University | 12:06 am | February 7, 2012 | By Dan Stein

True Love Week interrupted by “kiss in”

A number of students staged a "kiss in" Monday night.
A number of students staged a "kiss in" Monday night. Photo by Dan Stein.

At the second event of True Love Week on Monday night, love was certainly in the air — especially for the group of Yalies who staged a “kiss in.”

As Bijan Aboutorabi ’13, a member of Undergraduates for a Better Yale College, introduced the night’s featured speaker, Providence College Prof. Anthony Esolen, he said he had “heard certain rumors concerning tonight’s event.” He made reference to students who allegedly stole signs from Occupy New Haven as a negative example of Yale students being unable to respect the ideas of others.

“I’m very interested to see if Yale students, without disruption, can tolerate someone with whom they disagree,” said Aboutorabi. He then proceeded to ask anyone interested in disrupting the talk to leave, but no one did.

Then, five minutes into Esolen’s speech on “The Person as a Gift,” about 50 attendees staged a “kiss in.” As Esolen delivered a line blaming the sexual revolution for cultural degradation, one attendee’s cell phone began playing the Diana Ross classic “I’m Coming Out.” At that point, around 12 couples, straight and gay alike, rose to their feet and began to kiss. Others looked on and cheered. After about a minute, attendees spilled out of the previously packed WLH 116, leaving about 20 in the room.

As they exited, the group chanted “one in four, maybe more.” Before the interruption, Esolen had been telling a story about a concert of violinist Natalie MacMaster and Irish step-dancing. As one girl left the room, she yelled, “homosexuals hate stepdancing!”

After waiting for the crowd to file out, Esolen repeatedly shook his head, then continued speaking.

Comments
  • amenhotep

    Article is unclear – how do 12 couples add up to 50 attendees? Please explain

    • rm13

      “Others looked on and cheered.” Not everyone participated by kissing.

  • cyalie

    Seriously, people? Can we be a little bit more disrespectful here?

    • Yale12

      Yeah, we can – by inviting a keynote speaker to “True Love Week” who made extremely offensive anti-gay statements.

      • Goldie08

        there’s voicing opinions then there’s being downright disruptive. Engaging in moderated debate would have won more supporters

  • GlobalArts

    Well, there are obviously a lot of gay and lesbian people who don’t find these types of tactics helpful…maybe next time they can get a group of gay and lesbian Christians or Jews to speak on a panel or debate someone like Eosolen, that would have been more interesting. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/01/lesbian-gay-christian-pope-visit

    A kiss in just seems so immature…

  • BrightSide2013

    I don’t blame them for interrupting the man who clearly hates homosexuality.

    Even if only a third of the following article is true, I think there’s reason enough to dislike him: http://www.ivygateblog.com/2012/02/before-yales-upcoming-true-love-week-headline-speaker-published-fanatical-anti-gay-tirades/

    • LuxEtVanitas

      Granted, I haven’t read the entire transcript Eosolen’s statements, just what is quoted in the article, but it appears in most cases he is referring to “the sexual liberation,” meaning the separation of sex from commitment, not specifically homosexual relations. As a heterosexually active unmarried man, I may find that offensive to my own sexuality but that doesn’t neutralize important points about gender relations that need to be addressed. Please correct me if I’m mistaken in thinking Eosolen is not, in fact, taking dead aim at homosexuality here.

  • little_mango

    If we want respect, we should give it first.

    • T

      Exactly. So when someone equates my sexuality to necrophilia, pedophilia, and bestiality, I should…?

      • silliwin01

        Ignore them?

        • Standards

          Or publicly and peacefully express your disapproval, which they did fantastically?

          • OOB

            “fantastically”? HMMMM?

      • yayasisterhood

        Explain why the comparison is incorrect?

  • silliwin01

    So immature.

  • grumpyalum

    There is no room for discourse for someone who denies the you have any worth.

    Simple as that. Good job folks!

    • silliwin01

      Would these gays want some conservative to interrupt their makeout session at a co-op party by walking up to them and splashing cold water on them until they separated?

