Over 100 highly-attentive students attended in a panel outlining the conservative position on the sociological impact of homosexuality on Wednesday, where three police officers showed up in anticipation of possible protests.
Panelist Brian Camenker, who leads the conservative Waltham-based Parents' Rights Coalition (PRC), began by outlining his view on homosexuality.
There is "no such thing as gay people," he said. "These various things [homosexual] people do are symptoms of their own past, some often very tragic."
These statements elicited a visibly uncomfortable, often indignant response from the large group of Tufts students displaying their rainbow LGTB pins.
Camenker also drew an analogy between the understanding of alcoholism before the advent of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the current view of homosexuality. In its early days, people thought AA was ridiculous because drunks could not be reformed, according to Camenker.
Similarly, the public will eventually learn that homosexuality is a treatable disorder similar to alcoholism, he said.
The next presentation was by Dr. John Diggs, a prominent researcher on the health risks of homosexuality.
Diggs discussed the physical, psychiatric, and public health concerns of homosexual sex, including the elevated incidences of drug abuse and depression in the gay community, and the disproportionate amount of STDs and other health problems among homosexuals.
"Public health should discourage homosexual behavior," said Diggs, concluding that sodomy should be legally banned. "There are only heterosexual people, and homosexual problems," Diggs said, echoing Camenker's view.
Diggs tried to lighten his discussion of alternate sexualities with a joke. "I was a man trapped in a woman's body - it was my mother's, I escaped," he said, eliciting uncomfortable laughter from parts of the audience.
But the mood remained tense, especially after Diggs declared unequivocally, "there is no gay gene."
This comment spurred an audience member working on a PhD in genetics to respond, questioning the validity of some of Diggs' data. "Where the hell do you come from?" the student angrily asked.
Another audience member read from a 1998 statement by the American Psychological Association (APA) saying that treatments to change sexuality are not effective and the risks are great.
Diggs had contested these ideas during his presentation.
Diggs accounted for the discrepancy by claiming that various medical associations, including the APA, were pressured into making those types of statements by militant, gay activist groups.
Another impassioned response from the audience came from Jonathan Strong, a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Tufts.
"How is my existence so terrifying to you people?" Strong asked. Strong is openly gay and legally married to his partner in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Diggs responded by saying that there was "no terror on my part, [rather] extreme sadness over what political activities have done to public health."
He said numerous public health precautions such as mandatory AIDS screening before marriage have not been undertaken because the issue is a so sensitive.
The third panelist, James Lafferty, addressed the political effects of gay culture, saying he'd "never seen the sort of strong political behavior associated with [homosexuality]" over the course of his career as an analyst for politicians such as Ronald Reagan.
The issue of gay rights is a "hostile bare-knuckle affair here in Massachusetts," said Lafferty, referring to the harassment he and his staff experienced while working toward a statewide ban on gay marriage and abortion.
Lafferty contacted the U.S. Justice Department after he and a member of his staff were physically assaulted in public and the Boston and Beacon Hill Police Departments failed to respond.
The speakers asserted that gay rights activists were belligerent and extremely polarizing, making it difficult for either side of the debate to make headway.
Lafferty also cited the campaign of Tufts alum Carl Sciortino, the Democratic candidate for a Massachusetts state representative seat and openly gay, as "a real attempt to deceive and disguise" the public. Sciortino is attempting to "sneak" an "anti-Catholic" and "homosexual activist" past voters, he said.
Camenker's conservative organization has recently undertaken a mailing campaign against Sciortino.
Students were generally displeased with the panelists' points of view.
"It's not right that they singled out the LGTB [population]," said Anne Stevenson, a communications director for the Tufts Democrats.
Stressing that the Democrats were not "anti-Republican," Stevenson said they still "don't support the disenfranchisement of any minority on campus - we are fully supportive of the LGTB alliance."
Nicholas Boyd, president of the Tufts Republicans, said that they did not try to single out a specific community, but in any issue "some groups will be affected more than others."
He stressed that the goal of the panel had been to "to present a new perspective on gay marriage and other issues pertaining to sexuality." The event was co-sponsored by the Tufts Republicans.
Citing the panelists as "an example of conservative views," Boyd said that "this is part of the new perspective we want to provide to the campus."
Discussions are only made richer by bringing in all views - even those that might make certain groups unhappy, Boyd added. "Perhaps the truth does not make everybody as a group happy."
Allie Bohm, co-coordinator of the Tufts Transgender Lesbian Gay Bisexual Collective (TTLGBC), said she and many other members went to "hear the other side of the debate - we're better debaters if we know what the other side's arguments are."
Bohm said that while there may be logical reasons to oppose homosexuality, the panel's views did not, in her opinion, form a coherent argument. "From a religious standpoint, if people would have a problem with gay marriage, I would understand completely," she said.
During the panel, "the vast majority of the comments were not based on science, but on personal opinion," she said, and the scientific argument "had a lot of holes" and was "very, very outdated."
"I have a lot of understanding why people hate [homosexuality] so much," Bohm said. "It's the most normal thing in the world to me. What I saw [on the part of the panel] was a lack of education. What you don't know can be scary - and different is scary."
Before the panel, Director of the LGBT Center Dona Yarbrough, sent an e-mail to LGBT students warning them to remain composed, and stating that Camenker "has been known" for videotaping gay rights activists with the intent of discrediting the LGBT community.
The speech was also sponsored by the Waltham-based Article 8 Alliance, which describes itself as the sister organization of the PRC, and has the same P.O. Box as a mailing address.
