe our correspondent will regret the exposure less if he considers its inoculative potential. Should an impulse to subscribe to the paper or turn to its opinion pages ever tempt him again from his purposeful readings, he'll need only recall this brush with our commentary to save himself. Assuming, that is, he doesn't repress all memory of the event.)
Anyway, he makes clear why he doesn't take The Roanoke Times: "Every day there is an article promoting homosexuality and how wonderful homosexuals are."
Every day? But this is impossible. Without regularly reading the paper, how can he know this? OK, maybe friends who are subscribers told him that glorifying homosexuality is a fixture in these pages, an impression apparently confirmed by his Jan. 27 accident.
Needless to say, he questions our editorial sympathies. "Homosexuals are freaks," he writes. "There is nothing in the world that is worse: They are dirty, nasty things that are spreading their nasty AIDS all over the world. They will eventually bankrupt this country. They should be put in institutions where they can't contaminate normal people."
Nasty stuff. Why pay it any attention?
Because, for one thing, it isn't a pathological aberration erupting from the distant margins of society. At a Des Moines church two days before the Iowa caucuses, in the very heartland of America, eight organizations including the Christian Coalition staged a rally urging a nationwide audience to "send this evil lifestyle back to Satan where it came from!" Every Republican presidential candidate except Richard Lugar endorsed the event, some by showing up on stage.
Also, because hate is a poison that spreads. Believe me, I could show you letters worse than this one. I keep a bulging file. It keeps growing.
It's now a common observation, evidenced by nosing around the airwaves or political campaigns or letter columns where opinions are exchanged, that fear and loathing ooze through the social fabric's every hole. The Jan. 27 editorial, which our correspondent found objectionable, had lamented angry calls and threats that prompted a Christiansburg billboard owner to cover over a "Diversity Enriches" sign. A group calling itself "Gay and Straight Citizens of Southwest Virginia" had signed the ad. Our editorial also bemoaned an advertising company's rejection of a similar campaign last year in the Roanoke Valley.
I believe our community is better, more tolerant, than these events would suggest. But I don't believe we can ignore the continuing disconnectedness and coarsening of civic discussion.
In several respects, the letter at hand illustrates the dialogue's dark side. For instance, our correspondent seems unable to discuss his subject without insult and invective. Gays and lesbians aren't merely wrong or misguided or unethical (not to mention oriented differently). They are dirty, nasty "freaks." They are, indeed, not even people like him, but "things."
From a clipping on my desk: When two lesbians were killed in Oregon last year, the accused murderer said he chose them as targets because their homosexuality made it easier to shoot them. It was, said the killer, "no different than shooting your chicken that just lost in a cockfight or putting your sick dog to sleep or shooting at tin cans."
Again characteristically, our correspondent flavors his name-calling with exaggeration: Is "nothing in the world" really worse than homosexuality? And, rather than deal with the perceived problem, he would punish, marginalize and banish - "where they can't contaminate normal people."
He seems to regards gays, like the Sodomites who tried to break down Lot's door, as a personal menace. They threaten not only to spread AIDS worldwide, but to "bankrupt this country." Our letter writer might avoid the plague by eschewing risky behavior, but bankruptcy would hit him where it hurts: the pocketbook.
A lot of public anger is fixed on money, taxpayers' in particular. On this point, from another clipping on my desk, consider a passage from Daniel Kemmis' book, "The Good City and the Good Life," quoted by Washington Post columnist Neal Peirce:
"People who customarily refer to themselves as taxpayers are not even remotely related to democratic citizens. Taxpayers pay tribute to the government, and they receive services from it. So does every subject of a totalitarian regime."
To be a taxpayer more than a citizen is to be alienated from civic life. In this way, too, our correspondent isn't engaging fellow citizens (or even discussing them) reasonably, with respect for others and their differing opinions. In isolation, like a caller to a radio talk-show, he anonymously rages.
When he begins his letter by saying he read the editorial accidentally, he's in effect not admitting to joining the discussion. He's refusing to come out on common ground.
He ends the letter not with a signature, assuming accountability for his views, but with an assertion:
"I take it you are homosexual."
This, too, I take not as an insult, but as an insight. He seems to be saying, in effect: Since you disagree with me, you must be a homosexual.
His assumption implies not only that, if you disagree, you must be different. It implies the very impossibility of disinterested reasoning. There can be, in other words, no pluralism in Sarajevo. Muslims and Serbs must have their separate agendas - competing for power and spoils, and congenitally defining themselves only in relation to the differentness, or subhuman deviance, of someone else.
Which in turn implies that political discourse, such as occurs on these pages, only obscures the lack of shared ground on which public education and civic debate can search for the common good.
I believe our correspondent is wrong, but I am glad for the discussion.
LENGTH: Long : 115 linesby CNB