      Impeding another person’s usage of their First Amendment freedoms when they aren’t posing a threat to you makes you look like an arrogant, hypocritical and immature douche bag.

      • ironic

        The kissing was peaceful and didn’t physically interrupt the lecture…

        • Galavantian

          What would you have to do to “physically disrupt the lecture”? Clock the guy in the face?

        • ironic

          It was a peaceful protest

          I simply meant to reference the above metaphor of splashing cold water…

    • dhansen

      silliwin, where to start? The beginning, I guess….

      “Would these gays…” [Not only would many of the queer people who participated in this act never ever accept the label "gay", a good number of the protesters were heterosexual.]

    • dhansen

      “…want some conservative to interrupt their makeout session at a co-op party…” [How is a scheduled lecture by an invited speaker in any way comparable to a makeout session at a co-op party? Are you suggesting that "makeout sessions at co-op parties":"queer people and/or non-conservatives"::"scheduled lectures by invited speakers":"conservatives"? Do conservatives express attraction and affection through lectures, and do non-conservatives communicate ideas via making out? I'm confused.]

    • dhansen

      “…by walking up to them and splashing cold water on them until they separated?…”
      [There was a water fight too?]

    • dhansen

      “Impeding another person’s usage of their First Amendment freedoms…”
      [How was Esolen's right to free speech impeded? The demonstration took less than a minute; I imagine a question and answer period – decidedly not a violation of the FIrst Amendment – would be significantly shorter and be considerably more mentally taxing for the speaker.]

    • dhansen

      “…when they aren’t posing a threat to you…”
      [Are Esolen's rhetoric and political actions not threatening? For many, too many, queer youth in America and worldwide, the work of people like Esolen – intellectualizing, rationalizing, and publishing homophobia – constitutes a significant blow in a life-or-death struggle. There are students here, working and living and eating with you, who have faced abuse and financial/social/personal insecurity, and certainly those who have considered and reconsidered self-harm, as a direct result of this kind of discourse.]

    • dhansen

      “…makes you look like an arrogant, hypocritical and immature douche bag…”
      [I'm just going to leave this here^^]

    • Galavantian

      “There is no room for discourse for someone who denies the you have any worth.”

      Not to troll, but doesn’t that just sum up the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What about Iran’s opinion on the state of Israel?

      Despite the fact that what Esolen said was offensive and perhaps threatening, you don’t accomplish anything by ignoring that there ARE people in the world who hold his opinion.

      It’s not productive or respectful. It’s self-indulgent.

  • RexMottram08

    Unfortunately for the protestors, Professor Esolen had a lot to teach them. They preferred to behave like children.

    Never forget that beneath the rainbows are brownshirts…

    • Standards

      I stayed for the lecture, and learned little more than how pretentious and useless a talk filled with nothing but loosely connected literary references can be.

      He made no coherent or definable logical point.

      I dare anyone there to put his argument into a syllogism, or would that be too reductive of the beauty of philosophy?

      And pure class on the nazi reference. Of course anyone who stands up and peacefully dissents to offensive ideas must be a nazi. Poor Professor Esolen had to pause for a whole minute. How fascist of the LGBTQ folks, you’re right.

    • ironic

      I also stayed for the lecture, and it continued to have no basis or coherent connections between anything. He was a complete mess (just as intelligible and messy as many of the YUBCs op-eds). He sacrificed any possibility that I could at least understand his logic or point-of-view, albeit likely disagreeing with it, through being completely unintelligible and vapid

    • dhansen

      A debate coach once told me that, once you have brought Nazis or Jesus into your rhetoric, you’ve already lost. Your comment is either willfully ignorant or disingenuous. As much as far-right conservatives and conservative evangelicals like to imagine themselves an embattled and persecuted minority, the fact is that commenters like you belong to a privileged, empowered majority. The violence and policing you evoke is coming every day from people like Esolen and their followers, not from queer communities or from far-left advocates of sex-positivity. That you, in order to make your point and call attention to yourself, need to stoop to comparing a brief, peaceful (if silly and disruptive) act of student protest to a system of horrific, widespread, government-enforced, racially-motivated violence demonstrates that your position is indefensible.

