 "Photo: TOM YOUNG/The Observer")
When Saint Mary's junior Laurel Javors saw a comic implying violence towards the gay community in the Jan. 13 edition of The Observer, she thought of a friend.
"I was in Florence last year, watching my friend Jeff wheeled away in a stretcher," Javors said. "He was beaten to the point where he lost sight in his eye because we was holding his boyfriend's hand.
"These are the realities we face," Javors, a member of Saint Mary's Gay and Straight Alliance, said in a panel Thursday evening.
In response to The Observer comic, student government hosted "Where To Go From Here?: Moving Beyond Fruits and Vegetables," and discussed how the Notre Dame community can create a more inclusive atmosphere, especially for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) students.
Five panelists spoke about their reaction to the comic and offered suggestions for how the Notre Dame community can make progress in the achieving a "Spirit of Inclusion," referring to the University's 1997 formal statement.
Dan Myers, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, said The Observer comic should be used as an opportunity for progress.
"When something happens like this, like this cartoon being published, it's natural and it's very easy to get focused on the specific individuals who are involved," Myers said. "That's not where I want to focus."
Myers said it is more important to focus on changing the culture at Notre Dame, and he called upon students and faculty to hold themselves accountable.
"When you first came to Notre Dame, you might have wondered how people were going to behave with respect to these issues," he said. "The first time someone made one of these offensive jokes, I bet there was kind of an awkward pause while people figured out whether it as okay to laugh.
"Those are the moments that define our culture," Myers said.
"I'm asking you … to challenge yourself to step up and be someone who helps change this culture," he said. "I know it's intimidating as hell to do that stuff. I don't blame people to being scared to do it. I'm scared to do it, but you can do it."
Senior Patrick Bears, a member of Core Council for Gay and Lesbian Students, called upon both students and faculty to make a change.
"I don't go a week without hearing something odious described as gay or without someone calling someone else a [derogatory term] when they do something they don't like," he said.
But it's about more than simply changing the type of language used, Bears said.
"It's not just us to stop using ‘gay' [...] What I want us to do is to become better students and better teachers," he said. "I would like to see more students interested in queer material and I want to see more teachers offer queer material in their syllabi."
Javors said the Notre Dame community should move forward by engaging mature discussions about sexuality as a way of life.
"God created my sexuality, regardless of what any religious teaching otherwise said. That is what I hold to be true," she said. "I feel like the more people get to know their peers, whether they be heterosexual or homosexual, they will see that exact same thing.
"Sexuality isn't what someone does in bed, but it's what they live out to the world everyday," Javors said. "I challenge both the Saint Mary's and Notre Dame's campuses to really engage in a mature and intellectual way and not just hide behind the teachings of [the Bible.]"
Myers use his 13-year-old son as an example of what it takes for individuals to help change the culture. He said he heard his son on the phone with a friend defending homosexuality.
"You can hardly imagine a more socially intimidating place in life than junior high. [But my son said,] ‘Dude, you are being so homophobic right now. You can't just call people ‘gay' as a put down,'" Myers said.
"And then he said, ‘Seriously I'm going to hang up on you if you don't stop being so homophobic,'" he said. "Saying, ‘Dude that is so not cool.' That, I'm telling you, is a hell of a weapon.
"Now if he can do it, you can do it. I can do it. We all can," Myers said.
Other panelists included Sr. Sue Dunn, co-president of the Core Council for Gay and Lesbian Students, and Maureen Lafferty, University Counseling Center counselor and psychologist and member of the Core Council.
is a member of the 
34 comments
absolute, then the fact is it would not produce gay
people. When I read that "God is love," there is no asterisk
that has exceptions to that statement.When anyone feels they are "absolutely" sure about any
subject, I avoid those people. In them there is no room for
enlightenment. The earth is flat and that's that.By the way, it seems that gay love seems to only bother
straight people. Gay people don't advocate abolishing
or restricting or defining anyone elses love. It doesn't
seem to bother the Deity, either, God keeps making us.If he didn't, who would want to keep adopting all those
unwanted children who are the products of Nancy's sexual
love?
a gay man. Always was, always will be. Thanks
for all of your kind words of love and caring.
Yet St. Paul also wrote this:"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. 21For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." You can't have one without the other. The Jesus who "allowed individuals to make up their own minds how to proceed in the world" is the hippie Jesus invented in the 1970s. It's not the real Jesus, who told us that to have eternal life we must die to ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow him. The Jesus who came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The Jesus who gave his disciples the keys to the kingdom, and the authority to forgive and retain sin. The Jesus who loved sinners so deeply that he gave up his life to free them from their sin, but who also told them to go and sin no more. The Jesus who intensified the demands of the Mosaic law by abolishing divorce and telling his disciples that even lusting in one's heart is a sin. The Jesus who would never say "fine by me" to a person intent on engaging in homosexual activities.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
. . . there was a day in our Colonies when Catholics weren't allowed to worship in public in the State of Maryland. Catholics had to worship in the closet, so to speak. Charles Carroll of Carrolton, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence had a private chapel in his manor house, it is still there. It only took you 2 centuries to forget all about Catholic oppression by the King of England. Yet you have the "moral authority" to champion another form of oppression against gays and lesbians. How hypocritical is that?
The Catholic Church has gone well beyond the boundaries of decency and democracy to demonize gays and lesbians for decades. What else are their faithful to believe? Now the CC leadership tries to backpedal, love the sinner, hate the sin, which is BS propaganda but now the Catholic Church's slander has become hatefully ingrained in the behavior of it's faithful. Not even a clueless young Catholic editor can deny her culpability, but has she expressed her religion's disrespect for civil rights for all?
I suggest the biased homophobic leadership of the Catholic Church reconsider it's priorities, especially the bona fide hatred they publicly espouse for gay and lesbian civil rights and as expressed the the CC's monetary millions of dollars of support for California's Proposition 8. The CC has a lot of gall asking for money for Catholic Charities for Haiti relief and yet a few years earlier spend tens of millions of dollars in California to support discriminatory legislation in America?
I suggest that Notre Dame University decide which is more important, football or human rights. I know it's a tough choice for you kids. It's time for you all to grow up and stop the hatred!
There is nothing in Catholic teaching, nor in Scripture, that supports your conclusion that homosexual activities are "beautiful and of God's grace." Tellingly, you failed to provide anything but your own conviction to support that assertion. It is true that Jesus would never be callous. He would also tell you, as he told the Samaritan woman living in a sinful relationship, "The man you are with is not your husband." Notre Dame, as a Catholic university, can do no less than Jesus would have done. Please stop insisting that the university, and its members, endorse your relationship as equivalent to marriage.