TO THE EDITOR:
"(Gays) are killing themselves," was the response given when I asked a young woman why she was erasing the sidewalk chalk in the Pit. She thinks their brazen pictures and words will only inspire more hate.
Perhaps well-intentioned, her actions and her thinking have several major problems:
The solution to irrational hate is not silence. Public discourse, integration and time - these will reduce hate. Would anyone argue that blacks would be better off today if they had just kept quiet in the '60s?
She erased a large phallus with "I f***ed your boyfriend" under it.
I fully understand why she found it offensive, but when I challenged her to explain why it should be forbidden speech under the First Amendment, she responded by explaining that gay men are responsible for the AIDS pandemic.
Forgetting that this is like blaming silverware for obesity rates, let's focus on the fact that she didn't, in fact, tell me that the phallus isn't protected speech - just that she's anti-gay.
If she's objecting to chalking, she should petition Chancellor Moeser to ban all chalking - I'll support her.
We at Carolina don't have to be for gay rights or be in favor of changing N.C. law to allow same-sex marriage - but we do need to be smart enough to recognize that abridging free speech, however offensive, is stupid.
