The Daily Tar Heel has failed in its mission to fully cover the entire student body. I am referring to the two articles about casual sex and hooking up from the Feb. 14 paper ("Students Sound Off on Hooking Up," "Officials Outline Consequences of Casual Sex"). Both articles completely ignored the implications of hookups and casual sex for the gay community.
In defense of the DTH, some may argue that the same issues regarding casual sex for the heterosexual world directly apply to the gay community. Just change every "she" to "he" and stir. I find this untrue for several reasons.
Gay males face many different issues when it comes to casual sex. For example, AIDS is much more common among gay males than straight people. The number of U.S. AIDS cases from gay sex outranks the number of cases from heterosexual sex by a factor of eight. Both articles ignore this fact. Actually, both articles omitted any mention of AIDS all together.
Another important gay issue the articles ignored was Internet dating. While gay chat rooms can serve as a way to meet other gays and form a community, people also frequently use them to find hookups. Discourse on the safety of finding anonymous partners online has become urgently important because of events last fall. Two area gay men were found murdered in their homes last September. The police are investigating possible links to the victims' time spent in gay chat rooms. The dangers (and joys) of finding a lover over the Internet are regrettably absent from both articles.
The DTH needs to take a proactive role in fully covering all areas of student life -- queer and straight.
Drew McLelland
Senior
Business
