Another Stone Wall
While Stonewall is Glorified, Another Wall's Anniversary Passes in Obscurity
Charles Johnson
Last Updated: 12/29/09 Section: Opinion
At CMC, an email recently invited the entire campus to a speaker series entitled "Moving towards Equality: Forty Years since Stonewall - Looking at the Accomplishments of the Gay Rights Movement and the Challenges Ahead."
Few Claremont students had heard of the Stonewall Inn. The New York City bar was the site of a protest in 1969 against a police raid; that demonstration is considered the start of the gay rights movement. The email told students that speakers for this series included RuPaul Charles, a famous drag queen; Cleve Jones, a professional gay activist; and Dan Choi, a U.S. infantry officer committed to ending the current Armed Forces policy toward gays known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." ??It's alright for Claremont to host a big event to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Inn raid. But that commemoration stands in stark contrast to the school's indifference to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the wall separating East and West Germany was unarguably one of the most significant events of the last century, but the school had no event or speaker to discuss its implications.
The Claremont Colleges devote substantial attention and support to gay rights. In fact, homophobic incidents have been fabricated just to make it seem that gays are under attack and therefore in need of special protection. For example, the Student Life reported a supposed hate crime against the Queer Resource Center, but subsequent investigation revealed the "attack" as nothing other than some drunken students dispensing a fire extinguisher nearby. And in 2003, the left-leaning newspaper the Claremont Port Side retracted a story that accused professor emeritus Harry V. Jaffa of saying that homosexuals should be shot - but only after he threatened a lawsuit to clear his name. Those who know Jaffa well knew that he would never say such a thing.??Last year, following the passage of California's Proposition 8, which recognized marriage as a relationship between a man and woman, David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College, sent out an email encouraging students to join him in "expressing support for those who feel negatively affected by the passage of this measure." Activist students disrupted dining hall lunches and dinners across campus decrying as "unacceptable" Proposition 8's definition of marriage. Later, some even tried to disinvite Kenneth Starr, dean of Pepperdine Law School, from speaking at Pomona because he defended Proposition 8. The event went on anyway, and there was a tasteful protest outside.??Compare this lavish attention to gay rights forty years after Stonewall to the silence surrounding the Berlin Wall.??November 9 marked the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first step in the collapse of communism across Europe. Despite the demolition of the Wall, more than a billion people still languish in corrupt and nominally communist regimes. They include some international students who will have much less freedom when they return to their native countries than they enjoy in the United States.??There is a museum at Checkpoint Charlie, located on the old border between West and East Berlin. The displays show the extent to which East Germans would go in their efforts to be free: Boyfriends rescued girlfriends by hiding them in their cars; makeshift hot air balloons whisked their occupants up and away to freedom. ??
Few Claremont students had heard of the Stonewall Inn. The New York City bar was the site of a protest in 1969 against a police raid; that demonstration is considered the start of the gay rights movement. The email told students that speakers for this series included RuPaul Charles, a famous drag queen; Cleve Jones, a professional gay activist; and Dan Choi, a U.S. infantry officer committed to ending the current Armed Forces policy toward gays known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." ??It's alright for Claremont to host a big event to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Inn raid. But that commemoration stands in stark contrast to the school's indifference to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The fall of the wall separating East and West Germany was unarguably one of the most significant events of the last century, but the school had no event or speaker to discuss its implications.
The Claremont Colleges devote substantial attention and support to gay rights. In fact, homophobic incidents have been fabricated just to make it seem that gays are under attack and therefore in need of special protection. For example, the Student Life reported a supposed hate crime against the Queer Resource Center, but subsequent investigation revealed the "attack" as nothing other than some drunken students dispensing a fire extinguisher nearby. And in 2003, the left-leaning newspaper the Claremont Port Side retracted a story that accused professor emeritus Harry V. Jaffa of saying that homosexuals should be shot - but only after he threatened a lawsuit to clear his name. Those who know Jaffa well knew that he would never say such a thing.??Last year, following the passage of California's Proposition 8, which recognized marriage as a relationship between a man and woman, David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College, sent out an email encouraging students to join him in "expressing support for those who feel negatively affected by the passage of this measure." Activist students disrupted dining hall lunches and dinners across campus decrying as "unacceptable" Proposition 8's definition of marriage. Later, some even tried to disinvite Kenneth Starr, dean of Pepperdine Law School, from speaking at Pomona because he defended Proposition 8. The event went on anyway, and there was a tasteful protest outside.??Compare this lavish attention to gay rights forty years after Stonewall to the silence surrounding the Berlin Wall.??November 9 marked the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first step in the collapse of communism across Europe. Despite the demolition of the Wall, more than a billion people still languish in corrupt and nominally communist regimes. They include some international students who will have much less freedom when they return to their native countries than they enjoy in the United States.??There is a museum at Checkpoint Charlie, located on the old border between West and East Berlin. The displays show the extent to which East Germans would go in their efforts to be free: Boyfriends rescued girlfriends by hiding them in their cars; makeshift hot air balloons whisked their occupants up and away to freedom. ??
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