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In This Issue
- Editorial Staff, Cartoonist Apologize for Comic
- Spec Buggers Queer Coverage
- Contraceptive Addiction: The Next Big Thing
- Letters to the Feditrix
- BOSS Leader on Racism
- Fed Editor on Racism
- Howard Dean Broke my Heart
- More on Columbia Security Department
- Lasers Make Atlanta Almost Cool
- Barnard Student Government Shows Resolution
- Jesus: Zombie Demigod Beloved By All
- Fundamentally Funny Bible Games
- Fed Fun Guide to Columbia Campus
Spec Buggers Queer Coverage
Spectator Coverage of Gay Marriage Issue Sorely Lacking
Jamie Culpon
Let's start with an admission: there's a growing atmosphere of intolerance today, both within this campus and across America. This was apparent to anyone who bothered to open their eyes during the last week of February and take notice of the students sitting in silence across the steps of Low. Across the campus, students discussed the silence and ways to lift it.
But in Washington that same week, President Bush issued a statement calling for silence. By calling for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Bush has asked for millions of loving couples in America to be silent. In addition to trying to prevent millions of gay, lesbian, and bisexual citizens from visiting their loved ones in hospitals and from receiving coverage under their employers' health insurance, the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress are attempting to prevent couples from joining under the only state institution which symbolizes two people's love and commitment to each other. In one speech, Bush called for the largest move towards institutionalized hatred and the creation of a second class citizenry since Jim Crow, whose ghost we still deal with today.
Across the country, people spoke out. Some supported Bush's appeal for their own reasons, be they their love of states rights and their own religious creeds, their hatred of judicial activism, or their hatred of homosexuals. Some spoke out against the move, recognizing hatred similar to that which propelled the last attempt to amend the constitution to address the issue of marriage, a 1912 proposal calling for interracial marriages to be abolished forever within the United States. Some questioned precisely how gays and lesbians harm the world by saying "I do." Editorials and letters to the editor sang out for and against the proposed amendment in every major and minor newspaper across the country.
Every newspaper, that is, except The Columbia Spectator.
When hundreds of members of the New York queer community demonstrated around city hall the day Bush announced his support for an amendment against gay marriage, the Spec was silent. When the New York City Council discussed a bill calling for the extension of domestic partnership benefits to gays and lesbians, the Spec was silent. When Mayor Bloomberg spoke in opposition to the proposed amendment, yet refused to support gay marriage in New York City, the Spec was silent. When campus protestors mentioned gay rights and issues of discrimination on sex and sexual orientation in addition to their primary concern of racial intolerance, the Spec was silent.
It took the Spec over a week and a half to print anything addressing these issues. In that time, no less than three demonstrations in favor of gay marriage occurred in Manhattan, two upstate New York mayors, Jason West and John Shields, began issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples; City Council members from across the five bouroughs announced their support for same-sex marriage; justices in San Francisco refused to stop Mayor Gavin Newscom from issuing marriage licences to gays and lesbians; the city of Portland, Oregon issued its first same-sex marriage licences; the New York City Council held hearings on extending domestic partnership priveleges to all workers in the city, and 100 queer couples attempted to get marriage licences from the City Clerk. In the end, the Spec only covered those couples' attempts to marry, along with tangential references to other municipalities' actions in favor of gay marriage, ignoring the firestorm of debate that has been raised in the aftermath of Bush's Federal Marriage Amendment.
Intolerance indeed.
Of course, the Spec had its hands full last week. The protests on campus rightfully deserved the Spec's primary focus. The Spec, of course, has an obligation to address issues on campus first. But as the only daily student newspaper representing the first university in America to allow a gay student group, the Spec has a duty to itself, to Columbia's history, and to the hundreds of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students here to report on this issue. However, in the week following President Bush's proposed amendment, the Spec failed to print a single word regarding the amendment, its effects on gay rights, or the protestors' support of queers. This refusal to address actions for or against queers of every race, creed, and color is intolerable. Articles nearly two weeeks after the fact addressing only a tiny fraction of the issues facing queers today are too little, too late. Where is the vitrol that prompted the Spec to dedicate a staff editorial to assaulting the Fed? To be complacent and quiet about issues regarding gay rights is no less an injustice than ignoring the issues of racism we face on this campus.
