Over Thanksgiving Break I visited my relatives in Pennsylvania and I was talking with them about a play I was practicing for one of my theatre classes. When they asked what the play was about, I told them that it was a Gay Fantasia called Angels in America. Immediately they were outraged and said that they were glad they never went to a “Liberal College.” [They are all devout Catholics]. Anyways whenever they saw me studying my lines for the play they would talk amongst themselves about how they don’t understand why we are studying that play of all plays or why our school is paying attention to “30% of the population.”
I started to think about this theory that we were studying [LGBTQ] and wondered what has changed that has brought this topic to be written about in Lois Tyson’s book? I don’t agree with my relatives, nor have I ever really been exposed to such hostility towards the subject, but I just became curious as to what has changed over the last 30 or so years since they were in school/college growing up and now for us? Is liberal colleges really different in terms of our openness than other colleges and their view towards this kind of theory or this topic, or allowing this to be a discussion at such a high level of education?
2 thoughts on “LGBTQ Quick Question!”
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I think a lot of it has to do with our culture as Americans. The Civil Rights movement helped pave the way for LGBT acceptance by preparing the country to accept change in the face of a minority that wants to and deserves to have equal status. Our education system is certainly evolving into a more accepting one, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything. I don’t think everybody who goes to a liberal college is expected to come away being obsessed with homosexual rights and cultures, but at the very least in a modern society we are taught to tolerate and treat with respect. With all due respect to your family and mine, prejudiced Christian conservatives are themselves becoming more and more of a minority, and are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the world around them is changing so rapidly.
Acceptance isn’t a ‘liberal college” value, it is a modern one.