Henry Gonshak
English
Montana Tech-UM
[Note: The following commentary is reprinted with permission from the 21 September 21 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.]
When I proposed a summer course in gay and lesbian studies at the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology, where I teach English, the last thing I expected was to wind up in USA Today. But when a fundamentalist Christian minister in our largely conservative, blue-collar community tried to have the class canceled, a furor erupted that so reverberated it eventually caught the attention of the national media.
Let me admit from the outset: My story is not quite a profile in courage. In fighting to save my class, I made mistakes; my determination sometimes wavered. Still, I think my failures, as much as my successes, may prove instructive.
I'm sure my experience isn't unique in academe, and I suspect that, unfortunately, it will become more common in the future. As our culture wars continue, the religious right is likely to expand its censorious crusades from public elementary and high schools to state sponsored colleges and universities. And if any one subject proves most contentious, it's sure to be the burgeoning field of gay and lesbian studies.
My proposed class, which was approved by my department without dissent, would have covered several topics: differing attitudes toward homosexuality in the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman worlds; the history of the modern gay rights movement; the impact of AIDS on the gay community and the significance of social perceptions of the epidemic as a "gay" disease; gay literature, theater, and film; scientific investigations into a "gay gene"; current political battles over such issues as gay in the military and anti-gay legislation.
I suspect that a student in the pastor's congregation told him of the heresies afoot in the formerly staid precincts of Montana Tech. The pastor's letter to the local newspaper, which sparked the community debate, encapsulated the gay-bashing tactics of the religious right. After praising Montana Tech for its success in training engineers, he reproached it for offering a course in gay studies. While admitting that he was "unclear" as to what the class would actually cover, he warned that "radical homosexuals have an agenda." He quoted a passage allegedly taken from The Gay Community News, a weekly newsletter published in Boston: "We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity.... They will come to crave and adore us." He lamented the expenditure of tax money on gay studies during a time of cuts in education spending and thunderously concluded: "Our children are important!"
In my swiftly composed reply, which appeared in the paper two days later, I noted the unfairness of the pastor's insinuations that my course would promote a "radical homosexual agenda." I insisted that the class would consider every point of view and pointed out how patronizing it was for him to call Tech students "children" who should let him decide what they should study. After inviting him to voice his objections to homosexuality in my class, I concluded: "To try to censor a course before it has even begun runs contrary to...every right a democratic society holds dear."
The pastor's challenge to academic freedom rallied many on campus to my course's defense. As one might expect at a technical college, most of my colleagues are hardly in the vanguard of gay liberation. However, everyone understood the ominous precedent that would be set if someone unaffiliated with the college could dictate what went on in our classrooms.
With both the pastor's and my positions publicly staked out, and several weeks to go before the course was to begin, the battle was on. A local radio talk show was swamped with calls from listeners who vehemently debated the class's merits. The local paper ran a front-page story on the controversy. However, the dispute was played out most fully in the paper's letters to the editor. A Tech history professor compared the pastor to the Ayatollah Khomeini (which seemed to place me in the unenviable role of Salman Rushdie). Another colleague noted that the course wouldn't "waste" tax-payers' money; our summer classes are self supporting. Every letter writer who supported the course was sent, anonymously, a comicbook-style pamphlet titled "Doom Town: The Story of Sodom," issued by an evangelical Christian publisher. However, not all the local clergy echoed the homophobic venom expressed in "Doom Town" and in the pastor's letter. In fact, two local Congregational ministers sharply challenged the notion that Christianity is irrefutably anti-gay. "The Bible has little to say about homosexuality," one wrote, while the second insisted that Jesus's core message of love, acceptance, and support for the down trodden demanded that Christians accept all kinds of people, no matter how different.
With all the backing it received, my course might have withstood the pastor's campaign had he not adopted a second, shrewd strategy--aggressively petitioning the Montana Tech Alumni Association. Mostly mining industry bigwigs, the alumni soon began besieging Tech administrators with letters and telephone calls. They threatened to withdraw thousands of dollars in contributions unless the class was dropped.
