Rainbow Intolerance

By Matthew Tokson | Monday, October 2, 2000

As they often do, Dartmouth Christian group Voces Clamantium was choosing a speaker to bring to campus for a presentation in Collis Commonground. This past spring term's speaker was chosen, not by the usual unanimous vote, but by a 5-4 margin after a lengthy and emotional debate. And thus began Dartmouth's troubled relationship with Yvette Schneider, Policy Analyst in Cultural Studies for Washington, DC's Family Research Council and self-identified former lesbian.

Schneider's visit to campus on May 23 spawned campus-wide debate on issues of homosexuality and freedom of speech. The debate really started several days before Schneider's visit, when the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance and the Gay-Straight Alliance decided to hold a candlelight vigil and several other demonstrations, including a march to the Top of the Hop, during and after the speech to protest Schneider's message. Attendance at the speech itself was over 400; attendance at non-protested Voces events is about one-tenth that number. And the student body became involved in the debate early on through a long series of anti-Schneider and pro-Schneider Daily Dartmouth editorials leading up to the event.

The decision to protest was based on some implied attacks on homosexuality contained in Schneider's story of renouncing lesbianism. She was portrayed in several editorials as a hateful woman with a hidden agenda: to convert homosexuals or to separate them from their Christian faith. Her affiliation with the Family Research Council—a political action group with the motto 'Defending Family, Faith, and Freedom'—also upset members of the 'GLBTA' community. Activists circulated several supposedly anti-gay quotations from the FRC's website, portraying the FRC as an organization with a vicious anti-gay agenda.

Yvette Schneider is something of a contradiction. She was a 'practicing lesbian' for six years, until she became a devout Christian and renounced her homosexual lifestyle. She was once very active in the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Schneider currently researches and writes articles for the Family Research Council. She is also active in FRC's outreach program—speaking on television and radio as well as telling her story at churches, high schools, and colleges.

Schneider has, in past interviews, had harsh words for the homosexual community of which she was once a part, once referring to AIDS as a 'supernatural intervention' that should cause homosexuals to re-examine their lifestyle. Yet she has toned down her arguments in recent years. Even the most fervent GLBTA protestors agreed that her speech at Dartmouth was inoffensive and that her intentions were good.

Nonetheless, Schneider was heckled vigorously and was upset by her reception at Dartmouth. She told The Review, 'When I arrived at Dartmouth, the Voces representatives assured me that Dartmouth was very proud of its respect for freedom of speech. After all, I was there to tell my personal story of transformation. I was looking forward to intelligent, well-thought-out questions on anything from the Biblical admonitions against homosexuality to the science attempting to prove an inborn cause for homosexuality to the possibility of change. Instead, I faced false accusations based on incomplete and faulty research, and ad hominem attacks. I expected more from an Ivy League college.' Many Dartmouth students shared Schneider's disappointment.

Schneider continues to refine her opinions. Schneider's latest FRC article—entitled, 'The Gay Gene: Going, Going... Gone,' an interesting and dogma-free look at the failure of geneticists to prove the existence of a gene for homosexual preference or behavior (or for any other type of preference or behavior)—indicates that Schneider remains neither sympathetic to the beliefs of the homosexual community nor truly hostile to homosexuals. She is certainly not the bigot described by some DRA protestors.

Many argue that Schneider is damned by her affiliation with the Family Research Council. Programming Coordinator of the Office of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Advocacy Pam Misener made such an argument the day after Schneider's speech: 'When someone works for the kind of organization that Yvette works for, you have to take responsibility for the kind of implicit messages that go along with it.' The FRC is opposed to the growing acceptance of homosexuality, as it clearly states on its website: 'We do not consider homosexuality an alternative lifestyle...it is unhealthy and destructive to individual persons, families, and society...in addition, we challenge efforts by political activists to normalize homosexuality and we oppose attempts to equate homosexuality with civil rights.'

Yet the FRC's position against the homosexual lifestyle is only a small component of a larger focus on protecting and strengthening American families and values. Its policy areas include Sanctity of Life, Education, Marriage and Family, Parental Rights, Religious Liberties, Pornography, Drugs, Crime and Gambling, and Foreign Affairs. On its current website, articles about homosexuality and abortion stand next to articles promoting liberal issues like demanding human rights safeguards in China and demanding higher wages and smaller work weeks to promote family time. The Council promotes what it sees as the best interests of all families and all people—they just happen to have a Christian viewpoint.

In light of this, it should not come as a surprise that Dartmouth's student body supported Schneider's right to speak and disapproved of those who verbally attacked Schneider during the question and answer portion of her appearance. In a Daily Dartmouth poll taken before the speech, 64 percent of students considered the Voces Clamantium speech to be 'good for Dartmouth'; only 30 percent disagreed. And the majority of the countless student editorials published after the speech all echoed the same sentiment: students disagreed with Scheider's message but nevertheless supported her right to express her view.

The protests even caused controversy within the gay community at Dartmouth. Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance member John Brett told The Review that many GLBTA community members disagreed with the actions of the hostile few and that the most vocal protestors were non-Dartmouth students from the Upper Valley area.

Brett emphasized the community's positive acts such as the prayer vigils and the Top of the Hop meeting. He affirmed that Schneider did have the right to speak, but added that 'It was very inappropriate [for Dartmouth to sponsor] an individual to discuss these issues, even from a personal perspective...when she'd definitely been very derogatory in her past comments.'

Brett also criticized Voces Clamantium's lack of preparation for any sort of reaction from the gay community: 'I think that some of the negative response that occurred was not the audience's fault but Voces's fault for not being prepared and cognizant enough to realize that they would need more experienced facilitation. It was very unrealistic to have Yvette speak for over an hour with the audience sitting there passively absorbing her veiled attacks on the LGBT community without realizing there would be an emotional response afterward.'

The idea that Dartmouth's gay community was protesting Schneider's attempt to present Christianity and homosexuality as mutually exclusive is ultimately misleading. The GLBTA community reacted emotionally to Schneider's personal and religious disapproval of homosexuality. Yet, part of living in the 'diverse' community that Dartmouth, and the DRA, advocates is tolerating different views—even when they anger you. Unfortunately, DRA members allowed their emotions to cloud their judgment, and ended up unfairly attacking someone with no hostile intentions towards them.

Rainbow Intolerance

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