Letter to the Editor

Appears in today's issue of The Eagle. Hyperlinks are my addition.

A&M Student Senate bill would exclude some Aggies

Here we are again. In 2011, the Texas A&M Student Senate passed a bill urging the creation of a "traditional family values center" in opposition to the GLBT Resource Center, stipulating that student fees would not be raised to compensate, implying funding cuts for the Center. The bill was vetoed by the student body president, but not before the campus and community were consumed by frequently vitriolic debate.

Now, the Senate is considering S.B. 65-70: The GLBT Funding Opt-Out Bill. It proposes that students who, for religious reasons, object to funding the GLBT Resource Center with their student fees can opt out of their share of the Center's funding.

Let's be clear: This is not about money. The amount per student can be measured in cents. This is about allowing some students specifically and publicly to express their disapproval of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

If the Student Senate were truly concerned with right of conscience, this bill would have broader terms. Perhaps vegetarian students could object to their fees purchasing meat for the dining halls. Atheist students might rather their fees didn't fund religious groups.

But Aggies are a family. Each student's fees pay into an array of services they might personally never use, but all are essential to some part of the population. By singling out the GLBT Resource Center, the Senate is giving tacit approval to students who essentially are saying they would rather not share a campus with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

This is important to our community image because A&M routinely ranks as the least GLBT-friendly campus in the U.S. The Aggie spirit is not one of exclusion or division, of giving some students a voice to make their fellow Aggies feel less-than.

For more about the bill and ways to support the campus GLBT community, visit bit.ly/GLBTOptOut.

HALLIE GAMMON
Board of Directors
Pride Community Center

#KeepItReal

I've never really read fashion magazines. Perused the covers in checkout lines, flipped through them in doctors' offices, sure. Even coveted a cousin's subscription to Seventeen for a brief period. But I figured out pretty early on that they set off my bullshit-o-meter in a big way. I knew that the vast majority of what these magazines were telling me ranged from nonsensical to downright harmful. So the really sad thing is that I bought into some of it anyway.

Here's the thing: I've never needed to worry about my weight. I've been genetically blessed with a high metabolism and environmentally blessed with parents who fed me a pretty healthy diet, signed me up for sports from an early age, and modeled for me how to live a healthy-enough lifestyle. I've never been overweight -- not even close. I know this, I've always known this, and yet I've exhibited the same thoughts and behaviors as every teenage and 20-something girl ever.

In high school, my friends and I were obsessed with our "pooches." You know -- the little roll of belly fat you develop when you hit puberty. We named them, joked about them, compared their sizes. My friends were constantly telling me mine was barely there, and I was constantly protesting that yes, it was. I hated my pooch. The thing is, we knew that it is biologically necessary for women of childbearing age to have a certain amount of body fat. We knew that everyone had a pooch -- all we had to do was look around at each other. So why were we so convinced there was something wrong with us?

Most days, I like the way I look. Getting away from my hometown for a while, where the standard of beauty for people my age is flat-ironed blonde hair and a thick layer of perfectly-applied makeup, certainly helped. People tell me I'm beautiful, and not all of them are my mother. I know I'm healthy, and for the most part I take good care of myself. But there are days when I wake up and obsess about my less-than-perfect skin (I thought acne was a high school thing?), the size of my thighs (generous), the way my butt looks in a swimsuit (not as perfectly toned as I'd like). To all of this, I direct a big, outraged WHY? The girl I love thinks I'm pretty. My doctor thinks I'm healthy. Apart from that, nothing about my appearance should evoke more than a passing thought. I'm intelligent enough to know that, and I obsess anyway.

There is something wrong with a culture in which concern for appearance is so deeply ingrained that even those of us who recognize and try to avoid the propaganda end up feeling its effects. The #KeepItReal challenge is focusing on one specific aspect, the digital manipulation of magazine photos to misrepresent women's bodies. While I doubt that axing Photoshop would be a cure-all for body image issues, I do think that publishing unmanipulated photos has the potential to bring the conversation about real beauty into the mainstream and help change perceptions a little at a time. So, on the off-chance you're reading this, fashion magazine editor: listen to the voices of women who want to look at your magazines and see true, obtainable beauty, not a digital fantasy.

Perry, meet Paul (and, you know, Jesus)

My governor makes me angry. In theory, I do not begrudge public figures the right to publicly have religious convictions. This does not mean I think it's okay for them to legislate morality for others based on those religious convictions, but if a politician wants to pray about his political decisions and tell us about it, that's fine with me. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a bad policy for anything, including religion, and we shouldn't pretend that a person's religion is some discrete component of their identity they can turn off at will. What is not okay with me is if a politician wants to pray instead of making political decisions, and encourage others to do the same, as if it were one of his official acts as governor. Enter Rick Perry.