It was at this point, late on a Friday afternoon and only a few hours before the alumni association had scheduled a special meeting to discuss my course, that my division head asked me to cancel the class. Having learned that a local television-news team was planning to cover the first day of class, he felt cancellation was in the best interests of the students, who otherwise risked getting caught in the middle of a "media circus." Looking back, I suspect I complied with his request less because I found his rationale defensible than because I was weary of being beleaguered by a controversy that seemed to be escalating out of control.
However, by that evening I knew I'd made an awful mistake. To live with myself, I knew I had to do all I could to get the course reinstated. That weekend, I telephoned every departmental colleague I could reach and received unanimous support--including, surprisingly, that of the division head himself. A kind and decent man, he had had, I suspect, grave doubts about his decision all along. Monday morning, he and I met the academic dean, who agreed to reauthorize the class, asking only that we give it the more innocuous title "Differing Views on Homosexuality."
It's an intriguing question whether the whole dispute might have been avoided if I had chosen that title originally. One administrator told me that while to him the word "homosexual" simply connoted someone with atypical sexual desires, when he heard "gay and lesbian" he instantly pictured an activist chanting, "We're queer! We're here! Get used to it!" So, in retrospect, perhaps it would have been more politic to have chosen this alternate title.
Still, as an English professor, I'm well aware that no language is ever purely neutral. Homosexual is the word preferred by straights, whereas "gay" is a term gay people have picked. Since the course would be dealing with current issues surrounding the gay culture, shouldn't it use the designation that the culture itself uses?
However, even with a new, less inflammatory title, reinstating the course was still unacceptable to the college president. He argued that reauthorizing it after the administration had officially announced its cancellation to the alumni would make the institution look indecisive. Instead, he offered a compromise: I could "repackage" the class, somewhat shifting its focus while still retaining much of its original content, so that it wouldn't appear that the college was reversing its initial decision. Since the alternative was losing the course entirely, it was an easy offer to accept. The president, the dean, the division head, and I then concocted a "new course," insipidly titled "Differing Views on Alternative Lifestyles." While still addressing homosexuality, it would also cover a grab bag of other "nontraditional" life styles, including single parenting, living together, and "open" marriages.
And then the dispute faded away. I've no idea why the pastor chose not to protest the new class as well. Surely, from his perspective, a course that not only covered homosexuality but also lumped in the study of a host of other "sins" could hardly be much of an improvement. Perhaps he gave up the fight because he was just as worn out as I was.
I now find myself viewing the whole affair ambivalently, seeing neither victory nor defeat. The best way to fight the Christian right, I've concluded, is to stress the theocratic nature of their politics which clash directly with the democratic principles of individual rights and freedom of speech. In a state college, such as Montana Tech, the constitutional separation of church and state applies, just as it does in any other public institution. If church groups can have a gay-studies class dropped on the ground that the topic conflicts with Christian doctrine, why not also censor a course on evolution (as has already been done in some public elementary and secondary schools) or comparative religion or existential philosophy--all subjects that, one way or another, question church teachings?
Moreover, my struggle taught me that no one battling fundamentalism should be silenced by the constant cry of the religious right that its opponents are intolerant of religion--a charge leveled against me frequently during the controversy. Critics of the Christian right should stress that they are not objecting to the fact that fundamentalist politics are rooted in faith (which is as legitimate a foundation for apolitical agenda as any other) but rather to the specific political positions espoused in the name of that faith.
In short, once a religious group enters the political arena, it has no right to call intolerant those who simply disagree with its politics.
For fellow professors intent on introducing controversial courses, I'd advise that you be ready for trouble--especially if your college is tax-supported and situated anywhere in the traditionalist American heartland. Had I anticipated the furor that my class would inspire, I'd have met beforehand with the administration and my department colleagues to develop strategies to combat potential criticism. Such strategies should be assertive rather than defensive, based on staunch adherence to the principle that higher education has a mission to explore all areas of human experience, especially those that have been long suppressed.
Of course, upholding this principle amid closed-minded attacks demands considerable courage--virtue seldom required in the sheltered groves of academe. But don't we discover the strength of our beliefs only when we are called upon to defend them?