Katz, who teaches physics at Washington University removed the essay after his son, Isaac Katz, came out as gay on Sunday.

Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an essay sent in by Isaac Katz’s assuring gay teens: that “[i]t does get better.” On Monday, the younger Katz added that this renewal does take some time.

“I feel like it’ll be different for every person, [but] accepting who you are is the most important step,” Katz said.

National Coming Out Day also aimed to help students come to accept their sexualities.

Pride Alliance co-president Adrienne Sands was thrilled with the student involvement in Monday’s celebrations. Almost 150 students came and made buttons to show their support.

“It was honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” Sands said. “We had a booth set up for almost five hours, and we had people who identified as gay, straight and transgendered. We actually had two students who came out today for the first time, and that was just really amazing.”

Finding support for struggling LGBT teens is the center of a nationwide movement led by organizations such as Pride Alliance and also by gay celebrities.

“Dan Savage’s movement is to show that people have role models, not just famous people, [but] people they know,” Isaac Katz said. “There are people they can talk to, whether it’s a peer or a residential advisor.”

The younger Katz, despite struggling to recognize his own homosexuality, noted that others were much quicker to accept his being gay.

“I’ve never had problems with peers accepting me, in terms of sexuality,” Katz said.

Professor Katz’s reposting of his inflammatory essay, however, proves that there are still significant hurdles to be overcome for the LGBT community.

“Moral condemnation will not extirpate [gays], but neither can the law; a climate of disapproval may reduce their frequency and their harm,” Jonathan Katz wrote.

His son considers this distancing the major factor that must be overcome to effectively bring an end to homophobia.

According to Isaac Katz, if homophobes realize that people they know are gay, they will then realize that anti-gay discrimination is nonsensical.

“It’s important [that] more people are open about their sexuality,” Katz said.

Katz’s final comment asked that students do not conflate the controversy with his father’s teaching, and he again expressed that his message should be about more than his personal circumstances.

“My dad has always kept politics out of the classroom; I hope that students who take his class will do the same,” the younger Katz said. “This isn’t just about myself or my own family. I hope that this will become part of a larger story.”

Wash. U. Pride Alliance will hold a vigil for the recent gay teen suicide victims on Oct. 21.

Previously, gender-neutral housing was available only in the Village and Greenway.

The expansion comes in response to pressure by organizations such as Student Union and the Pride Alliance during the past few years.

“The Office of Residential Life aims to treat students as adults and encourages them to make well-thought-out decisions,” reads the application for gender-neutral housing.

The Student Union Senate passed a resolution in December 2008 urging the University to expand gender-neutral housing. The resolution includes information from a December 2006 survey, which found that 74 percent of students would consider gender-neutral housing if it were available to upperclassmen.

“This is an incredible step for the University in showing its support for students’ desires and students’ needs,” said senior Chase Sackett, the current speaker of the Senate and former Senate sponsor of the resolution. “I think it’s a testament to the role students play in these processes that make a difference in our lives on campus. I’m very excited the University has made this crucial decision, and I’m excited to see how it plays out next year.”

Students applying for gender-neutral housing must hand in their applications in person to ResLife instead of through WebSTAC. They can apply only in rounds 1 and 2.

Applicants must sign a gender-neutral housing agreement before they can apply, stating that they have considered the implications of gender-neutrality and have discussed their decision and received support from whoever is responsible for payment. The suites must also be filled for the entire academic year.

An estimated 30 colleges and universities across the country permit gender-neutral housing, according to the National Student Genderblind Campaign.

“Open” is a small discussion group focused on helping LGBT students go through the process of coming out to their friends and family. Open, which began this fall, is led by Kline and Bailey Brenton, both of whom are undergraduate students. Open is also assisted by Katie Garcia, graduate social work advisor.

“First and foremost, it’s a safe space for people to go and speak openly and honestly,” said Kline, a sophomore. “We want to encourage people to move forward with their lives, to move through the coming out process to the extent to which they feel comfortable. But by no means would we tell anybody to come out to people if they don’t feel comfortable or if they feel like they’re in some kind of danger.”

Inspiration for the group came after Kline attended a Safe Zones meeting last fall centered on sharing coming out experiences. Safe Zones is an LGBT peer-educating group on campus. Kline, who came out in high school, said the meeting made him feel welcome. He realized the experience might be even more helpful for those who had yet to come out.

“I started bringing it up at Pride meetings because I’m on Pride Exec,” he explained. “People thought it was a good idea, but no one seemed willing to take the reins. So toward the end of last year, I was realizing that if it was going to happen, I had to be the one to start it.”

Kline approached Brenton to co-lead the group, and together they approached Michael Brown, former program director for LGBT student leadership and involvement. Brown directed the two to ASQ, a flexible 10-week, 10-step group training program on which Open is now loosely based.

