<p>Given vnewyork's decision, it is probably not necessary to belabor the point. But, no, I am not familiar with the facebook but I don't think anyone but vnewyork has seen the actual entry (given we don't know the names of anyone involved). Again, I was merely encouraging vnewyork not to jump to conclusions based on a facebook entry. Who knows if the entry is truly representative of the young man involved? Far better to actually meet and speak with the roommate before making a decision.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Are you familiar with facebook? Because I appreciate the thought, but in the context of facebook it's quite clear he meant he was interested in men sexually (unless he was kidding about the whole thing).
<p>About halfway through my freshman year at Millikin University, my best friend slowly made her way out of the closet. This coming year, we will be rooming together. I've had people on more than one occasion question this living arrangement, primarily because, "Won't it be uncomfortable living with a lesbian?" To which my response is, "I'm not living with 'a lesbian,' I'm living with my best friend." People have trouble separating her from her sexuality. They look at her and think, "Lesbian," yet, no one looks at them and thinks, "Straight person." When I look at her, I think, "my best friend, who also likes Teen Titans and helps me with my monologues." What's so uncomfortable about that?
The other reason I'm not worried about living with her is because nothing changed once she came out of the closet. It's not like as soon as she made her announcement she began living in flannel, checking me out, and making passes at me. She still loves to get dressed up. If I change clothes in her presence, her eyes don't even flicker. And while yes, she did once tell me that I'm every lesbian's dream (thank you, thank you,) she has never once made me uncomfortable by treating me as anything but a close friend. Why should I be uncomfortable with that?
So I guess my advice to anyone facing a year with a homosexual roommate is this: A person is not defined by their sexuality. Make no assumptions. You have just as much to learn about this person as you would any roommate. Keep communication clear and your mind open, and you just may find that you have a pretty rockin' roommate.
*Stephanie Dietrich</p>
<p>Also FYI (this is what I get for not reading 100% of the messages before I post,) Facebook is taken pretty seriously, among the people I associate with. Once in a while you will see where people are joking around (ie, it's pretty obvious that Sarah is not married to Barb, despite what her profile may say,) but for the most part if someone says that they're interested in men, they're probably interested in men.</p>
<p>However like Dennis said, it is still not a good idea to condemn a person based on one facebook entry. What they put in their profile is only a tiny sliver of who they are, and there's so much more that you need to know before you can make judgements.</p>
<p>"Therefore NYU did not "force" a homosexual student to room with a heterosexual student anymore than they "force" heterosexuals to live with heterosexuals."</p>
<p>Gosh, being forced to live with heterosexuals? How awful! ;)</p>
<p>DKE--that's a great story about your grandmother, but I can't agree with your conclusion. I very much doubt that reassignment is even an option; it's hard to think of a plausible lie that would result in a change at this point, and NYU seems one of the last places that would be sympathetic to the true reason for such a request.</p>
<p>I mentioned Jeffrey Toobin's article on "Sex and the Supremes" in the August 1 New Yorker. Now that I think about it, the article emphasizes that NYU is particularly sensitive to any sort of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
[quote]
N.Y.U. has an extraordinary and unique role in American legal education," Law [Sylvia Law, the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law, Medicine, and Psychiatry at NYU] said recently.... "We've been ahead of everyone in welcoming women and blacks to law schools and to the profession." In the late seventies, Law noticed an anomaly in the school's recruitment policy. "We had tons of great gay students, and, among feminists like me, it was obvious to us that gay rights was the next civil-rights movement," she said. So, in 1977, at the instigation of Law and others, the faculty voted overwhelmingly to bar employers who discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation from using the law school's placement office. N.Y.U. was the first law school in the country to add such a provision to its recruiting policy, which did not apply to the rest of the university. Harvard, Yale, and Stanford followed....</p>
<p>In 1993, the N.Y.U. faculty went so far as to ban all Colorado law firms from on-campus recruiting, to protest the state's passage of Amendment 2, which repealed state laws that offered protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and forbade the future passage of any such laws. (The faculty rescinded the ban after the Supreme Court struck down Amendment 2, in 1996.) And "Don't ask, don't tell" made the law professors more determined to keep military recruiters off campus.
[/quote]
Vnewyork--I'm sure you will get to know a lot of openly gay people at NYU, and I'll bet you will find it surprisingly painless.</p>
<p>
[quote]
To which my response is, "I'm not living with 'a lesbian,' I'm living with my best friend." People have trouble separating her from her sexuality. They look at her and think, "Lesbian," yet, no one looks at them and thinks, "Straight person." When I look at her, I think, "my best friend, who also likes Teen Titans and helps me with my monologues." What's so uncomfortable about that?