      • RexMottram08

        Oh really? How many conservatives are on Yale’s faculty?

        One group invited a thoughtful, learned professor to discuss the human person, love and sexuality.

        The other group behaved like disruptive children rather than allow anyone to dissent from PC-pieties.

        Brownshirts on the march!

        • dhansen

          “Rather than allow anyone to dissent”? In what sense did the kiss-in prevent anyone from expressing dissent? Did Esolen not have the privilege of speaking uninterrupted to an attentive audience for over two hours after the interruption? How does hostility to conservative viewpoints among a small faction of hyper-educated, privileged, young Americans – or a lack of right-leaning professors in one left-leaning institution – constitute the systematic repression you suggest?

          • RexMottram08

            The public disruption of a scheduled event by a tantrum has clearly determined that Yale is closed for thought.

  • eli1

    Welp, so much for any semblance of intellectual tolerance. I’m honestly so sick of how academic freedom is only ok if it agrees 100% with the radical left wing agenda. These people need to grow up and understand that there are people in this world with different views, and while you might disagree, it does not give you the right to disrespect the person who is trying to have a civil, academic conversation. it honestly makes me sick. The majority of this campus acts the same, however, the gay and feminist populations are by far the worst.

    • Standards

      What are you talking about? They nonviolently protested speech they found offensive. They didn’t stop the lecture. They didn’t censor the speaker.

      They came and made a statement to a group and a speaker that his views were offensive and intolerant.

      Not everyone has the patience or time to sit through an hour and a half rambling lecture to politely ask questions at the end. The kid who did it was a hero, but that was supererogatory if anything.

      Though they were less classy than I would have liked, I entirely support the LGBTQ students and message they sent.

      It’s not academic intolerance in the least.

    • ironic

      The UBYC combated sex week by trying to shut it down… talk about actual intellectual intolerance whose goal was to silence conversation

    • MC13

      There’s nothing “civil” or “academic” about hate speech, and if the notion that we should respect the validity of all sexualities still counts as “radically left wing” then maybe you’re confused about what decade we’re in…

      • RexMottram08

        The considered position that homosexual acts are not praiseworthy is not “hate speech.”

        But to understand that you would have to major in something other than Moral Relativism.

  • Raven14

    So many members of the feminist and LGBTQ communities at Yale feel so entitled to their “victim culture” that they lose all semblance of propriety in their dealings with others who do not share their radical views. It is embarrassing that Yale has stooped this low in catering to them.

    • grumpyalum

      If it is radical to demand that someone does not suggest that what you do is comparable to having sex with children or corpses, then yeah, the LGBQT community has radical views.

      Screw you and your privilege.

      • RexMottram08

        One group hosted a well-regarded academic for a thoughtful lecture on the human person.

        The others kissed each other in a childish tantrum.

        • grumpyalum

          Only a freaking bigot such as yourself would describe him as a well-regarded academic.

          We don’t have anything to say to each other. You would force me into the closet and ostracize me and would hope that I get bullied into conversion. I obviously hope people who view things like you simply go away. Let’s stop pretending we can talk to each other.

          • RexMottram08

            Let me google that for you…

            Anthony Esolen

            Ph.D. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1987)
            Dissertation: A Rhetoric of Spenserian Irony (S. K. Heninger, director)

            M.A. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1983)

            A.B. Princeton University (1981), summa cum laude

            Languages: Italian, Latin, German, Anglo-Saxon, French, New Testament Greek

            First Prize, American Academy of Poets Competition, University of North Carolina (1983)

            Morehead Graduate Fellowship (1981-1985)

            F. Scott Fitzgerald Award, Princeton (1981)

            Professor of English at Providence College

      • Raven14

        Most esteemed “grumpyalum,” I must thank you for helping me prove my point. Notice how you say that you, “DEMAND that someone does not suggest…” What makes you feel that you have the right to DEMAND that anyone change their beliefs to suit your own? What is the matter with “agreeing to disagree?” Perhaps that is too foreign to YOUR sense of privilege.