This article reports on a speech Perry made a few months ago promoting The Response, a prayer rally he is sponsoring as the governor of Texas. If it were an ecumenical affair, I might be a little more sanguine about it (though I'd still find it just about as ridiculous as that time Perry ordered Texans to pray for rain), but when you bring the American Family Association into it, I start running the other direction. Also, there's this:

I tell people, that "personal property" and the ownership of that personal property is crucial to our way of life.

Our founding fathers understood that it was a very important part of the pursuit of happiness. Being able to own things that are your own is one of the things that makes America unique. But I happen to think that it's in jeopardy.

It's in jeopardy because of taxes; it's in jeopardy because of regulation; it's in jeopardy because of a legal system that’s run amok. And I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God and say, "God, You’re going to have to fix this." ...

I think it's time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God's hands. That's what I'm going to do, and I hope you'll join me.

To which I say:

Letter to the Editor

From today's issue of The Eagle, Bryan-College Station's local paper (hyperlinks are my addition).

Homosexuality is a given, not freely chosen

Two readers have already responded with evidence refuting Rev. David Konderla's claim (Eagle, May 24) that changing one's sexual orientation is possible. I add that the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation "conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed journal literature on sexual orientation change efforts and concluded that efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm."

I am not Catholic, but as a gay Christian, I have researched several denominations' positions on homosexuality. Many do not accept that different sexual orientations exist. They regard heterosexuality as the only possible orientation, and people who experience "same-sex attractions" are not gay, but "broken" heterosexuals.

The Catholic Church is more in line with scientific evidence than many denominations. A 1997 document from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Always Our Children," states: "It seems appropriate to understand sexual orientation (heterosexual or homosexual) as a deep-seated dimension of one's personality and to recognize its relative stability in a person. Generally, homosexual orientation is experienced as a given, not as something freely chosen."

It continues: "This implies respecting a person's freedom to choose or refuse therapy directed toward changing a homosexual orientation. Given the present state of medical and psychological knowledge, there is no guarantee that such therapy will succeed."

While not by itself damning of sexual orientation change efforts, this statement implies respect for scientific evidence, which, since 1997, has moved steadily toward affirming sexual orientation as immutable. If one accepts this, Rev. Konderla's organization seems misdirected and out of line with its own faith.

For more information, read the full text of "Always Our Children" and consult the website fortunatefamilies.com, which features an eight-part series on homosexuality and the Catholic Church.

HALLIE GAMMON

Caldwell

This letter follows two others I have written to The Eagle in a similar vein: We must continue to combat negative images (November 9, 2010) and No need for a family and traditional values center (April 26, 2011).

Third Thoughts

Excuse me for a moment while I get a little meta and blog about my blog. I've inhabited this same small corner of the web since late 2006, and this is its third "reboot" after a prolonged absence. Each time, I've toyed with the idea of starting fresh with a shiny new blog, but each time I decide against it. For one thing, some extremely deep-seated aspect of my character rebels at any sort of redundancy. It's why I don't use Twitter (redundant to Facebook status updates), why I figured out how to transfer balances between Starbucks gift cards so I wouldn't have to carry more than one, and why, if I ever fulfill my dream of getting an iPhone, I will immediately ditch my iPod and camera. In general, I like my life to take up as little space as possible.

There's another reason, though. I like continuity. I'm the sort of person who periodically goes back and reads every journal she's ever written in. Yes, sometimes reading the thoughts of my former self produces a feeling similar to nails on a chalkboard, but that person was me, too. Except in the most egregious cases, I'm not interested in hiding it. So please, feel free to get acquainted with Hallie the college freshman, who wrote a lengthy and impassioned article on how to wear a bra. Even though I've since ditched bras entirely, it's still one of my most-trafficked posts. 

The same year, I wrote a preachy rant about the fashion industry, in which I complained about "fashion statements that ought to be censored" and labeled girls who dress in revealing clothes "tart" (not to mention the judgmental comment that "if you're going to wear a practically nonexistent shirt, at least go back and read my bra rant - there are some things we don't want to see"). I have since learned the word for what I was doing. It's called slut-shaming, and if you -- like I did -- think it's just fine to judge women for how they present their bodies, please go read this amazing speech right now. I cried. No, the judgmental impulse in the back of my mind that goes "wow, that skirt is too short" has not immediately shut up. But I'm working on it.

And that's why I keep this blog around. Just like my third-grade diary with the heart-shaped lock, it keeps track of who I've been and who I'm becoming. Even better than a paper journal, this blog lets me self-annotate -- when I figure out that an old version of me was wrong about something, I can turn right around and tell her so. That means, as this blog continues to age, the "meta" tag will probably get more and more use. Read on, and watch the evolution happen.