COMMENTARY

Somewhere out it the ‘backwoods’ of Indiana, in the land of free speech and tolerance, there has been something of a nuclear explosion over a newspaper article advocating a little tolerance of gays.  The furore has not been caused by some established writer on gay issues like Deb Price, but by a heterosexual Megan Chase, the writer and her newspaper hardly known to the world – until yesterday.

Here, for starters – and completely unedited, is the article that has caused such a “hissy fit”.

We live in a world where we grow up being taught that it is only acceptable for a boy and a girl to be together. So how do you think you would feel if as you grew older and more mature you started noticing people of the same sex as you, rather than the opposite?

I can only imagine how hard it would be to come out as homosexual in today’s society. I think it is so wrong to look down on those people, or to make fun of them, just because they have a different sexuality than you. There is nothing wrong with them or their brain; they’re just different than you. I’ve heard some people say that they think there is a cure to being homosexual. I can’t believe anyone would think that. It’s not a disease, or something that you catch from someone else; it’s something that they don’t have control over. In saying that, I also believe that homosexuality is not a choice. Almost everyone that I talk to says that a person chooses to be gay or straight. That, again, is something that I believe to be very wrong. If people made the choice to be homosexual, there wouldn’t be anyone who committed suicide because they were too afraid of what people would think of them, and kids wouldn’t be afraid of being disowned if they came out to their parents.

There is also the religious aspect to the argument, where people say that if someone is homosexual, they are automatically sent to hell. To me, that seems extremely unfair. So what are homosexual Christians supposed to do? The answer that I constantly get to that question is, “Just don’t acknowledge that they’re homosexual and live a ‘normal’ life.” Excuse me? So they’re just supposed to never find a partner, or marry someone of the opposite sex, have kids, and pretend they’re “normal?” I don’t think that’s right, or fair. I wouldn’t want to believe in something that would condemn me over something that I didn’t even choose.

It is fact that as many as 7.2 million Americans under the age of 20 are homosexual, and of those that have already come out, 28% of them felt compelled to drop out of school due to the constant verbal assault that they experienced after people found out. Now, if you think that is terrible, this is even worse: According to pflagupstatesc.org, every day 13 Americans from the ages of 15-24 commit suicide, and homosexual youths make up 30% of the completed suicides. I don’t understand why we would put so much pressure on those people, that they would feel that they have to end their lives because of their sexuality. Would it be so hard to just accept them as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else? Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.

Not bad writing, we suggest.  Some very pertinent points were made – in fact, perhaps it is great writing.

And it was written, not by some famous columnist who has been plying her trade for years on one of America’s heavy-weight newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post or Los Angels Times.

It appeared in the Woodlan Tomahawk in Fort Wayne – a student newspaper by and for the kids at Woodlan High School

Principal Edwin Yoder apparently was not amused and shot off a letter to the newspaper staff and the journalism teacher Amy Sorrell insisting, Associated :Press reports, “that future issues be subject to his approval”.

Ms. Sorrell, the Principal said was “exposing students to inappropriate material”.

It later emerged that the school authorities considered the article to be flawed because of a “lack of balance and thoroughness”.

Frankly, the matter looks very much like “homophobic censorship”, even though the article was published.

Going further, the paper should have been lauded by the school’s staff as the article was something positive in the fight against homophobic bullying.  And who better to ‘lead the charge’ than by one of the pupils? 

Had young Megan Chase, who we reckon to be around 16, not written about homosexual kids and was pleading for tolerance of, say, disabled or ‘native American’ children, she would probably have been hailed by the Principal.

Is there such a thing as a “Junior Pulitzer Prize” for young Megan, who we hope is not put-off by all this intolerance of writing well about an important issue in schools?

■ Text of Megan Chase’s article courtesy the Advance Indiana blog.  The Associated Press article that ‘went round the world’ can be read in the Indianapolis Star.