        • grumpyalum

          BECAUSE I’M THE ONE THAT FREAKING LIVES IN A SOCIETY WHERE PEOPLE COMMIT SUICIDE FOR BEING CALLED GAY WHILE HOLDING TO THAT CATEGORY!

          I don’t agree to disagree with the person who calls women inferior to men and blacks should be slaves to others. I don’t agree to disagree with the person who claims homosexuality is evil and the same as having sex with animals.

          Screw you.

          • aztlanftw

            “screw you?” What liberals lack in rhetorical ability they make up for in base insults. Keep it classy.

        • rm13

          “agreeing to disagree” on the issue of whether or not we, as a community, are mentally ill, socially destructive sexual predators?

          right…

    • dhansen

      The phrase “entitled to their ‘victim culture’” is rich, given that UBYC feel they are bombarded by messages that “aggravate the problems (of) rape, sexual harassment, disrespect of women, and tension between the sexes” and stymied by the propagation of “silly neologisms like ‘sex-negative’ and ‘sex-positive’” that they say are “classic examples of Orwellian Newspeak, ideological catchwords intended to stop thought from going any deeper than the level of words.” The rhetoric of victim culture is the lifeblood of True Love Week, not of the student body’s lighthearted and non-destructive protest against a hateful speaker.

  • phantomllama

    –

  • RexMottram08

    Strange is this obsession with declaring anal sodomy as the summit of human achievement.

    • Standards

      Link me to one instance of anyone saying that, ever, otherwise you’re doing little more than trolling at best, and constructing confused straw men at the worst.

      I don’t find it at all strange that a group of people are “obsessed” with having their method of expressing love and sexuality taken not as a pinnacle, but simply acceptable.

      What monsters.

      • RexMottram08

        It’s written in the entire premise of Sex Week!

        Any “good” sex is acceptable, no, LAUDABLE!

        What is bizarre is the claim that anyone with a considered, alternative view on human sexuality is “hateful.”

        I have joined Professor Esolen in contemplating the nature, purpose and end of human sexuality. I find no virtue in sodomy. It doesn’t make me hate gays. I just find such bedroom antics to be less than praiseworthy.

    • dhansen

      Surely you’re trolling, sir.

      • RexMottram08

        I wish. I would experience less daily dismay at the state of thought at my alma mater.

    • amenhotep

      Strange is this obsession with declaring “anal sodomy” the end of civilization.

  • Goldie08

    More than disrespect shown the lecturer, the disrespect shown Bijan Aboutorabi ’13 is pretty sad. This is one of your classmates, who acknowledged the protest in advance and asked people who would be disruptive to leave.

    That’s like having your roommate ask you to quiet down in the common room, and you crank up the stereo in his face. Regardless of beliefs, we’re all classmates.

    That being said, some of the rhetoric on this thread is off the mark. I’m pretty sure RexMottram is just an intolerant bigot. Key word, intolerant. You don’t have to like it, Rex. Just don’t be a douche.

    • Jess

      What about the disrespect UBYC accorded their classmates when they tried to BAN Sex Week, the hard work of a substantial number of their peers?

      Chill out. We’re all just people, with different ideas of how the world ought to be and how to make it that way, trying to effect change without becoming monsters or going insane.

      • RexMottram08

        They approached the appropriate University administrators via the same process that ESTABLISHED Sex Week.

        The exact opposite approach taken by these children.

    • dhansen

      Goldie08, the roommate situation isn’t analogous. Negotiating a long-term, domestic, interpersonal relationship requires compromises and spoken contracts, e.g. “you don’t turn up the music when I’m trying to study”, that have no bearing on what goes on in the rest of the world. The kiss-in, on the other hand, was a political reaction in the context of a public forum, a (confrontational, subversive) public statement in response to another (extreme, uncompromising) public statement. As for respect, would you really characterize Aboutorabi’s casual and condescending dismissal of these students’ dissent as respectful?

  • Dedwards

    I might stage a Tebow-in at the next event… but then again, I’d probably get sent to ExComm.

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