OCR Text |
Show Letters to the editor PR is beautiful but reality is preferable Editor, I believe the refusal to appoint Beverly Taggart to her rightful position as managing editor next year would represent an injustice to. the Signpost. It is my understanding that Ms. Taggart applied for the position, but yet I read in last Friday's paper, a public relations specialist was chosen in favor of Ms. Taggart. But what better way to perpetrate the altruistic, flawless character of a school than by the beautiful rhetoric of a P.R. major. I prefer the reporting of reality. Ms. Taggart has given the Signpost sound professional investigative reporting, and is one of the few talents that has saved the Signpost from a P.R. rag that we all despise. Her talent is and will be an invaluable asset in the development of the paper that accurately reflects the position of this studentbody, Professor W. Editor: Reference is to your April 10th article: PROFESSOR CHALLENGES GAY STEREOTYPES THROUGH STUDY. Given a choice between the pitifully ignorant but honestly hateful opposition of an Anita Bryant and the hopefully well-intended, but hopelessly misconceived,pseudo-intellectual "study" of a W. Danny Kuhn, any minority would prefer Anita. It is highly unprofessional, to say the least, to draw any conclusions about a minority of some 200,000 Utahns on the basis of only 20 interviews contacted in a bar in a state where most of the subjects of the study have never been in a bar. This approach ignores the existence of most of those it presumes to study. Are they all assumed to emerge suddenly like pink bees in the springtime of 20 and then mysteriously fade away into a chilling 30? With Lis hardly startling revelation that "gays in Utah are law-abiding, functional members of the community," Kuhn seems to think he is challenging some widely accepted stereotype of homosexual Utahns as nonfunctioning criminals. No one with any common sense (not even Anita) has ever held that simple-minded a view. But Kuhn then contradicts his own challenge. Since "homosexuality in Utah is a crime," all homosexual Utahns are, at least technically, criminals, including virgin and celibate or "non-practicing" homosexuals. (Anita and the instead of the P.R. jive we are all too familiar with. Shouldn't the managing editor's position be filled by a person with some form of journalistic education, some sort of news reporting experience, and at least some time spent with the staff? Your prospective candidate fills none of these requirements; Beverly Taggart meets and exceeds by great degree all these minimal qualifications. I respectfully ask that next year's editor in chief reconsider the appointment of managing editor on the basis of talent, journalistic ability and experience, and past performance. I am sure you will find Ms. Taggart is by far the obvious choice. I had always thought of the Signpost as being free from the muddy waters of personal politics; please don't prove me wrong. Sincerely, Brian Bailey Danny Kuhn Mormons prefer to consider the latter "forgiven and cured, although it remains profoundly unclear just how anyone could be "cured" of a sin or "repent" of a sickness"). Is Kuhn challenging or promoting stereotypes when he present us with the unsavory spectacle of fending off the presumably unwanted advances of "as many as 500 drunken faggots," who we are asked to believe have so little taste as to find the "ass" of a closet anthropologist in low drag inexplicably irresistible. The assumption here is that queers are so depraved and hard-up that no "straight as an arrow" male is safe from their clutches, no matter how young, old, dull or repulsive. Poking fun at the stupid stereotype may have been humorous in the original context, but when repeated in a lecture and printed on the front page of a newspaper it is merely offensive to anyone of either, any or no sexuality. It is difficult to place much confidence in any self-proclaimed challenger of stereotypes who feels he must affect a false and stereotyped costume and personality to "build up trust" with his subjects, as if they were natives of some alien tribe or another species. The approach is understandable since Kuhn regards his "paranoid" subjects as mentally ill; but not even psychiatrists ordinarily pretend to be patients to gain their subjects' trust. If by "Paranoid" Kuhn believes Utah homosexuals suffer delusions of persecution, 1 3 Take if from Mama. If you have something to say, write a letter to the editor today. Letter exchange Dear Students: We are presently prisoners and have been confined for over four years.. .We'd enjoy exchanging letters with students! If you respond, a photo will be considered an additional pleasure. Be gentle with yourself! Sincerely, Frank Hall 20616-101 Thomas Pickney 32121-138 P.O. Box 34550 Memphis, Tennessee 38134 should stick he disproves his own diagnosis when he admits that "homosexuality in Utah is a crime." When the law makes an individual's very existence criminal, his persecution is no