We Have Miles to Go...

Did you hear the one about the college newspaper that ran a cartoon it thought had a clever punchline that wasn't?

The student paper at Notre Dame University caused a furor when a three-panel strip called, "The Mobile Party", suggested that "the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable" is a "baseball bat." This in 2010.

The paper published an apology and an editor resigned her position after the firestorm of protest over a cartoon advocating gay-bashing. Trouble is, the published mea culpa in the paper contained a disturbing line that undercut any real apology for this action:

Allowing this cruel and hateful comic a place on our pages disgraced those values and severely hurt members of our Notre Dame family — our classmates, our friends. For this, we sincerely apologize. Unfortunately, the language of hate is an everyday reality in our society.

Just because hate speech happens does NOT mean that it is OK to perpetuate it. The cartoonists, who have removed the strip from their blog, tried to explain their "humor" by saying that the character telling the joke, a handsaw, represented a mindset they don't like and that he is "a tool". They also said that they had originally made the punchline of their "joke" AIDS, but that was nixed by editors as making fun of a fatal disease. Wow, the sensitivity of those involved is heart-warming. The back pedaling and CYA on this does not excuse the meanness of the end result: a cartoon that promotes gay bashing.

The University President, Rev. John Jenkins, notes that the newspaper is an independent publication run by the Notre Dame students and the university has no oversight of that paper. Nonetheless, Rev. Jenkins says that Notre Dame "denounces the implication that violence or expressions of hate toward any person or group of people is acceptable or a matter that should be taken lightly."

If there is to be any good out of this fiasco, it is the consciousness-raising on a college campus where being gay is no picnic to say the least! For that, I am hopeful and grateful that somewhere out of this, some learning and growing can happen.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the U.S. Senate seat long-held by Ted Kennedy has gone to the Republican Party. And Senator-elect Scott Brown is no Ted Kennedy apparently. Not only does this cause a hiccup in the health care debate, it is NOT good news for the LGBT community. Brown received backing from the National Organization for Marriage, the same folks who gave us that lovely anti-gay "Gathering Storm" commercial.

And then there's news that Missouri Congressman Ike Skelton is dead set on keeping the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in place for the military. Skelton is one of the key Democratic votes on military issues. He believes to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell will disrupt our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fine, send our queer soldiers to Haiti where we can do some good instead!

It seems that with each step we are taking along this journey toward equality, the road ahead stretches further and further in front of us until it vanishes into the horizon. It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, which has the famous line: "I have promises to keep/and miles to go before I sleep." The promise is that which our government has made to all citizens that we will all be treated equally. And the greater promise that we are all loved by a God who will not forsake us or leave us desolate. And so we keep walking, we keep walking, we keep walking.