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You hear plenty of gay activists accusing their opponents of “hate speech,” often on pretty flimsy pretexts. Merely stating one’s biblically based opposition to homosexuality will bring howls of protest and has been known to get people hauled up on charges before campus authorities. But what happens when a gay activist dishes out some real hate speech at his opponents?
The answer, at least at Texas A&M University, is: not too much.
There, in early October, a gay student sported a T-shirt declaring, “Every time a Republican dies, a queer angel gets their wings” at an event sponsored by the Gender Issues Education Service (GIES). Leaving aside the deficiencies in the T-shirt’s grammar and theology, you can’t help but notice a double standard at work. Campus Republicans certainly did.
“If the words were reversed, we probably would have been kicked off campus,” said Steve Dutton, vice chairman of Texas A&M College Republicans. “We make sure our members don’t go off and do anything too crazy, and we’d like the same kind of consideration from other groups on campus.”
The student wearing the T-shirt was seated at a booth in the student center, passing out literature about sexual orientation during Coming Out Week. Both Dutton and Tyler Dunman, chairman of the Young Conservatives of Texas A&M (YCTAM), identified him as a former member of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Aggies (GLBTA) — a “social and volunteer community service group,” according to the Department of Student Activities — which receives funding from the university. Political student groups, such as College Republicans and YCTAM, do not.
GLBTA President Chelsey Jones was unable to confirm or deny the student’s past involvement with her organization for Boundless. After receiving a YCTAM press release Oct. 10 saying the student with the shirt was at a GLBTA booth, she issued a disclaimer saying the organization did not have a staffed table at Coming Out Week, and the shirt was the property of the individual student alone.
“The shirt . . . was not produced by GLBTA. This individual was making a personal statement, a statement not sponsored by our University student organization,” the memo read. “We deeply regret any offense caused by the actions of this individual, however, we are not able to control the personal opinions expressed by non-members, such as this individual.”
Jones and some of her colleagues were obviously embarrassed, and Dunman said several gay students at A&M called him personally to say the student with the shirt was out of line. Still, gays hardly poured forth outrage over the display. One might say that a single student’s actions weren’t worth the trouble, but as Dutton noted, it doesn’t take much imagination to picture the reaction if a student had gotten his jollies wearing a shirt that read “Every time a queer dies, a Republican angel gets his wings”—which suggests that the issue for gay activists isn’t so much their indignation against “hate” per se, as much as who happens to be on the receiving end.
After the way gay-rights groups and major media outlets were quick to say the “hatred” of groups standing for traditional values led to the slaying of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming several years ago, the hypocrisy of the student’s shirt wasn’t lost on College Republicans chairwoman Jessica Berkey. “Gay-rights groups condemn hate speech, and today’s message is hypocrisy at its worst,” she said Oct. 10. “Gay student groups say ‘hate is not an Aggie value;’ they should heed their own advice.” 
Copyright © 2002 Karla Dial. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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