delusion! His caution is hardly paranoid, but a rational response to a very real situation. What Kuhn calls "covert" and "secretive" paranoia is usually considered normal reticence. Most people differ from Kuhn in that they feel no particular need to announce publicly the specific manner in which they "practice" their sex, or indeed whether or not they are getting any, nor with whom. A "practicing heterosexual," Kuhn makes it sound like some religiously grim duty. Unless he means to imply that homosexuals are schizoid as well as paranoid, Kuhn's simplistic dichotomy between "gay reality and straight reality" is pointless. Few of us reveal completely every aspect of our personalities (least of all our sexualities) to everyone we meet at "bars, parks, work, church," or even "at home" to friends or family, far less to the police! In fact, the proportion of homosexuals who lead some sort of at least double, if not multiply fractured, lives is probably no greater than heterosexuals. There is nothing new in Kuhn's "new terminology." He should really try to master the existing one before attempting a new. Basic distinctions (such as between "gay" and "homosexual") would be a very good place to begin. Some basic reading would also help i .... ; r Geology scholarships Applications are now being accepted for two $140 scholarships in the Department of Geology - Geography. The scholarships will be awarded to students who will be on a Junior or Senior status in either Geology or Geography during the 197880 academic year. They will be awarded on the basis of potential and need. The scholarships are made possible by a generous donation from Dr. and Mrs. Walter Buss of Ogden, Utah. Dr. Buss taught Geology and Geography at Weber State a banana up his turban (although admittedly not easy while playing grab-ass at bars.) TIME magazine's recent report on Masters and Johnson research shouln't be overtaxing, however. Dealing directly with Utah, THE PAYNE PAPERS by BYU students, originally published in THE OPEN DOOR, is one of the most sensitive and intelligent studies of homosexuality ever written by anyone, anywhere, Kuhn's findings are truly underwhelming: 20 Utah barflies "have a higher tendency" to drink alcohol; 14 of them said they had been Mormons; 13 said they had never had a venereal disease! "Homosexuality is social in nature." Is the same not true of hetero or any other kind? "Kuhn believes homosexuality generally caused by a positive early homosexual experience or an extremely strong male ...role model." All experts who support environmental origins of homosexuality claim just the opposite: that it is caused by the lack of such models. If Kuhn's "positive experience" theory were true, the only logical prevention would be a "negative" Clockwork Orange experience, like having every child raped by an ugly queer around the age of three. Far from challenging old stereotypes, Kuhn's muddles speculations merely reinforce them and create new barriers of confusion and misunderstanding. His methods may have been appropriate in the fifties for some sociological documentary in novel form, ( GAY LIKE ME?), but to pass oil such pretentious nonsense as serious scholarship College for 41 years until he retired in 1974. Oil Shale Topic Dr. Reginald Cane will speak to the Geology and Geography Department regarding oil shale in Australia on May 8. He is the head of the School of Applied Science at the Queensland Institute of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. The talk will be given at 1:10 p.m. in room SL328. Dr. Cane is a Fulbright scholar visiting in the area. All interested parties are invited to attend the lecture. before an academic fraternity is inexcusable. What might have been tolerated from a student cannot be when the offender is a professor, even if merely "visiting." (From where? One wonders, sniffing the malodorous and malignant condition of BYU) . The validity of any study depends upon its own merits, not upon the self-avowed sexual "practicings" of its author, nor the alleged straightness or crookedness of his intercourse, no matter how fascinating. For an upright "practicing heterosexual" member in good standing, W. Danny protests too much! To quote another trailblazing "ethnographic study" challenging Chinese street gang sterotypes (conducted while working undercover, stained lichee-nut yellow, as a fortune-cooky stuffer in one of San Francisco's smallest, most dangerous laundromats, in standard "field research" guise, wearing rather loose red silk pajamas with darling gold tassels and very tight, black, eye-slanting pigtails, moving up to head stuffer after only 10 months while repulsing the truly repulsive advances of what on a good day could easily have been as many as 2 opium-maddened, tassel-grabbing mandarins): "man who claim straight as arrow speak with forked tongue." Whenever W. Danny again feels the itch to moonlight in low drag, he should resist the Sun Tavern, stick a banana up his turban and try the Guadalupe Center. Dr. Theron Butler |