Open is not the first organization formed to support students coming out on campus. But past groups, mostly from Mental Health and Student Health Services, have fallen flat, according to Garcia.

“I think students kind of know what they need and it wasn’t quite that,” she said.

Both Garcia and Kline said they see the fledgling group, which has now had three meetings, as distinct from any other services provided on campus. Pride Alliance focuses on fostering an extended LGBT community—planning social events, sponsoring health-related events and political activism—but in Kline’s view it “didn’t have the capacity or it wasn’t making the capacity to facilitate small group discussions.”

“Plus,” he added, “I felt like somebody who is not comfortable about coming out at all might not feel comfortable going to an organization called ‘Pride.’”

While Open brings students who are “out” to their friends and family together with students who have never told anybody about their sexuality, the leaders of the group emphasized that coming out is a process for all.

“It’s not something that happens in a mass e-mail,” Kline said. “No matter where you go, if you choose to be out you will have to continue coming out in some capacity. Even if it is a smooth transition to college—it was for me; this is a pretty accepting school. But it still happens again, and it’s still something you have to do again and continuing. It doesn’t stop.”

Senior David Dresner doesn’t want his children to have parents who are second-class citizens.

Over the next two years, Dresner hopes to jump-start a national movement by applying new strategies to gain equal rights for the LGBT community.

Dresner’s journey as a gay rights activist started just seven weeks ago when he was approached by Brian Elliot—the older brother of 2008 Washington University alum Marc Elliot—to join him in a project called “The Right Side of History.”

Senior David Dresner works with sophomore Michael Weiss in his mission, entitled “The Right Side of History,” which strives to launch the gay rights movement into the mainstream and eventually to pass legislation guaranteeing the LGBT community equal status. (Sam Guzik | Student Life)

Dresner and Elliot—both openly gay men—hope that The Right Side of History will reshape the status quo of the LGBT movement by using straight youth to garner mainstream interest and propel the movement into the national political sphere.

Equal rights in 26 months

The Right Side of History’s 26-month goal is to pass legislation akin to the 1964 Civil Rights Act that would ultimately afford the LGBT community equal rights in the United States.

The idea to engage straight people in the struggle for gay rights came to Elliot after he read a Columbia University study conducted in every state. The study showed that at least 75 percent of each state supported equal legal rights—a figure much larger than Elliot had anticipated.

Despite this widespread support, however, 29 states do not have laws on record prohibiting employers from terminating employment based on sexual orientation. Additionally, 13,000 people have been discharged from the military in violation of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” for admitting their homosexuality.

“The second takeaway of the study was [that] the young folks overwhelmingly support the most controversial issues,” Elliot said. “Young people were the vanguards of the civil rights movement. This is their generation’s turn to hold our country to its own ideals. It’s not fine for laws to treat people differently.”

Straight support

Dresner said it mathematically makes sense to place a large emphasis on targeting straight people since straight people make up between 90 and 95 percent of the population.

“My efforts right now really need to be focused on the larger 95 percent of the people, and if I’m going to really demonstrate and get the show of force that I’m looking for, I need to go for the harder demographic first,” Dresner said.

Dresner said he believed that gays in the United States would achieve equal rights within 30 years time. But when Elliot said he could fast-forward these results to the year 2011, Dresner knew he wanted to take part in this movement.

Facing Congress

Every year since 1994, Congress has attempted to prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual identity and orientation as well as disability through the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. That bill has consistently failed to garner enough support to pass both houses of Congress.

Senior David Dresner (second from left) leads a meeting of students involved with nascent organization fighting for gay rights; the movement, known as The Right Side of History, hopes to see sweeping gay rights legislation passed nationally in the next two years. Also pictured are, from left to right, are sophomore Jeremy Cramer Gibbs, sophomore Michael Weiss, junior David Klein, junior David Dobbs and Gregory Hogan, regional director of the Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity. (Sam Guzik | Student Life)

If passed in its entirety, the proposed bill, The Civil Rights Act of 2011 with Religious Exemptions, would be more expansive than the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The 2011 Civil Rights Act would prohibit job discrimination and afford LGBT Americans the same federal rights of citizenship that are afforded to heterosexual Americans.

The ‘Theory of Change’

Elliot and Dresner hope to tackle this ambitious goal by following the “Theory of Change”—a model developed by the movement that aims to empower youth and engage millions to make change and demand equality.

By doing so, Elliot and followers of the movement hope to pervade American culture and make the issue of gay rights a prominent one–one on the minds of national legislators.

“We’re hoping to engage millions of youth across the country,” Dresner said. “We’re trying to charge straight youth in an autonomous action.”

