the rest of the story

I really don't know why I kept trying to get through to her. Even before she responded at all the first time, I was quite certain it was useless, but for some reason I just couldn't let it go. She had personally offended me, and even worse had made the situation at BYU even more homophobic, and I felt I had to at least try to show her that her rhetoric (if not her position) was offensive, damaging and extremely hypocritical. Her response to the e-mail I posted yesterday was this:

Do you feel better now?

Which pissed me the hell off. I responded with this:

You're unbelievable! Did you even read it?

At which point I guess she decided to avoid the issue even more and sent me this e-mail which she titled "Common Ground":

Dear Craig:
Are you still interested in Germanic philogy?
Best wishes for your work,

I wasn't about to let her just avoid the issue, and her attempt to find "Common Ground" I found quite manipulative and offensive. So I sent her this reply:

What' I'm interested in is getting more understanding and compassion shown to gay people who have it hard enough already without your kind of unthinking vitriol thrown in their faces. I tried appealing to your compassion, to your logic, to your sense of fairness. Nothing apparently works. Did you happen to read some of the responses at the Daily Universe to your letter? Here's a convenient link. I'm by far not the only one who was upset and disappointed by your language.

I respect your right to your opinion, but don't you see you're making matter worse when you talk about the issue like that as if nothing bad ever happens to gay students and you're the injured one?

This is an incredibly important issue that, at times, literally deals with life and death situations. Suicide is a horrible thing, and I would hope you would want to not contribute, in whatever small way, to the despondency many faithful Mormon, gay BYU students feel when they read things like what you've written. It happens, it's reality. Do you deny that?

I want you to face the issue, not brush it casually off.

The next e-mail she sent was called "Common Courtesy":

Dear Craig:

A young man came to speak with me about my DU letter, during office hours last Wednesday. His intent was communication and understanding. We spoke together civilly for about 45 minutes. He thanked me for the discussion in an email followup. I responded by expressing respect for his courtesy and courage.

My letter appeared in a public forum and was not an invitation for you to attack me personally by email.

Best regards,

By this point I'm just plain pissed off. I've had enough of her complaining about me attacking her while she attacks all gay people in a public forum where I can't even respond or fight back because everything I write is censored. So this is my very direct and forceful reply:

Indeed it was in a public forum, but I thought you might benefit from knowing that people who know you personally were offended and how ludicrous your ridiculous comment about never hearing a bad thing said towards gay people was, as someone who knows first-hand. I also posted on the DU website, but of course my response was censored. This was the only way to address the issue. I can see (and had assumed from the beginning, but thought I should at least try) that you would be deaf to any criticism because you're convinced you're in the right, no matter what anyone says - this is a judgement I made when I was in your class and saw how inappropriately you censured and judged your colleagues and other students for political protests specifically re: Cheney speaking at BYU.

Your tone and words in the letter were offensive and hypocritical. But of course you're in the right. Because you follow the prophet, selectively. You chose what is comfortable and fits with your preconceptions and ignore the that which you don't want to address. You took offence at a gay student's call for compassion, when his call echoed the prophet you claim to follow.

Your homophobia with your "home-phobia" comment was obvious, and I thought you might benefit from some suggestions as to how your words are counter-productive, and don't represent the reality of what it is like to be a gay person.

I am an atheist and a non-Mormon and care nothing about your personal beliefs. I'm simply sick to death of people like you forcing their morality on the rest of the world and telling other humans what rights they do and do not deserve. It is disgusting that you act in this way, speak so callously of other humans, and so coldly disregard the fact that all humans are equal and deserve the same treatment, no matter how different or diverse.

I am ashamed of you and of your tarnishing of academia, free-thought, and human equality.

And her final response is weirdest of all. It is called "Common Destiny" and it is:

I am Cynthia. You are you. We shall be changed.

What the weird?! I have no idea what the fuck that is supposed to mean.

This whole experience of trying to break through her self-righteousness, just a little, and get her to admit that she herself had quite hypocritically said unkind things about gays in her letter, and to impress upon her the reality of being gay and Mormon and how that actually does lead many to suicide showed me that even if the situation with some people is hopeless, and they are completely blind to reason, and deaf to compassion, I still have to try.

She was wrong about my writing these responses to her to make myself feel better. It was only partly about me. It was much more about the hundreds if not thousands of gay students at BYU who are subjected to her extreme overt homophobia. It was for those who might just be suicidal or depressed and when read her letter about how clueless she is about them and their experience are going to feel even more isolated, alone, helpless, and despondent. It was people like her and rhetoric like the kind she uses which constantly made everything worse for me when I was there, and which was a strong contributing factor to my own contemplation of suicide. Her casual dismissal of suicide and her claim that nothing unkind is said about "those who struggle with same-sex attractions" infuriated me to a degree that hasn't happened for quite a while. On top of that, her logical fallacies and ridiculous complaint of Mormons being the "real" victims here induced me to keep trying to reach her until I found that her crazy was just far too entrenched, and it was indeed pointless.

Her apparent obsession with this subject (I still suspect it may well stem from intense internalised homophobia) doesn't give me hope that she'll leave the topic alone. At this point, I can only hope that even if just to avoid criticism from myself and others she'll word her homophobic epithets a little less caustically next time.