Columbia offers next to no classes on queer culture and issues surrounding homosexuality throughout the ages. Columbia does not offer a queer studies major. The demands put forth by the protestors last week rightly call on the administration and the proposed Multicultural Affairs office to address issues relating to homophobia, gender, and sexuality. So while wholeheartedly supporting the protestors' foresight in addressing these issues, I have to wonder why the Spec is so willing to sweep the interests of so many students back into the closet.
But in Washington that same week, President Bush issued a statement calling for silence. By calling for a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Bush has asked for millions of loving couples in America to be silent. In addition to trying to prevent millions of gay, lesbian, and bisexual citizens from visiting their loved ones in hospitals and from receiving coverage under their employers' health insurance, the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress are attempting to prevent couples from joining under the only state institution which symbolizes two people's love and commitment to each other. In one speech, Bush called for the largest move towards institutionalized hatred and the creation of a second class citizenry since Jim Crow, whose ghost we still deal with today.
Across the country, people spoke out. Some supported Bush's appeal for their own reasons, be they their love of states rights and their own religious creeds, their hatred of judicial activism, or their hatred of homosexuals. Some spoke out against the move, recognizing hatred similar to that which propelled the last attempt to amend the constitution to address the issue of marriage, a 1912 proposal calling for interracial marriages to be abolished forever within the United States. Some questioned precisely how gays and lesbians harm the world by saying "I do." Editorials and letters to the editor sang out for and against the proposed amendment in every major and minor newspaper across the country.
Every newspaper, that is, except The Columbia Spectator.
When hundreds of members of the New York queer community demonstrated around city hall the day Bush announced his support for an amendment against gay marriage, the Spec was silent. When the New York City Council discussed a bill calling for the extension of domestic partnership benefits to gays and lesbians, the Spec was silent. When Mayor Bloomberg spoke in opposition to the proposed amendment, yet refused to support gay marriage in New York City, the Spec was silent. When campus protestors mentioned gay rights and issues of discrimination on sex and sexual orientation in addition to their primary concern of racial intolerance, the Spec was silent.
It took the Spec over a week and a half to print anything addressing these issues. In that time, no less than three demonstrations in favor of gay marriage occurred in Manhattan, two upstate New York mayors, Jason West and John Shields, began issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples; City Council members from across the five bouroughs announced their support for same-sex marriage; justices in San Francisco refused to stop Mayor Gavin Newscom from issuing marriage licences to gays and lesbians; the city of Portland, Oregon issued its first same-sex marriage licences; the New York City Council held hearings on extending domestic partnership priveleges to all workers in the city, and 100 queer couples attempted to get marriage licences from the City Clerk. In the end, the Spec only covered those couples' attempts to marry, along with tangential references to other municipalities' actions in favor of gay marriage, ignoring the firestorm of debate that has been raised in the aftermath of Bush's Federal Marriage Amendment.
Intolerance indeed.
Of course, the Spec had its hands full last week. The protests on campus rightfully deserved the Spec's primary focus. The Spec, of course, has an obligation to address issues on campus first. But as the only daily student newspaper representing the first university in America to allow a gay student group, the Spec has a duty to itself, to Columbia's history, and to the hundreds of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students here to report on this issue. However, in the week following President Bush's proposed amendment, the Spec failed to print a single word regarding the amendment, its effects on gay rights, or the protestors' support of queers. This refusal to address actions for or against queers of every race, creed, and color is intolerable. Articles nearly two weeeks after the fact addressing only a tiny fraction of the issues facing queers today are too little, too late. Where is the vitrol that prompted the Spec to dedicate a staff editorial to assaulting the Fed? To be complacent and quiet about issues regarding gay rights is no less an injustice than ignoring the issues of racism we face on this campus.
Columbia offers next to no classes on queer culture and issues surrounding homosexuality throughout the ages. Columbia does not offer a queer studies major. The demands put forth by the protestors last week rightly call on the administration and the proposed Multicultural Affairs office to address issues relating to homophobia, gender, and sexuality. So while wholeheartedly supporting the protestors' foresight in addressing these issues, I have to wonder why the Spec is so willing to sweep the interests of so many students back into the closet.