Good for You, Straight Guy

The recent Anti-Hate Speech campaign was awesome. We painted the bridge, spread word through Facebook and Matt took some great pictures to make into posters. These posters were put up all around campus with short phrases like “I’m gay. Your textbook isn’t” next to the faces of LGBT and ally students. I wasn’t sure how all of this would be received by certain groups in the student body. I thought maybe someone would try to deface a poster or just ignore the campaign altogether. What I didn’t expect was for it to be re-used and integrated into daily conversation.

I was recently talking to a friend on the Bryan Center Plaza about the campaign, and he had only very positive feedback. He’s a straight-identified member of a selective living group, an open-minded guy with his own ideas about spreading tolerance. He thought the posters were a fantastic idea. They were eye-catching and efficient. This savvy friend of mine has noticed that, at least at Duke, there are more good hearts than one might think. The problem is that we don’t know about all of them because they don’t want to make the time to share their good nature. “I’m not a bigot, so I’m not part of the problem” is a common defense. Well, not really. If you let the bigotry fly, you’re an accessory.

A huge fear that most people have with standing up for LGBT equality is becoming “that guy” who killed the mood. What this campaign did for his SLG, though, was allow people (straight or not) to intervene when necessary without disrupting the momentum of a casual dialogue. My friend has heard straight-identified men in his SLG throw out “I’m gay!” on several occasions where someone used hate speech. Whoever had said “That’s so gay,” “No homo” or whatever the phrase may have been recognized what his/her friend was trying to say. They understood that they had been insensitive, so they apologized and addressed their mistake before smoothly moving on with the topic at hand.

I thought this was a brilliant use of BDU’s attempt at affecting change on campus! These guys are my favorite now. The first person I hear saying this is getting a hug.