 |
| Unrecognized gay club - should be banned from the YU campus (Commentator) |
Tani sits on the board of YUPA, which YU correctly does not
recognize as an official student club. In fact, unless they were operating
without approval, I am surprised YUPA is even allowed to hold meetings on YU’s
campus - let alone recruitment meetings encouraging students to join their club.
That being said, there is no excuse for what happened to
Tani, as reported by his friend in YU’s student publication, the YU Commentator:
“As I was packing up to go and walking towards the exit,” Glaser mentioned in his statement to YU security after the incident, “he took another picture of me… so I said, ‘Excuse me, hi,’ then he immediately shoved me as hard as he could into the table and people around me and yelled, ‘You (gay expletive deleted),’ and continued to yell at me for being an ‘abomination,’ ‘filth,’ ‘not belonging here,’ etc., and didn’t back off.”
(Later, in a separate incident) Glaser was assaulted and subjected to hateful and vitriolic messages in front of tens of passive and subdued YU students.
Apparently, what triggered this horrible response was the
following:
(His) performance in one of the YU bands, during which he donned an unmistakable green-and-gold dinosaur onesie. He also happens to be queer.
Queer. To be honest, I have never really understood how the Q in LGBTQ differs from the G. Aren’t
they the same?
I guess not. I tried to look it up online and found no clear answer. As far as I can tell, the difference seems to be in how a gay person presents themselves in public. This leads me to assume that ‘queer’ may refer to someone who expresses their identity in a more colorful or flamboyant way. Perhaps like the ‘unmistakable green-and-gold dinosaur onesie’ Tani was wearing.
I understand the reaction that religious students might have
to people who are openly gay. They were reacting to a
public display of a lifestyle that includes behavior the Torah considers a
capital offense. The last thing a religious student wants to see is his school
tolerating anything remotely related to that. It would be akin to tolerating a
club that openly defies Shabbos observance or another serious Torah
prohibition.
I have no issue with the public repudiation of such clubs or
individuals seeking to legitimize them. However, I do have a serious problem
with bullying and publicly humiliating people. This is not the way to rid the
school of illegitimate organizations.
The correct approach is to petition and protest to the
administration, urging them to ban such organizations from campus. If they
continue to operate in defiance of school policy, law enforcement should be
called upon to remove them. If violations persist, charges of trespassing
should be pursued.
I say this not to hurt gay people. Far from it. I accept
them for who they are. I cannot count how many times I have expressed this. They
must be treated with dignity and human kindness. At the same time, a Torah
institution cannot allow an organization on campus that promotes pride in a
lifestyle that almost certainly includes serious violations of Torah law. And certainly,
such organizations should not be allowed to recruit members on campus. That would
be an outrage!
By the same token, in no way should YU tolerate bullying of
gay students. That, too, is a serious violation of Torah law.
