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GAY DEBATE II FOCUSES ON SHOWING REAL PEOPLE
By Julianne Smith GUEST WRITER Last Thursday in the Heyns basement, three gay students spoke to a crowd of around two hundred students about their experiences at Calvin. The student panel, consisting of Justin Jager, Janee Harvey and Peter Fortner, was the first of its kind in Calvin’s history. The discussion they led on Thursday night was the third and final installment of the second annual late-night series about homosexuality held at BHT. Tuesday night’s discussion featured Rev. Jack Roeda, the minister of Church of the Servant, who spoke about how the church should respond to gays according to the 1973 Synod guidelines. Thursday night’s dialogue led by three openly gay students. The students shared their stories of coming out and how this has affected their lives as Christians and as students at Calvin. In so doing, they hoped to facilitate communication between straight and gay students and to let other gay students know that they are not alone. The three students who led the discussion are participants in the Calvin Gay and Lesbian Discussion Group and made an open offer to speak on campus. Josh Armstrong, the Resident Director of BHT who organized a gay debate last year, responded to this offer. It was emphasized throughout the discussion that the purpose of the night was not to engage in a theological debate over the issue of homosexuality. Rather, the students wanted to show that the debate involves real people. Harvey said that their purpose was “not to win some sort of proof text competition, but to share with others what we have experienced and to hear the stories of others, both gay and straight.” Jill Eelkema, a student who attended the Thursday night discussion, appreciated that the Gay Debate II was not really a debate. “I was glad that the main focus was on the care that we can give each other, not on the theological issues involved. More than being a theologically based school, Calvin is a community of Christians who need to support each other more than they do now,” she said. To open up the discussion each student related their stories of coming out to their family and friends. The three students’ experiences were diverse in terms of family reaction to the news. Jager was accepted with love and support by his family. Harvey, who had vowed never to tell her family, was told that she would be a bad influence on her siblings and since then she has been struggling to find acceptance. The students also described their personal struggle to accept their sexual orientation prior to being able to share with others. Jager described his denial. “When I starting thinking that I may be gay, my strategy was to think about women as much as possible. At 3:15 in the afternoon, I would go up to my room and meditate about women.” Harvey found it difficult to face her sexuality until she found an environment that was more supportive of her struggle. Fortner related how he had dated girls in high school, but then realized that he couldn’t get the emotional support from girls that he can get from guys. Since then, he has come to this conclusion: “God didn’t make any mistakes when he made me.” Along with the diversity of family reactions, there was much diversity in how the students felt they were received by the Calvin community. Fortner and Jager said that they had felt little overt hostility since coming here. Harvey emphasized that more than feeling rejected, she feels invisible. She described class discussions in which gays were assumed to exist only off-campus. She also related how being gay made socializing more challenging for her. In her words, “I have had to pick and choose my friends, which is sad.” During the discussion, students searched for a way to understand homosexuality. However, according to the panelists, each analogy offered denied the uniqueness of the issue. “It’s not like having a birth defect. It’s not like being black. It’s like being gay,” Harvey said. When asked why they decided to come out publicly, Jager replied that he wanted “to establish a dialogue that has been absent on campus so that both sides can come together to reach a valid conclusion.” Harvey added that she wanted to create a space for herself and other Calvin students in her position to participate in the dialogue. They all agreed that if they reached one struggling gay student and showed them that there are people that understand and groups such as the Gay and Lesbian Discussion Group, then it would be worth the risk of coming out. When asked what Calvin should do to support their gay students all three agreed that the most important thing is to address the issue of homosexuality and “recognize that it exists on campus.” |
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