Powerful support

A professional group, dubbed “Creative Geniuses,” has been formed for The Right Side of History in New York and Washington, D.C. A leading executives from consulting firms are already on board and they said they have spoken with several strategists responsible for the Obama campaign’s success.

Dresner and Elliot are currently seeking to expand the group.

A band of brothers

Dresner is launching the campaign at Wash. U., and he found his first supporters in his fraternity house—Sigma Phi Epsilon (SigEp). His brothers have provided assistance to the movement at the University.

“At SigEp, there are a lot of people who want to get involved and help out,” said junior Lionel Johnnes, a member of SigEp. “The challenge will be branching out and stepping outside of the Wash. U. bubble and spreading to the majority of the population.”

While the support has already spread beyond SigEp on campus, Dresner said he hopes to use the fraternity as a platform from which to reach other college campuses.

With more than 13,000 current members, Sig. Ep. is the largest fraternity in the nation in terms of current members, and Dresner has plans to visit SigEp chapters through the country to garner support.

A group of approximately 25 Wash. U. students has been meeting each Saturday to discuss strategies for spreading the group’s message and expanding the movement.

The right approach?

Although Dresner said he has received overwhelming support for his campaign on campus, The Right Side of History’s tactic to primarily engage straight people represents a controversial stance within the gay rights movement.

In the past, the gay rights movement has traditionally been led by members of the LGBT community.

Junior Ayla Karamustafa, an advocate for LGBTQIA rights, said that while she respects Dresner and his team, she believes the movement disregards the history of the LGBT movement and excludes many people who have devoted their entire lives to the cause.

“Our movement centers on gaining rights for individuals of various sexual orientations and gender identities of all racial backgrounds; to take away those identities or to refuse—at the very least—to acknowledge them renders the entire thing senseless,” Karamustafa said.

Senior Laura Lane-Steele, president of Pride Alliance, said her group agrees with the intention and goals of the Right Side of History but will be working toward the goal of equality in different ways.

“Obviously everyone on Pride is going to have a different opinion on this movement and the issues surrounding it,” Lane-Steele said. “Pride and the Right Side of History have different strategies in achieving goals for LGBT people.”

The ultimate goal

Dresner said he expects challenges along the way but will continue to garner support until he gets the American youth on the right side of history.

“I think a lot of people at Wash. U. care about this issue,” Dresner said. “People can’t believe these types of inequities exist in this country. Wash. U. can be the start of a civil rights movement.”

With additional reporting by Kate Gaertner

There are many student organizations that cater to the needs of students of all sexual orientations and genders: Pride Alliance (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual student group), Safe Zones (a peer education group), and the Alternative Lifestyle Association (ALA), to name just a few. Professors and peers create a classroom environment where every non-violent comment is tolerated and respected. Couples of any gender can walk around campus hand and hand without fear.  The only thing not tolerated at Wash. U. – by professors, administrators, and students – is intolerance.

We must take advantage of the four years we have to live in this judgment-free world. It is easy to slip into a sense of complacency when we can be ourselves without ridicule or criticism, and it is easy to look around Wash. U. and forget that this is not the case in most other places in our country.  Violence and intolerance plague our world, and not only against LGBTQIA people.  People are discriminated against and even murdered for their religious, racial, and political identities.

At Wash. U., we have the unique chance to do something about these problems.  Join Pride Alliance and protest anti-gay legislation on the State House steps. Join Safe Zones and teach Resident Advisors and other peers about LGBTQIA issues. It is a waste to go through Wash. U. just taking classes, jumping through hoops, and walking away with a piece of paper without taking full advantage of what this university has to offer.

We have to take the opportunity we have here to work towards making the world’s level of tolerance mirror that of Wash. U. We must use the advantages and resources we have at Wash. U. to work for the good of the disempowered, marginalized, and oppressed. Get involved, volunteer, take classes that educate you about the issues you care about, and most importantly, care about something. Get excited, freshman – this will be an experience unlike any other.

“There is a role for everyone within Pride Alliance,” junior Audrey King, co-president of Pride Alliance, a multi-focus LGBTQIA group, said.

Pride Alliance initiated the week with a coming out workshop hosted by Safe Zones. The workshop was held in the Pride room in the Women’s Building.

At the event, a representative of Student Health Services spoke with students about constructing a plan for announcing one’s sexual and gender identity to peers and parents.

Students at the workshop discussed strategies for coming out, including ways to support someone planning to come out.

“I think it is really nice to have that safe place where people understand,” King said.

Throughout the week, Pride Alliance held a series of discussions on sexual identity and the LGBTQIA community.