<p>You know, one thing that disturbs me about some of the posts in this thread is the implication that because the prospective (male) roommate is interested in <em>some</em> men, he's interested in <em>all</em> men and therefore a sexual threat to his roommates. Without exception, the gay men and women that I know are interested (attracted to) some men and some women---surprisingly, this is <em>exactly</em> like the straight men and straight women I know.</p>
<p>"I suppose it all depends on whether you view sexual orientation as a "lifestyle" or as an innate characteristic. There is no basis for objecting to an aspect of a person with which he was born and which he cannot help; "</p>
<p>Well now I can say you are ugly, your mother dresses you funny, and you smell bad and I haven't broken a law. But if I saw "Twinkle toe over there is a pipe smoker" I can be tossed from school and possibly criminally prosecuted. And why? I am not objecting to characteristics that are innate - that would be his sexual orientation, rather I am objecting to the fact that he practises sodomy. I am objecting to behavior.</p>
<p>Presummably most sociopaths cannot help the fact that they WANT to steal your money or burn your house or rape your four year old child. However the fact that they have the urges inately doesn't entitle them to act on them. And it shouldn't prevent civilized people from being unkind to them when they do.</p>
<p>The very idea that actions must be tolerated because some people very very much want to do them is silly,</p>
<p>You would object to sociopaths who burn your house and rape your children because the acts they commit are harmful. But when there's consentual sexual activity between two adults of the same sex, where's the harm? I tend to think that, in a free country, people should be legally "entitled" to act on whatever urges they please in their private lives so long as their actions do not harm anyone. For example, if they get kicks out of massaging their partner's feet or wearing leather, the world should let them do that. Same deal here.</p>
<p>So yes, civilized people can be forgiven for being unkind to someone who harms the people around him. But until you can prove to me that two men committing sodomy in the privacy of their own bedroom is harmful to the world at large, I think your point is moot.</p>
<p>Patuxent, that is an interesting piece of fiction, but no one gets thrown out of school for making insensitive remarks. They may lose friends -- and if they cross the line from merely making nasty remarks to threatening or harassing others, that is a different matter. Your example of "Twinkle Toe is a pipe smoker," however, is neither criminally nor civilly actionable. Might get you punched in the face if you said it in the wrong place... but I wouldn't recommend telling people they are ugly or smell bad either.</p>
<p>calmom - I think you need to read the hate speech statutes a little more closely.</p>
<p>I am generally pretty libertarian and don't particularly like the now banned sodomy laws but I do believe the courts overstepped their authority in the process. The fact is that sodomy is a high risk sexual activity and that homosexuals as a group have higher incidences of STDs and engage in riskier sexual activities with more partners than heterosexuals. We as a society have spent billions of dollars on the research and treatment of AIDs which is strictly a lifestyle disease and which is still overwhelming confined to homosexuals, intravenous drug users, and their sexual partners. If society has to foot the bill then what goes on in the privacy of ones bedroom is not ENTIRELY a private matter.</p>
<p>Again just because you really really want to do and you do it in private doesn't automatically make it cost free to society. Besides since it is behavior and it is a free country if you are free to do it then everyone else should be free to reproach you for it.</p>
<p>patuxent said: "We as a society have spent billions of dollars on the research and treatment of AIDs which is strictly a lifestyle disease and which is still overwhelming confined to homosexuals, intravenous drug users, and their sexual partners."</p>
<p>Actually it is epidemic in Africa, and it is overwhelmingly HETEROSEXUALLY transmitted there, consentually and by rape.</p>
<p>And there is plenty of risky behavior by heterosexual and homosexual young people--that is why all of them are counseled on STDs, date rape, etc....in high school and in college.</p>
<p>Yeah yeah yeah have heard the Africa propaganda but have seen little evidence to support the inference that African sexual norms are the same as ours. What we do know is that its spread to the heterosexual community hasn't occurred to any significant degree. </p>
<p>In any event it is STILL a life style disease. If you are a monogomous heterosexual couple who do not use needles you run a higher chance of getting eaten alive by ants than you do of contracting AIDs.</p>
<p>Besides my basic argument here is that anything person A is free to DO person B should be free to reproach him/her for. And that is what is wrong with NYU's policy. Nobody should be forced to refrain from criticising behavior they find repugnant. Just as nobody should be forced to refrain from doing what they want as long as it hurts noone else. Homosexuality is NOT the same as race and should not recieve the same kind of protections. You are Black whether you want to be or not and it is totally irrelavent to anything else you DO in life. Being a sodomist is a choice.</p>
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[quote]
