Administration should out sender of hateful e-mails

To the Editor:

Oct. 11 was National Coming Out Day, a day designed to increase awareness of issues surrounding sexuality and to combat prejudice against the LGBT community. On Oct. 11, however, every inbox at Yale was spammed with an offensive e-mail, which included the lines “What are you coming out as today? Are you a racist? Embrace the hate. A homophobe? So was JESUS. A male chauvinist? A Nazi? There’s no shame in being who you are. Just remember, admitting it doesn’t make it right.” This e-mail, as well as the many posters displayed all over campus, was sponsored by the “National Organization to Gain Acceptance for Your Sins,” the acronym of which deliberately spells NO GAYS.

To compare being gay to being a Nazi is reprehensible. To claim that Jesus was a homophobe is not only misleading but also insulting to the Christian and gay communities on campus. To include the inscription “NO GAYS” is homophobic and hateful. But to do all of this behind a veil of anonymity is simply cowardly.

The e-mail was sent from a Yale account and is thus traceable. I urge the administration to track the sender of the e-mail and to out him or her to the Yale community. The perpetrator should not be punished, as freedom of expression is a valued characteristic of Yale, but should be willing to stand up for his or her tasteless and bigoted work.

As opposed to other recent controversies, such as the Yale Record’s Blue Book parody, this act is substantially more condemnable. While the Record strove for comedy and may have missed its mark, the e-mail and posters of yesterday revealed a blatantly political message couched in tasteless humor. Though Yale is largely very tolerant, issues of sexuality and homophobia tend to be brushed aside as irrelevant or already resolved. Yesterday’s events indicate a need for ongoing dialogue, as well as an apology from the person or people responsible for this malicious campaign.

Andrew Beatty

Oct. 11, 2006

The writer is a senior in Silliman College.

Oct. 5 editorials’ views on sex were too narrow-minded

To the Editor:

Last Thursday’s News’ View (“Social reforms must cut through red tape,” 10/5) called for a “centralized authority on sexual assault issues” and demanded what, to a naif like me, amounts to an acceleration of the University’s meddling in the private lives of students, unbounded by procedure or “red tape.” The point of the other charming piece — on Yale undergraduates’ prospective childbearing, birthing and household-chore schedules (“Kids, career trade-off remains a hot topic,” 10/5) — seemed to be that it is painful to have your cake and not eat it too — but that with enough intrusive surveys and re-education plans, Yale’s sex officers can convince students otherwise. The third article of the day (“Republicans are to blame for Foley’s folly,” 10/5) consisted of the dirty details surrounding the current Foley scandal, which, in the author’s rich imagination, has its source in the repressive Republican personality. This he seems to have observed by studying old episodes of “The West Wing.” By contrast, the House 408-18 reprimand of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) for having protected a live-in male hustler who ran a prostitution ring out of his home was also, if you just look at it in the right way, because of Republican repression. In keeping with your civic-minded agenda, this piece implies the moral imperative of public denunciation and commentary on the sexual habits and fantasies of those with whom you happen to disagree. Such show trials not only draw apologies and resignations from your political opponents, but would actually improve public health by defeating hypocrisy and promoting a more wholesome way of having intercourse — two birds with one stone! Maybe all of this is with a view to constituting a sexual “central authority” commissariat at Yale. Looking at these diverse articles, I wonder at the range of interests that occupy Yale’s brightest at the Daily News. More wonderful still is the fervor of their activist passions; I congratulate your paper on having advanced from incipient sexual Leninism to full-scale Maoism.

Costin Alamariu

Oct. 6, 2006

The writer is a first-year graduate student in the Political Science Department.

Labor article focused on wrong problems with foreign workers

To the Editor:

Cari Tuna’s article “Foreign alums cope with visa troubles” (10/5) on the issues of H1B is misleading. The H1B program has been used as a vehicle by industry to bring in foreign labor in mass to displace American in the same positions. Claiming that it only invites “the best and the brightest,” industry lobbyists have continually pointed to recent graduates and the problems they have in staying here. For that reason, a special category of visa was created for those with advanced degrees, with a quota of 20,000. Yet that quota has never been reached for in fact the industry wanted to bring in labor of lower cost through other portions of the H1B program. In truth, industry uses the excuse to bring in cheap labor to displace America’s middle class.

Mike Fishbein

Oct. 8, 2006

The writer lives in Boston.