This past Wednesday in Ursa’s Café, the group also commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Matthew Shepard hate crime in Laramie, Wyo. Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was murdered in Oct. 1998 by two men on their way home from a bar.

Awareness Week ended this past Friday, the eve of National Coming Out Day.

“I think it helps people in a different way, maybe less directly than the workshop,” King said.

The last event of the week was a masquerade-themed semiformal dance, titled Midnight MasQueerade and held in McMillan Café. The 125 students who attended were offered free masks for the semiformal.

At midnight, Pride Alliance played Diana Ross’s hit song “I’m Coming Out”—a song adopted by the gay community for coming out.

Midnight MasQueerade also commemorated Connecticut’s legalization of gay marriage, which the Conn. Supreme Court ruled in favor of on Monday.

Pride Alliance has previously held its annual semiformal GAYLA in spring, but the MasQueerade marks the first semiformal event Pride Alliance has held in the fall.

Students reactions were largely positive.

“It’s awesome,” freshman David Levine said of the activities. “A lot of education still needs to be done. There should be education on how intolerant people really are. This is not going to go away by itself.”

“I think there are always going to be people who are judgmental. Hopefully stuff like Safe Zones and programs like that can help,” senior Archana Varma said.

Varma questioned, however, how effectively Pride Alliance would be able to inform and target the University’s student body, “Sometimes those programs target people who are already informed and don’t really need them,” Varma said.

However, freshman Michael Laks observed the week was not well publicized.

“I think they should have said more about it. I didn’t even know about it,” Laks said.

Residential advisers were, however, notified about Pride Alliance week via e-mail, and many passed the message on to their floors.

Pride Alliance has more activities planned for the near future, including a discussion on sexual health.

Spontaneity in so-called public viewing area was discouraged as speakers had to register in advance in order to appear before the crowds.

While more traditionally liberal groups, such as Pride Alliance and Planned Parenthood, spoke, religious pro-life groups also paid the campus a visit. Among these groups was the Christian Defense Coalition, whose debate presence consisted solely of its director, Patrick Mahoney.

“We’re a group committed to challenging the church to live their faith in the public square on a number of social justice issues,” Mahoney said. “Poverty, racism, we’re pro-life, human rights, free speech, pretty much all the things Senator Obama is not committed to. We’re actually here to pray too.”

Upon taking the stage, Mahoney launched into a charged speech, lambasting Obama for not donating a larger share of his fundraising to charity, not visiting storm battered areas of the Texas coast, and living what he considered a “disconnected” lifestyle.

Mahoney’s speech aroused the anger of protesters representing Planned Parenthood, resulting in heated verbal exchanges on both sides. Mahoney accused Planned Parenthood of being created to eliminate black people through abortion.

“You’re wearing your pink shirts, but you might as well be wearing white robes,” said Mahoney in reference to the clothing of the Planned Parenthood protesters and the Ku Klux Klan.

Planned Parenthood protestors walked out shortly afterwards, and remaining sympathetic protest groups left with them. The Christian Defense Coalition originally intended to split its time with its parent group, a pro-life group known as Operation Rescue, but Mahoney’s speech did not permit time for Operation Rescue to speak.

Remaining were the University Conservative Leadership Association, whose student representative Caleb Posner spoke about the dangers Iran posed, and the Florida Security Council, which advertised their documentary about radical Islam, titled “Obsession.”

The Florida Security Council also warned demonstrators of the dangers of Muslim student associations and their alleged fundamentalist links.

“Organizations such as CARE or the Muslim America Society or Muslim Students of America have been indicted as front organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization created in 1930 for the sole purpose of instituting Sharia law throughout the world and taking over the world,” said Richard Swier of the Florida Security Council.

With the last of the protestors finished in the field, attention turned to protesters on Big Bend Boulevard. These protesters peppered the lawn, carrying anti-Palin signs with slogans reading, “Why is Sarah Palin an NRA member? Shotgun Weddings” and “We can see Russia from St. Louis!”

However, not everyone on the lawn expressed antipathy for Palin.

“It’s nice to find a woman that’s strong and conservative and who knows that real women don’t kill their children,” said Ruth Cosgrove, one of the protesters.

Some of the protesters carried signs for Bob Barr, the Libertarian candidate for president.
Thomas Knapp, vice presidential candidate for the Boston Tea Party, a splinter libertarian party, was also present. Knapp founded the party in 2006 to fill a void in the country’s libertarian culture during the last Senate campaign. He views his party as a much more solid libertarian group than the better known Libertarian Party.

“We are a libertarian party, not the Libertarian Party,” Knapp said. “This year the Libertarian Party nominated a conservative republican rather than a libertarian. This year we nominated our first presidential ticket, Charles Jay from Florida, and myself from right here in St. Louis.”

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