If you are a monogomous heterosexual couple who do not use needles you run a higher chance of getting eaten alive by ants than you do of contracting AIDs.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Same goes if you're a monogomous homosexual couple who don't use needles.</p>
<p>You seem to have some sort of problem with sodomy. You seem to find it offensive for some reason. But the only reason you cite for its alleged harmfulness is that it can spread AIDS. (So can vaginal sex.) So assuming the couple uses condoms in order to prevent the spread of AIDS, do you still have a problem with it? In other words, do you have a problem with the act itself or merely with the risk of disease associated with abusing it? </p>
<p>If the latter, then I'm not sure you have a case. I agree with you that spreading AIDS is bad. A lot of prominent homosexual men agree with you too, and put out a lot of effort to promote safer sex and to lambast those disgusting and criminal individuals who knowingly spread AIDS. (Any Dan Savage reader will know how heated he gets about the subject, for example.) But I don't see what this has to do with the act of sodomy in and of itself. It seems that your argument is more against AIDS than against homosexuality.</p>
<p>So yes, everyone, use condoms and don't spread AIDS.</p>
<p>Also, homosexuality does not necessarily imply sodomy, though in many cases it does. But I'm sure there are plenty of gay men who stick to oral sex (I couldn't give you examples, because I'm not a gay man and I don't ask other people for details of their sex lives).</p>
<p>Conversely, many heterosexual couples practise sodomy as well. So if, contrary to what you seem to be saying, you actually have some reason to object to sodomy other than the possibility that it (like vaginal sex, which you for some reason don't mind) can spread AIDS, then perhaps you ought to widen your circle of hatred to include a lot more people. As the performing duo The Wet Spots say, "Anal sex: it's not just for convicts anymore!"</p>
<p>Also, regarding your claim that AIDS has not spread to the heterosexual community "to any significant degree," the following statistics should belie that:</p>
<p>US AIDS CASES BY EXPOSURE CATEGORY IN 2003</p>
<p>Male-to-male sexual contact: 17,969
Injection Drug Use: 9,449
Male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use: 1,877
Heterosexual contact: 13,260
Other: 557</p>
<p>Sure, there are more cases amongst homosexual males, but I certainly wouldn't call 13,260 insignificant. Heterosexuals clearly need to be as vigilant as homosexuals about the risks of unprotected sex.</p>
<p>Take out the heterosexuals who are sleeping with drug users or are sleeping with bisexuals or who are being less than truthful or who are themselves engaging in sodomy and then give me the numbers.</p>
<p>Other practices besides sex may account for the spread in Africa - female circumcision and ritual scarification being two of them. Anyway I am not interested in rehashing all of this with somebody who has the Gay lobby talking points down pat. The bottom line is the STD rate among homsexuals is much higher than it is among heterosexuals. The some heteros do this and some homos don't do that is argument by anecdote and without much merit along the lines of some smokers live to 90 (my mother) therefore smoking is no bad for you or society.</p>
<p>I wondered how long it would take to get to my circle of hatred:-) I don't hate homosexuals and indeed I have never even met one I even moderately dislike - that I know of. I also encouraged the OP to give the kid a shot and he would probably find he liked him. But liking the person and approving of the lifestyle are two different things. I am ambivalent about the lifestyle and if you are going to push for social approbation which is what the homosexual community wants I don't think I can go along for the ride. There are many reasons why some of them rooted in religious belief. Some in fear of harming other social institutions and some in fear of the next step in l</p>
<p>For a long time, I wondered if homosexuality was a choice or innate. Then I read about attempts during WWII to force gay men to become straight by giving them electroshock therapy. It didn't work. Frankly, if it were a choice, don't you think it might have?</p>
<p>I can't believe that we, as a society, condemn homosexuals for failing to maintain close relationships when we make it so difficult to do so, both legally and socially. If we made (heterosexual) marriage illegal and socially unacceptable, don't you think a lot of men and women would have trouble maintaining close relationships, too?</p>
<p>As for religious beliefs and the Bible on the subject of homosexuality, I've read enough history, and enough of my Bible, to know that established churches once supported slavery, just as the Bible continues to do. That doesn't make slavery right, either.</p>
<p>Patuxent--while it's clear that you very very much want to air your views on homosexual behavior, they seem beside the point. NYU has a stated policy that "roommate requests based upon race, color, religion, sexual orientation, physical characteristics, or national origin cannot be accepted." Anyone who is not prepared to abide by that rule should seek out a school with a different policy.</p>
<p>"Sodomist" is an unnecessary pejorative. And being gay is not a "choice." Gays certainly get enough grief in our society that I don't think the queue forms up and people say, "Hey! THAT's the 'lifestyle' I want!"</p>
<p>The choice is being sexually active or not. Though I suppose the ignorant and the homophobic would be happier of gays had to be celibate if they had to exist at all. Afterall, wishing a stunted incomplete life on someone doesn't matter if they're gay.</p>