The Lantern’s decision to print the remarks of Brett Beemyn, the coordinator of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Student Services at OSU, in Wednesday’s front-page article “Same-sex couples put off by Defense act” is objectionable and highly tactless.
The appearance of Mr. Beemyn’s inflammatory opinion in the lead-off position of a front-page article implicitly implies the paper’s endorsement of his views. In response, I challenge the paper to run a story covering those members of the OSU community who support Gov. Taft’s decision to sign the Defense of Marriage Act.
Mr. Beemyn believes that Taft’s decision to sign the bill implies the governor’s determination to protect “conservative, outdated values,” which Beemyn implies should be rejected as untenable. The bill’s obvious identification with conservative values, however, and the governor’s support of those values through the bill, by no means indicates that such values are either “outdated” or false.
The age of any value or value system can never by itself establish the non-validity of the views in question. Many non-controversial opinions have existed unchallenged in our society for a long time – opinions that the majority of us would not wish to dismiss simply on grounds of their age.
It is unfortunately a common, but quite groundless, cultural assumption that the most conservative of political positions or religious world views must be wholly rejected without a dialogue or investigation into the explanatory claims they offer.
Given the controversial nature of the Defense of Marriage Act, The Lantern needs to be aware that there are conservatives who respect others’ rights to disagree with them and who request that they be treated with the same respect. These conservatives are not seeking “to impose their intolerant values on all Ohio residents,” but are instead asking those Ohio residents to join them in the attempt to build living and working communities of respect, dialogue, and the right to hold contrasting opinions.
Mark Rankin,
Doctoral student in English
